According to the latest data released by Lantu Automobile, in May 2023, Lantu delivered 3,003 new vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 231%, and has been stable at more than 3,000 for three consecutive months.
However, for the substantial growth of Lantu, many people in the outside world still have doubts, believing that compared with new forces such as Wei Xiaoli, Lantu's market performance is not bright enough.
Yes, from the sales volume alone, compared with Wei Xiaoli, Lantu does have a gap. But if you only talk about heroes based on sales, it is obviously a little unfair to Lantu Automobile.
First of all, Lantu Automobile is an automobile brand that has been established for less than 3 years, but in January 2022, the brand has already welcomed the 10,000th production car of its model off the production line, which took 553 days. In comparison, it took NIO, Xiaopeng and Ideal 736 days, 1009 days and 586 days respectively to achieve this result.
Secondly, as we all know, the car market in the first half of this year is extremely involuted, and Tesla took the lead in opening the price reduction tide, followed by a number of manufacturers and brands in Hubei to subsidize and give benefits, triggering a price war in the car market. Behind the involution market and price war is the epitome of the helplessness of the downward trend of the car market. However, in the face of the current difficult market, Lantu not only has an outstanding growth rate, but also has a significantly higher growth rate than the car market.
More importantly, Lantu's growth is not only reflected in the growth rate of sales, but also in the average price of products and brand power.
It is reported that the average price of Lantu's bicycles has exceeded 382,000 yuan. For comparison, BMW's average bicycle price in 2022 is 409,000 yuan, Audi's average bicycle price is 317,000 yuan, and Tesla's bicycle average price is 306,000 yuan. Lantu's average bicycle price has surpassed that of Audi and Tesla, second only to BMW.
This also shows that based on high-end brands, Lantu has begun to achieve results. At the same time, it is also the user's recognition of Lantu's brand and products, which is of great significance.
In addition to the recognition of the market and users, Lantu Automobile has also attracted investor confidence in the capital market. At present, Lantu Automobile has completed the A round of financing, and the market valuation of Lantu is nearly 30 billion yuan after financing. In Forbes China's 2022 New Unicorn List, Lantu, as a new energy vehicle, ranks among 74 new unicorn companies in China and is one of the three new energy terminal OEMs in China's 2022 New Unicorn List.
Based on the sales volume, growth rate, brand power and influence of the capital market, Lantu's achievements in the past three years can be described as full of gold.
So the question is, in the face of highly fierce market competition, why can Lantu, which has only been established for 3 years, achieve such rapid growth? In the current involuted and cold car market, what did Lantu do right?
Insist on awe: "Less routines, more technology!" ”
Unlike many new forces that strive to promote product points such as "refrigerators, color TVs, and large sofas", and export is to benchmark "the best within 5 million", Lantu Automobile is more willing to share hardcore technologies such as power, chassis, and safety with consumers when promoting products. Even if the configuration of "refrigerator, color TV, large sofa", Lantu also has it, and it is even more luxurious than many new forces.
However, Lantu did not take the above as the main selling point of the product. Because in Lantu's view, the car manufacturing system born from Dongfeng Motor Company for more than 50 years, adhering to technology research and development and innovation, is an important guarantee for the sustainable development of Lantu brand.
In terms of technology research and development, backed by the support of Dongfeng Motor, although Lantu Automobile has only been established for less than three years, it has become one of the few new energy vehicle enterprises in the industry that can achieve full-link independent R&D and manufacturing, and take the road of full-stack self-research. In terms of technical reserves in the fields of vehicle platform, three electrics, intelligence, and body technology, Lantu is at the leading level in the industry. Among them, ESSA's native intelligent electric architecture + SOA intelligent electric bionic is the two major technical trump cards in Lantu's current hands!
1. Top performance and control brought by ESSA's native intelligent electric architecture.
Lantu's ESSA native intelligent electric architecture is the first architecture in China that is completely oriented to electric vehicles, and Lantu has completely independent intellectual property rights. The electric architecture has four advantages: powerful electric, intelligent driving control, extreme safety, and expandability, and many performance is industry-leading.
Taking Lanhai Power as an example, it supports two power solutions: high-performance pure electric and intelligent multi-mode drive, and Lantu is one of the few new energy vehicle companies in the industry that has pure electric + plug-in hybrid (intelligent multi-mode drive, range extender) dual power, and will match power according to the different characteristics of the product.
