Text/Liu Qiang
Porsche owners do have money, and they're creative.
On April 27, when Porsche was conducting a webcast of the new Taycan listing, some car owners entered the live broadcast room to make a big gift.
It's not about being rich and willful, it's about having something to say. The users of the gifts used their own screen names to indicate their intentions: accusing Porsche of reducing the allocation of "steering columns", which was suspected of defrauding consumers and forcing overlord clauses.
"Gift-giving complaint"
According to the users, the thing is this: when ordering Porsche yourself, the official promise is to temporarily reduce the vehicle to a "manual (adjusted) steering column" due to insufficient chip supply, and the follow-up will upgrade the "electric (adjustable) steering column" for the owner free of charge. But now the official has changed its mouth to say that it will not be upgraded for free, and finally only provide a "goodwill plan" of 2300 yuan voucher compensation. However, it costs 30,000 yuan to install electronic steering columns separately in 4S stores.
This is a bit unkind. Porsche owners are certainly more gold, but whose money is not blown by the wind, collect money to collect 30,000, refund 2300, or coupons. It's hard for anyone to accept it.
What's more, when buying a car, I said that I would slow down, and after a year and a half of delay, I said that I would not install it. Porsche certainly does not worry about selling cars, nor can it casually renege on its own words.
In fact, in essence, the purpose of Porsche's delivery of manual steering column is really not to earn the difference of more than 20,000 yuan, but to ensure timely delivery. Not only in the Chinese market, but also in the global world, Porsche also reduces the amount of chips through this "slow installation" method, avoiding long delays in delivery due to the shortage of specific chips.
This is not news. As early as June 2021, Porsche CEO Obomu publicly stated in an interview that in order to ensure delivery time, Porsche installed a "fake chip" that could not work in some non-critical parts of the vehicle, and waited until the available chip arrived to reload the owner.
With Obomu's endorsement, the "slow loading" did not affect Porsche's sales that year, on the contrary, its global sales in 2021 increased by 11%, breaking the 300,000 mark for the first time.
However, the same lack of core, the same "slow loading", Porsche seems to use two faces for Chinese and foreign car owners.
Some users posted on overseas forums that they received a notice from the local Porsche company in June 2021 that the vehicles to be delivered will not have the function of electrically adjusting the steering column due to chip shortages.
It is worth noting that according to the feedback of some overseas car owners, the steering column delivered by Porsche can not only not be adjusted electrically, but also not even the "manual adjustment steering column" in the traditional sense, but can only be adjusted by the special equipment at the dealer, which sounds troublesome, but this means that the steering column delivered is designed in accordance with the electric adjustment method, leaving room for subsequent chip installation.
As for Chinese car owners, judging from the photos released by some car owners, Porsche chose to directly deliver the "manual steering column", although it can be used normally, but the subsequent modification of the "electric steering column" requires more work. Of course, this is not a problem, because Porsche has unilaterally canceled its original commitment.
The steering column posted by overseas car owners (left) and the steering column posted by domestic car owners (right) show obvious differences in appearance design
But this has to make people question how much sincerity Porsche originally promised to Chinese car owners for "follow-up reloading".
Admittedly, the global supply of chips is still tight, and Porsche is no exception. However, Beiqing Automobile learned from some foreign Porsche owners' forums that in foreign countries, there are already car owners who have been reloaded at the end of 2021 with complete steering columns with electric adjustment functions. It can be seen that some Porsche 4S store personnel declare to the owner that "dealers all over the world do this", which is probably nonsense.
Guaranteeing delivery in a "slow-fit" way is a "successful" initiative for Porsche. In 2021, Porsche will deliver 95,000 new vehicles in the Chinese market. According to the data revealed by different channels, 20,000-30,000 of the 95,000 new cars were achieved by "slow loading" and then canceling.
Peeling off the layers of "compensation measures" and "goodwill programs", Porsche gave Chinese consumers a "delay strategy" and was quite effective. Coupled with the feedback on the overseas owners' forum, Porsche's "two-faced" image has gradually become clear.
The lack of core is not terrible, the lack of heart is not saved.