It is difficult to fight the country, and it is even more difficult to defend the country.
Header image source: IC photo
More than 5 months ago, in the monthly delivery ranking of the new forces, the top three seats of "Wei Xiaoli" suddenly underwent a huge change. "Big Brother" Weilai rarely fell out of the top three of the sales list, and what is even more surprising is that Nezha Automobile, which has been unknown and does not have much sense of existence, won the second place in one fell swoop, becoming the biggest dark horse of the month.
After achieving a monthly delivery of more than 10,000 vehicles for two consecutive months, Nezha Automobile ranked among the top three new forces in the first three months with the delivery of 11,009 vehicles, 7,117 vehicles and 12,026 vehicles respectively in 2022.
However, because of the label of "main low-end market" and "B-end sales account for too high", even if sales are rising, it has not dispelled people's doubts about the future direction of this dark horse.
For Nezha, if you choose to continue to fight in the low-end market, then the first thing to face is the reality of low-end electric vehicles "losing money and selling". And if you want to tear off the low-end label, from product strength to brand, you will undoubtedly have to pass a more difficult test.
Who is buying Nezha?
In September 2021, Tang Lin, who plans to change cars, has been hesitating between Changan Ben E-Star, Euler Black Cat and Sihao E10X. Ben ben is cheap, but there is no air bag; the black cat has a high appearance, Si Hao is not injured, but the endurance of only 300 kilometers between the two makes him unable to make up his mind.
By chance, because I saw many people recommend Nezha Car on social media, although I had never been in contact with it, Tang Lin suddenly became interested in this new brand. When I went to the store to test drive, because the battery life, tail box, and rear row use were all in line with expectations, without much thought, Tang Lin decided to buy Nezha V, "because after looking around, it is most like a normal car." ”
As a civil servant in Nanning Township, Guangxi, every day to commute, Tang Lin has to drive at least 40 kilometers, plus he has to go to the countryside from time to time to work, and the unstable mileage of the car makes him particularly concerned about the endurance. Before that, he drove Changan CS75, "A day less than seventy or eighty oil money, who can stand it?" ”
He has calculated an account, using his own charging pile, one kilowatt hour of electricity only needs 0.58 yuan, Nezha is full of 70 degrees of electricity, the frequency of charging a week can fully meet his 400 km endurance requirements, rough calculation, a month can save at least 800 yuan.
Tang Lin's Nezha U (left) and Nezha V (right) Source: Courtesy of the interviewee
In Nanning, whether it is a gas car or a tram, there is no restriction on the number of lottery. In just over a year, Tang Lin's home has gathered three electric vehicles of Nezha V, Nezha U and Hongguang MINI EV for daily family transportation.
In his perception, in less than a year, the Nezha car, which was rarely seen on the street, "seemed to suddenly catch fire." Many friends around have also started, Tang Lin attributed it to the rise of word of mouth and the stability of production capacity, "Nanning has a local factory, pick up the car very quickly."
As an electric vehicle of less than 100,000 yuan, Tang Lin will also feel criticized by many riders when using the car every day, such as a bit of drifting on the high speed, difficult to change braking habits and other issues. But he believes that under the ultimate cost performance, these do not affect the "true incense effect" of Nezha.
Because of the price of civilians, Nezha chose the survival path of "rural encirclement of the city" as soon as he appeared, and Daniel Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Nezha Automobile, has also stressed many times that Nezha's market is in third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities, focusing on small-town youth, but this does not seem to affect Nezha's gradual move to the front line.
Before becoming the owner of the Nezha V, the car that Huang Sheng of the coordinates Shenzhen used every day was the Jeep Wrangler. Because he was worried that Shenzhen would also implement the tram lottery purchase restriction policy in the future, he decided to buy a tram first to "occupy a green card".
Either the same level as the family oil car, or simply buy an entry-level electric car, and after consulting with his family, Huang Sheng found that he did not have many choices. Prior to this, Weilai ES8, Mercedes-Benz EQC, and Audi e-tron had all been within his consideration, but because of the distrust of the existing new energy replenishment system, Huang Sheng finally set his sights on Nezha V, Chery Ant and Zero Run T03.
Nezha V is the main force of Nezha delivery Source: IC photo
In mid-2021, because his family was impressed by Nezha's appearance, Huang Sheng finally chose Nezha V. The arrival of the tram also completely dispelled his previous concerns, and the ubiquitous charging piles, unlimited number policy and free parking for 2 hours a day made Huang Sheng realize how friendly today's new energy policy is.