For example, the chasing light, which has just been launched, is equipped with a self-developed dual permanent magnet synchronous motor, which provides a maximum power of 375 kW and a peak torque of 730Nm, and accelerates to 100 kilometers in only 3.8 seconds, which has an excellent performance experience. For example, Lantu Dreamer, which has a multi-purpose, adopts pure electric + intelligent multi-mode drive.
Among them, compared with ordinary range extension power, the intelligent multi-mode drive system also has no anxiety about endurance, and it increases the engine direct drive mode, when more than 70km/h, the engine directly drives the vehicle to ensure the economy when cruising at high speed, making the low-carbon version of the Lantu Dreamer WLTP fuel consumption of only 7.4L/100km.
It is worth mentioning that with its strong performance, "Lanhai Power-Intelligent Multi-mode Drive System" won the title of "The First World's Top Ten Hybrid Systems" not long ago.
In addition, the chassis structure of ESSA adopts lightweight aluminum alloy material, and adopts the suspension structure of front double wishbone + rear multi-link, and then cooperates with the high-end equipment of air suspension + CDC, which lays a solid foundation for the driving quality and driving experience of Lantu models.
Not only that, ESSA's native intelligent electric architecture also has the characteristics of scalability and upgradeability, which is the biggest competitiveness of ESSA architecture. It can make every model of Lantu in the future have better and more far-reaching upgrade capabilities.
For example, for example, other people's mobile phone hardware only supports upgrading to Android 13 and Android 14, but it is stuck in Android 15. And because your phone has more powerful hardware performance, you can upgrade to Android 16, or even 17 and 18 in the future. So that old users can also enjoy the more and more new intelligent travel experience.
2. Intelligent advantages brought by centralized SOA electronic and electrical architecture.
In addition to powerful hardware, in terms of software, Lantu's self-developed centralized SOA electronic and electrical architecture is the most advanced "software-defined vehicle" architecture in China, with four advantages: efficient hub, agile system, intelligent interconnection, and development.
As we all know, with the development of electrification and intelligence in the automotive industry, the corresponding requirements for ECU computing power are getting higher and higher. Bosch has predicted that the code volume of cars equipped with L2 level autonomous driving is about 100 million lines, and in the L3 autonomous driving stage, the code volume of the car is expected to exceed 200 million ~ 300 million lines, and the code amount of L5 autonomous driving vehicles will reach 1 billion lines, and the traditional architecture can no longer carry the needs of intelligent electric vehicles.
The increase of software code also indicates that software will occupy an increasingly important position in automobiles, which is also the reason why automobiles have changed from hardware-led to "software-defined vehicles" and "software rebuilds the automotive ecology".
As a result, various electronic and electrical architectures are about to emerge, including Tesla's EEA, X-EEA 3.0 architecture, etc., which are centralized electronic and electrical architectures, and the main feature is to streamline the original hundreds of ECUs with low computing power into several ECUs with high computing power to achieve control of the whole vehicle. As a result, flexible function update iterations can be realized during the vehicle life cycle, and there are stronger information interaction processing capabilities.
Simply put, the most intuitive benefit of adopting a centralized SOA E&E architecture is that faster and easier OTA upgrades can be achieved. Under the traditional disaggregated architecture, which needs to integrate the content of dozens of vendors, OTA is slow and very prone to bugs, and the use of SOA architecture can really quickly and easily implement the common and new use of vehicles.
With the ESSA architecture, Lantu has top performance and excellent driving quality, as well as upgradeable hardware capabilities. The SOA architecture is the "brain" of Lantu, allowing Lantu to have the usual and new intelligent experience.
In addition, based on its strong cutting-edge technology reserve capabilities, Lantu is expected to be equipped with solid-state batteries, a landing 800V high-voltage platform, and a rich hardware interface reserved in the future, providing users with a more cutting-edge driving experience.
It is worth mentioning that thanks to the two major architectures of ESSA+SOA, Lantu has formulated a plan to launch a new product a year and release a new product a year, and implements this plan in an orderly manner.
At present, Lantu has built a model matrix of three categories: high-end medium and large SUV Lantu FREE, high-end medium and large MPV Lantu Dreamer, and high-end medium and large electric sedan Lantu Chasing Light, this layout takes into account the many car needs of high-end consumers, Lantu has also become the most complete car company in China's new energy vehicle brand.
Adhere to safety and quality, and be a brand that consumers trust
Electric horse Xiaobian has asked some users who buy Lantu cars, and the reasons for buying Lantu are also very rich. Such as luxurious large space, intelligent technology, excellent performance and so on.... However, there is one thing that everyone recognizes, that is, safety, and believe in the quality and quality of Lantu.
