If you just bought a car last year, and recently suddenly found that this model disappeared almost overnight, the brand side in order to fully promote their new car, but also treat the previous car as a second-hand car, promotional sale. How do you feel as a car owner?
At the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show, Huawei and Xilix Automobile, a subsidiary of Xiaokang Co., Ltd., launched the Xilix Huawei Smart Choice SF5 model, and the SF5 became the first Huawei Smart Select eco-car product, which was sold simultaneously in Huawei's online and offline channels. However, since February and March this year, more and more SF5 owners have run to various channels to complain about Xilix, mentioning that the actual fuel consumption is too high, the battery life is false, the car machine is stuck, etc., especially the vehicle can not be upgraded to the Hongmeng OS system, which makes them feel cheated.
A consumer said, "90% of car owners are going to Huawei, but now we don't know who to blame."
According to the data of the Association, from April to December 2021, the sales volume of the SF5 of Xilix was 129, 204, 1097, 507, 715, 1117, 1926, 1385 and 1089, totaling 8169 vehicles, with a monthly average of less than 1,000 vehicles. Recall that when the first car, the SF5, was on sale, Yu Chengdong set a target of 300,000 vehicles a year internally, and now this figure is quite embarrassing for Huawei.
In the future, can car companies continue to sell cars through Huawei's halo?
"Failed product" has a "high-end heart"
The first cooperation between Huawei and Xilix Automobile can be said to have chilled the hearts of the first car owners, but this does not seem to affect the continuation of cooperation between the two sides.
At the end of last year, Huawei and Xilis jointly created the high-end car brand AITO and its first car, the M5, and unlike the previous car, Huawei personally participated in and even led the design, user experience and post-sales of the vehicle this time. It may be precisely for this reason that the price of this car is much higher than that of SF5, the price of the standard version, performance version, and flagship version is 24.98, 27.98, and 319,800 yuan, respectively, and Yu Chengdong has put out a bold statement that "first dry Tesla, and then kill the space of BBA more than 300,000 to 500,000 yuan."
But the current performance of the M5 may disappoint Yu Chengdong.
According to data from the Association, the M5 sold 3,045 vehicles in March, ranking 12th in the march sales list of new energy SUVs.
Huawei does not mention for the time being, as an unknown car company, why Xilis has the courage to directly win the high-end market, which is somewhat bizarre.
Mention of Xilis, I have to say Zhang Xinghai, Zhang Xinghai is the chairman of Chongqing Xiaokang Automobile Holdings Co., Ltd., we used to be familiar with Dongfeng Xiaokang, is the main model of Xiaokang Holdings, and the controller of Xilis is Zhang Xinghai's son Zhang Zhengping.
In 2016, Zhang Zhengping came to Silicon Valley in the United States with the dream of building a car, founded a car company called SF MOTORS, and only two years later, he held a high-profile brand launch. Sitting in the audience, Zhang Xinghai, next to the governor of Indiana, Zhang Zhengping spoke with great enthusiasm about his plan to produce the nation's top electric vehicles, saying that he would compete with Tesla in the global market.
This time, a year earlier than Jia Yueting ran to the United States to build a car, but the story after that may not be so glorious. SF MOTORS was exposed to a large number of layoffs, serious losses, the two previously released cars seem to have stopped developing, and one has not been delivered.
Reluctantly, Zhang Zhengping returned to China and transformed SF MOTORS into Jinkang Cyrus under the Xiaokang Group.
But without Huawei's aura, Xilis can achieve from zero to one. Although Xiaokang Group has the basic skills of traditional manufacturers, there is a technical gap to be crossed from vans to passenger cars, not to mention new energy vehicles, Xilis has been tossing and turning in the United States for a long time, but the result has not ended. An industry insider in the automobile industry revealed that "whether it is in production quality control or experience, there is still a certain gap between Cyrus and mainstream domestic manufacturers."
In fact, not only Xilix, but also car companies that cooperate with Huawei seem to want to use Huawei's aura to enter the middle and high-end in one fell swoop.
For example, Beiqi Blue Valley, Beiqi Blue Valley has lost money for two consecutive years, and at the time of its commitment to high-end intelligent transformation, automobile sales have been flat, with total sales of only 26,100 vehicles in 2021. In this case, the high-end brand ARCFOX (or "Extreme Fox") launched by Beiqi Blue Valley has become the key to the company's intention to break the situation. Last year, Huawei and Beiqi Blue Valley cooperated to release the Polar Fox Alpha S Huawei HI version, earning enough industry heat.
Changan Automobile's first model, the Avita 11, will be equipped with Huawei's HI full-stack intelligent vehicle solution, positioning itself as a high-end SEV brand.
Traditional car companies explore the high-end market, and cooperation with Huawei can bring natural heat and attention to their products, but the brand aura is not Huawei's own "antidote", let alone other companies?
Consumers love Huawei, do not love the cars that Huawei sells?
In the rights defense group, a Mr. Wang from Chongqing said that most of the owners who came to buy SF5s went to Huawei, and he ordered a Cyrus Huawei Smart SF5 at a Huawei mobile phone store in September last year. Another owner, Mr. Yu, purchased the Cyrus SF5 at Huawei's Shenzhen Vientiane Tiandi flagship store.
When asked if they knew about the Cyrus brand before, most of them said they had never heard of it.
Do not look at the brand, do not look at the performance, do not look at the service, only with Huawei's endorsement, there are consumers rushing to pay for the "experimental products" of Xilis, Huawei's brand appeal in the electronic consumer market is still amazing, but they are a minority after all.