The frequency of use of new cars at home has also risen sharply, going to work, buying vegetables, going out for sports, and almost all activities within 10 kilometers are contracted by Nezha V, "There is an A0-class tram that is easy to park everywhere."
Huang Sheng, who has hindsight, even has some regrets, "It is completely possible to buy a tram for the main use, rather than a tram for small-scale transportation." After that, he began to pay attention to the higher price of Nezha U.
If you want to sell a car, go out of the circle first
In the growth process of Nezha Automobile, the reason why it can survive the bloody new power war is mainly based on the B-end market based on shared travel, online ride-hailing platforms and enterprises and institutions. Daniel Zhang once explained the early strategy of Nezha Automobile, "Because the product strength is really not enough, it will be more difficult to play the C-end market." ”
Perhaps knowing that this is not a long-term solution, in 2021, Nezha Automobile is trying to break the impression of over-reliance on third- and fourth-tier cities and the B-end travel market. Embark on the road of transformation from capital, products and other aspects to increase the proportion of individual customers.
From the results, official data show that of the 69,674 cars delivered by Nezha Automobile in 2021, individual users accounted for 83%, and users from first-tier, new first-tier and second-tier cities accounted for about 60%.
The difficulties and difficulties in the process here are deeply felt by Chen Chen, who is in the sales line. As a dealer in Luzhou, Sichuan, because Nezha did not have much voice in the C-end market, how to sell the car to consumers once made him very anxious. Even if the storefront is open in the city center, it has not exchanged too much traffic. In 2020, the store's business was at its worst, and even the monthly sales were less than 5 vehicles.
After some efforts, Chen Chen realized that instead of waiting for others to buy a car, the top priority is how to let more consumers know about this brand. Because of his background in journalism at the university, after seeing the local TV station cooperating with other brand dealers to hold auto shows, Chen Chen keenly captured this potential publicity channel, "This is an opportunity."
In 2021, its store held five auto shows in cooperation with local TV stations and automobile associations. With the opening of local popularity, sales have also increased considerably, the most time, Chen Chen sold 20 cars in one go at the auto show.
Holding a car show is the magic weapon for Chen Chen's store to increase sales Source: Photo provided by the interviewee
After holding three or four auto shows every two months, Chen Chen found that the store's trading volume has been able to stabilize at more than 20 vehicles per month. In contrast, Chen Chen understands that local dealers such as Toyota and Volkswagen have monthly sales of about 70-80 vehicles.
Although every time a car show is held, it costs a lot of money from venue to publicity, in Chen Chen's view, if you want to really have your own influence in the C-end market, "these costs must be spent." More importantly, because there is no local lottery purchase restriction policy, "as a new force, we want to grab a share with fuel vehicles, and naturally lose money and also publicize."
On the other hand, Miao Xin, who works as a salesman in a direct store in Xiamen, has also personally experienced transformation. It was just that the store had just opened, and reality hit her head- Affected by the epidemic, the direct store in his direct operation was forced to close for nearly a month less than a week after opening. "Others say that the door is red, and we are also red, but the red is the health code."
As a salesperson forced to open a remote office, Miao Xin and her colleagues decided to switch to shooting a short video on the line to warm up the store, and data such as playback volume and comments began to become new assessment indicators. In order to achieve the goal, salesmen have used all their strength to play tricks and set up people. After the store was unsealed, its average monthly sales remained at about 20 vehicles.
Although the impact of the epidemic on sales has been reduced as much as possible, such achievements are not much competitive. According to Miao Xin's observation, there are not a few small electric vehicles in Xiamen, and most of the drivers are young people, "generally living outside Xiamen Island, coming to work and commuting to the island for commuting." And such young people, the most visited place is the local Wanda Plaza.
Knowing that the influence of the business district where her store is located is limited, Miao Xin and her colleagues jointly planned a car show held in Wanda Plaza.
The flow of people in the mall has brought a lot of sales to Miao Xin's store. Although only 12 cars were sold at the auto show, the attention that followed was the most important. Miao Xin revealed that since November, the flow of people in the store has obviously improved, and "sales have doubled in the month." According to her rough estimates, the average monthly order number in the store since December is nearly 60-80 units.