In fact, with the continuous development and breakthrough of new energy technology in recent years, the problem of endurance anxiety has been greatly reduced. In contrast, with the increase in the number of new energy vehicles, safety issues have emerged one after another, and the safety anxiety of pure electric vehicles has been greater than the anxiety of battery life.
Lantu does have its own advantages in terms of safety and quality, after all, it is a traditional car company, backed by Dongfeng Group's 50 years of car manufacturing quality, and the starting point is stronger than other new forces in car manufacturing.
1. Build a world-class 4.0 digital factory with Dongfeng backing
In terms of manufacturing, Lantu has the support of Dongfeng Motor's advanced manufacturing system and has established a world-class 4.0 digital factory to escort the safety and quality of its products.
It is understood that in order to ensure the exquisite appearance of the vehicle, Lantu's unique VES and strict exquisite quality evaluation system have made the car paint achieve first-class color uniformity in the industry. In order to ensure the reliability of the assembly, Lantu independently developed a torque management system, which can collect the torque of each screw in real time, so that the tightening defect "0" enters the market, and the traceability period is 10 years.
2. Possess technology to solve the safety anxiety of electric vehicles
In terms of safety technology, in response to the battery safety that everyone is most concerned about, Lantu Industry pioneered the "three-dimensional thermal insulation wall" technology, which uses heat-free flame retardant materials without heat diffusion in the battery pack to achieve a separate and all-round three-dimensional wrapping of each cell. Among them, the "amber" battery system uses a super-strong polymer heat insulation flame retardant material filled with silicon base in the battery pack, and the "mica" battery system adopts a gas melt adhesive heat insulation flame retardant protective layer.
The three-dimensional thermal insulation layer tailors a "safety chamber" for each cell, and even if a cell is "irritable", it can only honestly stay in its own "single room". On this basis, Lantu is also equipped with a super liquid cooling system at the bottom of each cell, which can provide sufficient cooling for each cell.
In addition, Lantu has also launched a cloud BMS (cloud battery management system), which can predict key faults such as smoke, fire, and explosion 2 hours in advance; For faults such as short circuit and undervoltage in the battery, early warning can be achieved one week in advance. If there is an emergency, PDD can actively power off within milliseconds to avoid vehicle fire.
With its innovation in passive and active battery safety technology, Lantu Automobile obtained the results of "no smoke, no fire, no explosion, and no water ingress" in the test of the China Automotive Center.
3. Benchmark the body strength of the three major safety in China, the United States and Europe
In terms of body structure, Lantu benchmarks against the three major safety standards of China, the United States and Europe, and meets the C-NCAP and C-IASI MGGG test standards of China Automotive Center, and the body high-strength steel exceeds 68%, of which the proportion of hot stamping steel exceeds 24.4%, which is mainly used in the body A-pillar, B-pillar, threshold, middle passage and seat beam, forming a cage body of high-strength steel, providing users with life safety protection.
In addition, Lantu also has the world's first TRB+Patch composite structure thermoformed A-pillar, 2000MPa aluminum-silicon coated door anti-collision beam, to ensure that the A-pillar will not be deformed in the most severe small offset collision.
Last year, in the "2022 TOP Safety - China's Ultimate Safety Peak Challenge" by the China Automotive Center, Lantu Dreamer performed a high level in the most stringent MPV rear-end collision challenge test and active safety test in China. Successfully completed the high-speed rear-end collision test with a challenging speed of more than 100km/h that exceeded the US standard by 1.88 times. Successfully passed the items including door opening, no fuel leakage, seat belt preload point explosion, electric shock protection performance meets the standards, etc., obtained a perfect score in all evaluation standards, and won the "TOP Safety 2022 Top Safety Collision Challenge Certificate".
In addition to winning the "TOP Safety-China Ultimate Safety Peak Challenge" award, Lantu Dreamer also won four awards such as "China's Top 10 Body", "China's Top 10 Chassis", and "TOP Intelligence-China Ultimate Safety Peak Challenge" by China Automotive Center, which also demonstrated Lantu's technical strength in body development, chassis development, vehicle passive safety, intelligent active safety and other dimensions.
The safety of vehicles is the lifeblood of the brand, and Lantu brand puts safety in the first place, which is the responsibility of a large manufacturer, and it is also an important reason why Lantu as a new brand can quickly be recognized by the market and users.
