The ideal "matryoshka adventure": copy and paste the new car, is it a price reduction in disguise?

Source: Visual China

Author丨Cheng Xiaoyi

Editor丨 Kang Xiao

Produced by Tencent News Xiaoman Studio

Ideal Auto "copy-pasted" a new car.

On February 8, the ideal L7 with almost exactly the same appearance as the ideal L9 and L8 was officially launched, divided into three versions: ideal L7 Air, ideal L7 Pro, ideal L7 Max, the national unified retail price is 319,800 yuan, 339,800 yuan and 379,800 yuan respectively. Deliveries of the Ideal L7 Pro and Max will begin on March 1, and deliveries of the Ideal L7 Air will begin in early April. Netizens ridiculed that this naming method at first glance "thought it was a new product from Apple." ”

The practice of sharing a visual scheme for all models released by Ideal Auto is unprecedented in the history of car manufacturing in the view of Wang Ke, a veteran automotive industry practitioner, "Ideal This solution may cost less than Tesla's integrated die-casting." ”

An ideal employee told "Deep Net" that after the ideal L7 is listed, it will compete with BBA (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi) in the price range of 300,000 yuan to 500,000 yuan.

In addition, the ideal L8 has also added an Air version, which is 20,000 yuan cheaper than the original Pro version. "Pro is a little embarrassed." An ideal L8 Pro owner told Deep Web that the Pro looks like it has an air suspension compared to the Air, and "the air suspension is not felt by the average person [unlike the non-air suspension]." ”

In a sense, Air is an ideal disguised way to reduce prices, and the price is back to the ideal actual value.

From top to bottom: ideal L7, ideal L8, ideal L9

In addition to the air suspension, the ideal Air model uses a different power battery than other models.

The ideal L7 Air and ideal L8 Air are equipped with Hive Energy and Sunwoda batteries respectively, and other models are equipped with CATL batteries. Hive Energy is a power battery company incubated by Great Wall Motor. Sunwoda was originally a supplier of Apple iPhone and iPod batteries, and began supplying to car companies in 2018. According to SNE research data, Sunwoda ranked 9th in the total installed volume of global power batteries in 2022, with a market share of 1.8%, and CATL ranked first with a market share of 37%.

Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, said that Hive Energy and Sunwoda have established proprietary production lines for Li Auto, and the battery performance, quality and warranty policies produced by them are consistent with those of Pro and Max models.

While most car companies are pursuing product differentiation, Ideal Auto has played four similar cards. Is it a dangerous move, or is there another plan?

One fish eats more, nesting dolls out of miracles?

The advantages of using the same exterior design scheme for all models are obvious, as are the disadvantages.

The advantage is that the cost is optimized, and one mold can fit all ideal models. "The minimum configuration of L9 and L8 coincide, which can be understood as the B-pillar is the same from the front, but the interior configuration is different." Wang Ke told "Deep Net" that in the past, only vans such as Iveco would use the same face (front design) and different wheelbase (car size) to reflect different functions. "The ideal play is more extreme, the front and rear faces (front and rear design) are exactly the same."

The disadvantage is that high-end models lose their recognition.

"The ideal makes L9 owners lose their sense of superiority." A car enthusiast told Deep Web that for him, the L9 is too big and the L7 is too small, and he thinks only the L8 is competitive. "Five seats, what reason do I have to buy ideals? This price point is already on Tesla's knife edge. ”

Auto parts supplier Zhao Wei also agrees with this view, "High-end products that cannot satisfy the vanity of car owners are also failures." He lamented that compared with foreign traditional car companies, the new domestic car-making forces like dimensionality reduction in product definition.

For example, Volkswagen Toyota in terms of price and configuration, the difference between different levels of ABCD (divided by wheelbase) is very obvious. Zhao Wei said that NIO and Ideal are more inclined to make models between BC or CD, "but the stack configuration is very powerful, with a small amount of money to do more things, there are always rough places, and it is very troublesome to encounter a little thunderstorm." ”

However, up to now, the ideal L8 and the ideal L9 have not been trade-offs and internal friction.

According to the retail sales data of CAIC Data Terminal, in December 2022, the sales of the ideal L8 and ideal L9 both exceeded 10,000, becoming the sales champions of the two segments of large SUVs and large SUVs in the Chinese market respectively. Liu Jie, vice president of sales of Li Auto, revealed at the 2022 Guangzhou Auto Show that the delivery of L8 and L9 has been scheduled for February 2023, and "the order reserve is relatively sufficient." ”

"The knife of (ideal) product positioning and price is very accurate, and it is not very good to step on the foot." An ideal employee told Deep Web.

"Deep Web" summarizes the three important product strategies of ideal automobile: divide the needs according to the space in the car; Decide the number of models at different price points according to the market space; Among similar interior space models, do the one with the lowest price.

Li Xiang's recent product planning details on Weibo also revealed its product strategy, that is, models of different sizes strictly abide by the price range in which they are located.

The sales crown will not win the year-round final bonus

Li Auto was the best sales performance among the domestic new car forces last year, and it was also the only domestic new car company with monthly sales of more than 10,000 in January this year, but Li Xiang and Li Auto were not relaxed inside.

"The three years from 2023 to 2025 are extremely brutal knockouts." Li Xiang said in an interview with China Entrepreneur that he did not think there were so many car companies.

Last year, Li Xiang carried out a drastic reform of the ideal internal organizational structure, learned from Huawei, and established a matrix organizational structure. Li Xiang said in the above interview that when the scale of the organization is small, speed is efficiency, and when the scale is large to a certain extent, quality is efficiency. "Among the most successful companies in the world in the past few years, Microsoft is definitely number one." Li Xiang said that to change Microsoft from a company that everyone hates to a company that everyone likes, Nadellagan's first thing is to reshape Microsoft's culture with Bill Gates.

The pressure from competition is also transmitted to the employee's year-end bonus.

A person who was certified as an employee of Ideal Auto on the pulse of the workplace community platform broke the news that because the annual sales target of Ideal Car was not achieved, the year-end bonus was discounted, and almost everyone received a year-end bonus of less than one month. A number of ideal employees replied to the post that their year-end bonus was discounted by five.

The above post has been deleted at this time. But a number of Ideal Auto employees told Deep Web that this was indeed the case.

In 2022, the cumulative delivery volume will exceed 133,000 units, which is nearly 40,000 short of the sales target of 170,000. But it also surpassed NIO (122,000 units) and Xpeng (120,000 units). Last year, due to macro factors such as the epidemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, coupled with the setback of the overall automotive supply chain, most car companies failed to achieve their sales targets at the beginning of the year.

"It's probably also about motivating employees." Gao Zhun (pseudonym), an employee of Li Auto, told "Deep Net" that compared with car companies such as BYD and Geekrypton, Li Auto gives a higher monthly basic salary. "According to my observations, BYD and Ideal School recruit more people than SAIC Geely this year, which is positively correlated with market sales, which is also a positive signal."

The ideal annual sales target for 2023 remains high. According to the Securities Daily, Li Auto has set a total sales target of 250,000 to 300,000 units in the range of 2023. Even at a minimum of 250,000 units, the ideal car needs to achieve a target growth rate of 88%.

As of the close of trading on February 9, Li Auto's total market capitalization ($26.23 billion) was nearly the sum of NIO (US$18.02 billion) and Xpeng Motors ($8.489 billion).

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