In order to let Nezha out of the circle, many directly operated and dealer stores have chosen online and offline dual channel publicity. A blogger with 100,000 fans on the short video platform said that he had also received advertisements from Nezha Tianjin offline stores, including shooting the first perspective to visit the store, experiencing test drives, and asking about preferential activities.
It is difficult to fight the country, and it is even more difficult to defend the country
Whether it was a brief highlight moment, or since then, sales have really prevailed. Nezha, who attacked, was always surrounded by various controversies.
On the one hand, although the current new forces are still in a scale war, the monthly delivery volume competition is not meaningless, but completely abandoning the price and positioning, only talking about sales is still a bit of a "hooligan".
As the main force in Nezha's delivery results, data from the Association of Passengers shows that the annual sales volume of Nezha V in 2021 will be 49,646 vehicles, accounting for more than 70% of the overall sales volume.
The model priced at 6.29-12.08 million yuan is mainly in the small electric vehicle market of about 100,000 yuan, in this level, the main opponent of Nezha V is Hongguang MINI EV, Chery QQ ice cream and other models, and compared with other players positioning in the middle and high-end, the competition in this segment is not fierce.
In addition, in the long run, unlike other head players who focus on intelligence and have core competitiveness, Nezha, which focuses on the low-end market, has a large distance from the former, both in terms of product strength and brand reputation. Not to mention, these directly lead to its profit margin, as well as the scale of revenue and the head of the new car is far from the gap.
From the recent suspension of many A0-class models, it is not difficult to glimpse the embarrassing situation of this market. Under the dual pressure of raw material price increases and subsidies, Euler brand CEO Dong Yudong bluntly said that behind Euler Black Cat's suspension of receiving orders, the main reason is, "Counting subsidies, Euler Black Cat now sells a loss of ten thousand." ”
Nezha S Source: Nezha Official
Nezha, who mainly pursues the pro-people line, is still trapped in the situation of losing money and making money. According to the performance data revealed in the financial report of Nezha Automobile Shareholder 360 Group, Nezha Automobile achieved revenue of 1.297 billion yuan and a net loss of 1.321 billion yuan in 2020; in the first half of 2021, it achieved revenue of 1.632 billion yuan and a net loss of 693 million yuan.
Although Nezha officials have not yet disclosed relevant data such as gross profit margin, with reference to Hongguang MINI EV, which is more "close to the people" than Nezha, according to the relevant research report data of Caitong Securities, the gross profit margin of Hongguang MINI EV may only be 2%-3%. The Daniel Zhang also told the media that the gross profit margin of Nezha Automobile is positive, but "good and cheap will have a lower gross profit margin." ”
In the view of Zhang Xiang, an analyst in the automotive industry, although Nezha has a good delivery momentum now, it is still necessary to rely on its own cost performance to accelerate the pace in the last year of new energy subsidies, and explore and vigorously develop the potential market upwards, "The complete cancellation of new energy subsidies in 2023 may bring great uncertainty to the delivery volume of Nezha." ”
How to turn losses into profits, improve gross profit margins, and continue to explore upwards is undoubtedly a top priority for Nezha.
According to the collation of Future Auto Daily, as of March 2022, Nezha Automobile has opened 438 sales outlets nationwide, of which 113 direct stores and distribution agent stores in first-tier and new first-tier cities, accounting for only 25.8%.
In this regard, Nezha officials also revealed to the Future Automobile Daily that it will increase the layout speed of first- and second-line directly operated stores, and the number of Nezha automobile directly operated stores is expected to exceed 100 by the end of 2022.
In terms of products, the medium-sized electric sedan Nezha S, which is planned to be launched this year, will shoulder the heavy responsibility of brand upwards. It is not only the first product based on the full-stack self-developed Shanhai platform, but also equipped with Huawei's MDC computing platform that can achieve 200TOPS high computing power in order to improve the level of intelligence.
In Zhang Xiang's view, with the launch of Nezha S, which is expected to be priced at about 200,000 yuan, its company's image and brand positioning will also be changed, "more conducive to attracting consumers." ”
However, the relevant report of the research institute J.D. Power shows that consumers are gradually shifting from directly focusing on models to focusing on brands and then determining models, and have locked in the intention to buy brands at the beginning of purchase. Whether Nezha can really break through the barrier is left to the market to judge.
(At the request of the interviewees, Tang Lin, Huang Sheng, Chen Chen, and Miao Xin are pseudonyms)
Author | Cui Qiuyang
Edit | Wang Yan