Adhere to user thinking and be a user-oriented enterprise
In recent years, "user thinking" has become a hot word in the automotive industry today. In the era of smart electric vehicles, all car companies are strengthening user operations and pampering users. For pet fans, Lantu also has his own thoughts and practices.
1. For the sake of users, plan the marketing layout in advance
As of March 31, 2023, Lantu has opened 197 stores nationwide, including 149 Lantu Space, 2 Lantu flagship stores, and 46 Lantu Delivery Service Centers. Lantu Automobile will further improve the construction of sales service network and charging network, not only improve channels, but also provide users with a more convenient intelligent electric travel experience.
As a new car company, even if the product ownership has not yet supported the sales performance of a single store, in order to better and more convenient service users, Lantu Auto is still willing to spend more money and layout marketing in advance. This can be the embodiment of Lantu's "pet fan" under the user's thinking, and also shows Lantu Automobile's confidence in future development.
In addition, Lantu said that in 2023, it will continue to practice diligently, strengthen its health, plan in advance around user touchpoints (sales contacts and service contacts), and improve the network layout.
2. Accept user complaints and improve product strength
Lantu CEO Lu Fang once said: "Lantu is a user-oriented technology enterprise, a real user-oriented technology enterprise, must grow with users. ”
Then, since you want to grow with users, you must first learn to accept users' complaints and improve them.
At the beginning of this year, Lantu Automobile held a "spit conference", inviting Lantu FREE owners, in order to hear their dissatisfaction and suggestions about Lantu FREE. I thought that Lantu was using this to engage in gimmicks, but I didn't expect that Lantu was directly responding to user demands after this "spit conference".
For example, the problem of car machine chips complained by users, Lantu announced that it directly upgraded 8155 car machines for FREE users, and for old users who have paid to upgrade 8155 chips before, Lantu will return the cost to users in the form of points, which made many Lantu owners exclaim unexpectedly.
For example, in the case of Amap, because Lantu and Baidu are deeply cooperative, it is impossible to list Amap, but Lantu said that it has docked with the relevant person in charge of Baidu, and the next step will be continuously optimized. Another example is the issue of NVH, Lantu announced that silent tires will be launched behind the mall, and owners in need can replace them to solve the problem of dry tires.
There are many more examples of such "product improvement and adjustment according to the user's suggestions or needs" on Lantu.
For example, Lantu Dreamer was once complained by users because there was no electric slide. As a result, Lantu took the advice of users and launched an interior package, which includes a two-row ultra-long electric slide. For example, Lantu FREE's two colors, glaze blue and jade green, are also designed according to user suggestions, combining oriental jade culture and ceramic culture.
The background of the emergence of intelligent electric vehicles is the high development of Internet technology. With the help of advanced Internet technology, people can communicate faster and more conveniently, without the barriers of time, region, identity and level, and become more and more equal. Therefore, it is also more and more normal to complain.
In the face of car owners' complaints, the practice of some car companies is still to delete posts and sink into manuscripts. However, now that the times have changed, the thinking of car companies must also change. Not only to tolerate complaints, but also to encourage complains, welcome spitting, and turn each complain into a good opportunity to improve bugs, improve products, and stick users.
Especially for consumers who buy models of more than 300,000 yuan, their comprehensive quality is also very high, and no one specifically complains about playing. Spit is to pay attention to you, to hope that you improve, and to love the brand.
Lantu Auto can listen to the complaints, withstand the pressure, and find the right direction to make the right improvements, which is valuable for Lantu, who was born in a state-owned enterprise, and also sets a benchmark for the transformation of traditional car companies.
Stick to being a long-termist
The automotive industry has always been a technology-intensive, capital-intensive, talent-intensive industry with a long industrial chain, and it is also an industry that needs to adhere to long-term principles.
To be a long-term person is not to run fast, but to run far. Only long-term accumulation in technology research and development, product quality, manufacturing, marketing and other aspects can car companies ensure long-term development and sufficient competitiveness.
At the beginning of its birth, Lantu was ready to "Long March", as Lu Fang said, "Lantu Automobile is a central enterprise Dongfeng, shouldering political, economic and social responsibilities, shouldering the mission of satisfying the people's pursuit of a better automobile life, and must adhere to long-term ism, endure loneliness, play chess first, reserve for a long time, and make contributions for a long time." ”
Today, after three years of accumulation, Lantu's top power and safety have been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, winning the favor of more and more consumers. Next, with the delivery of Chasing Light, and the excellent product strength and the empowerment of Dongfeng Motor's more than 50 years of system strength, Lantu's blueprint may be even better, let's wait and see.