Recently, the big move that Qianjie Car has been holding back for a long time has finally been released.
Now many consumers come to Huawei's directly operated and authorized stores and find that the nameplate of the exhibition car has changed to "HUAWEI" and "AITO" has disappeared. The sales staff also changed the publicity caliber and called it "Huawei car".
Previously, in the promotional copy of the AITO Automobile's multi-platform official account, the words "HUAWEI Question" had appeared, which triggered speculation in the public opinion field about Huawei's car manufacturing. In this regard, Huawei said that "HUAWEI Qianjie" is Huawei's ecological car brand and a new business model created by Huawei.
At this point, it can be determined that Huawei is only one step away from "building a car". At least Huawei subconsciously wants to give consumers an illusion that the car is Huawei car.
However, Huawei does not want to take this step too early.
Since the beginning of this year, the sales volume of Qianjie has continued to decline, and it is no longer as good as last year. The capping data for the first three weeks of March showed that 973 vehicles in the first week, 823 vehicles in the second week, and 728 vehicles in the third week, continued to decline, totaling only 2,524 vehicles. Compared with last year's monthly sales of more than 10,000 consecutive vehicles, it is now difficult to ask the boundary monthly sales of more than 5,000 vehicles.
In this situation, moving the "HUAWEI" logo out is actually Huawei's helpless move. It is obviously more urgent to solve the sales problem than to cause competitors to fear whether they build their own cars or not.
But even if Huawei stands in front of the stage, it is difficult to reduce the decline in sales in the world, why is this?
01
THE IRON DUST WAS HARVESTED, AND "HUAWEI" CAME TO THE RESCUE
Speaking of which, just like the legendary "Apple Car" that can always enter the hot search, consumers were also full of interest and expectations for "Huawei Car" at the beginning. Because as one of the most successful local brands that China has bred in the past many years, one may have to be removed, Huawei's brand halo is dazzling enough.
However, due to the basic strategy of "Huawei does not build cars, only helps car companies build good cars", Huawei can only test the edge of car manufacturing step by step. Tempting the customer, but also the attitude of the opponent, but also testing the patience of the consumer.
Previously, because consumers did not buy "Cialis", Cialis Huawei Smart SF5 may be one of the shortest-lived cars in history. Immediately, Huawei quickly drummed up the AITO series, which while erasing the traces of Cialis, it also highlighted the identity of "HUAWEI" through configuration and sales.
Last year, the sales volume of the Qianjie series rose month after month, and by the third quarter, it achieved a continuous breakthrough of 10,000. At the time, this model was widely considered a success in the industry. But in fact, after many car owners buy their cars home, they will remove the "AITO" logo and change it to "HUAWEI".
By this year, sales of Qianjie have been declining, and at the same time, Netnews has visited Huawei's direct stores in major local business districts for many weekends, and compared with last year, the number of consumers who come to visit Qianjie has decreased significantly. Ask the in-store salesperson and learn that now, the average number of customers who come to see the car every day is only 2-3 groups, and even on weekends.
Huawei's sales staff told Netnews that they originally thought that after entering the showroom, they could effectively drive passenger flow. But in fact, quite the opposite. Due to the difficulties of Huawei's mobile phone business in the past two years, the competitiveness of new machines has declined, and the number of customers who come to see mobile phones has decreased significantly, and fewer and fewer people have come to see cars.
It can be considered that one of the important reasons for the decline in sales in the world is that Huawei's iron fans have been harvested, and many other consumers who have a good impression of the Huawei brand want to buy a real "Huawei car", rather than a Huawei Smart car in the Huawei store.
SO, HUAWEI MOVED "HUAWEI" OUT AND WANTED TO SAVE THE SCENE.
02
There are more small problems, and there are problems with quality control?
In recent years, new energy vehicles have been a big outlet, many new brands have appeared on the stage, and there are many good performances, and it stands to reason that the same new brands have opportunities.
But consumers demand much higher quality and reliability from cars as commodities than mobile phones with thousands of dollars. Compared with the mature foundry mode and integrated circuit assembly process of mobile phones, the standards to be met to manufacture a car are much more stringent.
This means that every new brand has to stand the test of time. Especially for new brands that have no background in car manufacturing before, consumers will definitely look at its products with suspicion, after all, no one wants to be a guinea pig.
Recently, car owners generally report that there are more minor problems with the car.
For example, a car owner took a video saying that the passenger window of the M5 could not be raised, and it did not work whether the control keys of the main driver or the co-driver were used. There is also a video of the owner demonstrating whether the M5's electric tailgate control function has failed, or whether it has only driven 1,000 kilometers of new cars. Although they are not a big problem, they are very annoying when it comes to daily use.
This shows that there is a problem with the production quality control of the Qianjie.
As we all know, almost all of the core technologies of the Qianjie series models are derived from Huawei, which can be manufactured by Xiaokang OEM. According to Yu Chengdong's recent statement: "Huawei is deeply involved in R&D, not only providing components, but also controlling design, quality, user experience, overall quality control, and OTA version upgrades." ”
For the control of automobile production quality, Huawei is undoubtedly a newcomer. In this regard, how much Huawei actually contributed and how much it played a role is unknown.
Xiaokang Automobile has been manufacturing cars for many years and has a mature production system. But over the years, Xiaokang's own products have not made a name for excellent quality, for example, on the car quality network, you can find a large number of product quality complaints about the Fengguang series models.
Therefore, even if Yu Chengdong emphasizes that Huawei will not build its own factories, cars are different from mobile phones, and the production line is not in its own hands, so it cannot really effectively control quality.
After all, it is no accident that NIO and Xiaopeng have shifted from OEM to self-built factories.
03
DON'T SMASH THE "HUAWEI" SIGNBOARD
In 2022, Huawei's revenue will be 636.9 billion yuan, and although the profit margin is improving, its revenue is more than 200 billion yuan less than at its peak.
Ren Zhengfei said that "we must pass on the cold to every Huawei person", which shows how strong Huawei's sense of crisis is. To survive the crisis, Huawei must find a breakthrough in the automotive business.
Yu Chengdong's burden is very heavy. He introduced: "Huawei and Cialis cooperated to make three cars in more than a year, and no one in the world is so fast. "We work weekends, nights, and holidays, working in shifts, fighting in parallel."
This spirit is certainly admirable, but over the past hundred years, the automotive industry has formed a strong objective law. Generally, it takes about three years for a new car to go on the market from project initiation. Even though the development time has been greatly shortened over the years thanks to architecture and modularization, the necessary verification and testing processes are still the same, and this part of the time is difficult to save.
The market is changing with each passing day, car companies must race against time to develop new cars, but cars are related to travel safety, and quality control cannot tolerate a little sloppiness.
Huawei's mobile phones have good quality and good signal, and they have been tested by countless consumers and precipitated for a long time, and have gained such a good reputation. BUT FOR CARS, HUAWEI SEEMS TO BE A LITTLE ANXIOUS AND WANTS TO SUCCEED IN ONE FELL SWOOP, SO THAT NOW IT HAS MOVED THE "HUAWEI" GOLDEN SIGNBOARD, WHICH STILL DOES NOT HELP.
As the old Chinese saying goes, if you want to be fast, you can't do it.
Huawei does not lack technology, let alone brand influence, and now it seems that it only lacks determination, awe and respect for car manufacturing.