On the one hand, the car is no better than the mobile phone, for a consumer or family, the price of hundreds of thousands or even two or three hundred thousand, so that people can not buy a mobile phone can simply pay for the feelings. A consumer of Huawei mobile phones said that the mobile phone thousands of dollars of things, to buy a bad use, bite the teeth and throw away can buy another one, but buy a car, not to say that after two or three years can be changed at will.
On the other hand, over the years, as Huawei mobile phones have gained a firm foothold in the domestic high-end market, its user groups have gradually favored middle-aged men with higher incomes, and MobData has reported that Huawei's user groups belong to high-end business people, with monthly incomes between 5,000 yuan and 20,000 yuan. Generally speaking, high-end business people have higher spending power, they have higher requirements for car performance and brand, and they tend to be more rigorous and professional when choosing.
How much of the technical background of the models Huawei cooperates with car companies is the key to whether consumers are willing to pay for the "Huawei". However, in order to leverage consumers' willingness to buy from this perspective, there is a dilemma, that is, car companies want to borrow Huawei's brand appeal, but do not want to really rely on Huawei in intelligence, automatic driving and software ecology.
Cyrus may have become a "lesson from the past". After the failure of Huawei's smart selection SF5, Huawei changed its cooperation model with Xilis, and the whole process of Q&I M5 from product design, industrial chain management, quality management to software ecology, user management, brand marketing, etc., was almost all dominated by Huawei, which made Xilix largely more like a "foundry" role. Coincidentally, shortly after the release of the M5, the news of beiqi Blue Valley and Huawei's "falling out" spread.
Although Beiqi Blue Valley later debunked the news, doubts from the outside world still exist. Because the emergence of the Q&C M5 means that the cooperation between Xilis and Huawei has exceeded the cooperation mode of OEMs and suppliers in the past, and the intelligent part is basically in the hands of Huawei.
BAIC, GAC and Changan do not want to see this scenario, especially more and more new forces have put forward the goal and direction of "full-stack self-research", not hesitate to invest heavily in the establishment of their own autonomous driving technology team, and even plan to develop their own autonomous driving chips, not to mention traditional car companies.
Who's "painting bread to fill the hunger"?
As early as last April, beiqi blue valley and Huawei jointly created the polar fox alpha S Huawei HI version has been announced, this car was originally scheduled to be delivered at the end of 2021, but until the news of the "fallout" with Huawei came, Beiqi Blue Valley still did not give a specific time for delivery.
With a cumulative loss of more than 10 billion yuan in two years, a decline of half in the production of pure electric passenger cars, and uncertain delivery of new cars, even in this case, Beiqi Blue Valley still swears, saying that "in 2022, Beiqi Blue Valley's sales target is 100,000 vehicles, of which 40,000 are Extreme Foxes." Lenovo last year's Cyrus, Cyris initially promised 45-60 days to deliver the car, and then the delivery time was delayed again and again, so that many owners just got a new car, less than a few months, found that the SF5 became an "out-of-print car".
2021 is a year of soaring sales of new energy vehicles, Tesla, BYD, Wei Xiaoli and even Nezha Automobile, which is in the second echelon, have ushered in a sales breakthrough last year. Car companies cooperating with Huawei are also eager to take advantage of the momentum to fire the first shot, but the production capacity cannot keep up, and they can only "draw cakes" for consumers.
Car companies "paint cakes" for consumers, and Yu Chengdong seems to be "painting cakes" for car companies.
Yu Chengdong once said: "The biggest advantage of Huawei's car sales is that there are more than 5,000 Huawei smart selection stores, and BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, and new car-making forces are not in the same order of magnitude, which is our huge advantage and covers every important city in China." According to his meaning, Huawei's more than 5,000 experience stores from selling mobile phones to selling cars, Huawei mobile phone traffic will directly guide these cooperative car companies, increase car sales.
Yes, Yu Chengdong set a "small target" of 300,000 for car companies, and promised to sell cars in 200 experience stores at the end of July, and expand to more than 1,000 by the end of the year.
Some media have counted that as of September 22, there are only 138 Huawei authorized experience stores and user centers that can "book a test drive" in the country. Moreover, in Ningxia, Tibet, Guizhou, Guangxi and other provinces and cities, although there are a large number of Huawei offline retail channels, none of the Huawei stores can book a test drive of the Cyrus SF5.
Looking at the Q&I M5, when the M5 officially started delivery on March 5 this year, the official said that it had completed the settlement and construction of more than 500 experience stores and 150 user centers. Although this number far exceeds the number of offline stores of other car companies, it is not a star and a half away from the target of 1,000.
Not all Huawei experience stores are willing to switch from selling mobile phones to selling cars.
A Huawei dealer said, "Although the mobile phone business has seriously declined, driving the sales of other businesses to be sluggish, most of Huawei's offline stores have not yet been prepared for the sale of cars, whether it is store transformation or sales training." And many dealers are not very optimistic about selling cars, "there are many differences between selling cars in mobile phone stores and buying mobile phones, and it is not a simple thing to convert user intentions into actual orders in a short period of time."
Huawei's huge sales channel network built by relying on consumer business is one of Huawei's core assets, and in the context of the setback of mobile phone business, Huawei urgently needs to sell car business to fill this gap. But it is clear that the car companies that cooperate with it now cannot take on this heavy responsibility.
Even a risk has emerged, if the failure of the Cyris SF5 is repeated, Huawei's brand appeal can withstand several rounds of tossing?
The Tao is always reasonable, and has used the name Crooked Dao, the Internet and the new media in the science and technology circle. The WeChat public account of the same name: Dao always has a reason (daotmt). This article is an original article, and any form of reproduction without retaining the author's relevant information is not retained.