Text/Wang Xinxi
has just entered 2024, and the news of a new force breaking up has been on the hot search, and the new force knockout tournament is really going to start this year.
Some netizens broke the news that "all work of Gaohe has been suspended, including stopping shipments, stopping the development of new projects, and preparing for prosecution". At present, Gaohe Automobile has issued an urgent statement and responded that these rumors are "rumors".
The reason why the rumors of Gaohe have attracted the attention of the industry is that Weimar, which collapsed in the past, and GAC Mitsubishi, which withdrew from China, clarified and refuted the rumors at the beginning, but finally the rumors became true. In addition, Gaohe, known as the "ceiling of pure electric luxury cars", is now selling worrisomely. In terms of sales, Gaohe Automobile sold 4,237 units in 2021 and 4,349 units in 2022, with a monthly delivery volume of only about 400 units. In 2023, the average monthly sales of Gaohe will only be 355 units.
Although the unit price is high, this sales volume can definitely not support the positive operation of this enterprise, if the situation cannot be reversed, the possibility of Gaohe from rumors to reality will become more and more likely.
At this point, what is the problem of Gaohe?
Founded in 2017, Gaohe Automobile is a new power car company that started in the ultra-high-end luxury car market, and the company behind Gaohe Automobile is Human Horizons, and its founder is Ding Lei. From the very beginning, Ding Lei has positioned Gaohe's brand and products with a high momentum, and at the beginning of its establishment, it focused on the high-end luxury market segment of 600,000 to 800,000 yuan.
The HiPhi X started deliveries in May 2021 with a guide price of 57-800,000 yuan, and the second production model, the HiPhi Z, was launched in August 2022 with a price of 61-630,000 yuan. The last one is between 339,000 and 449,000 yuan.
The average price of its vehicles is higher than that of BMW and Audi, and almost the same as that of Mercedes-Benz cars.
The positioning and price of Gaohe have always far exceeded that of other new car manufacturers, but what is the core competitiveness of Gaohe? In Gaohe's view, it may be the unique design, appearance and luxury of stacking.
For example, Gaohe Automobile has adopted some high-end technologies and materials, such as the world's first intelligent electric SUV with active rear-wheel steering, SUV with sports car elements, etc., and the cost of these technologies and materials is high, resulting in a corresponding increase in the cost of the whole vehicle.
In addition, there are many gimmicks in the design. For example, the 89-degree frameless door design - the "Rolls-Royce same" side door - HiPhi X adopts a high-closing wing door, a customizable LED light strip for the door, a large screen that can rotate according to music, and supports smartphones, smart keys, and smart B-pillar face recognition entry and exit methods.
Secondly, high-end audio equipment, etc., for example, Gaohe has always emphasized that it uses imported audio from the United Kingdom, but it was previously exposed that it used domestic audio and overturned, but in Gaohe's view, this is also one of the supporting forces for it to support high prices.
But at present, Gaohe is going in the direction of niche marginalization, and people call Gaohe cars "big toys for the rich", focusing on an experience and collection.
Gaohe takes the biggest shortcoming of high-end luxury cars - the fully assembled route, and does not have its own technology
The first step from Gaohe to today stems from the fact that it has committed the taboo of taking high-end luxury cars - the fully assembled route and does not have its own technology. The reason why domestic cars must emphasize technology when they go to the high-end is that new energy vehicles have changed the track compared with fuel vehicles, and technological experience and product intelligence are the core differentiation capabilities of new energy vehicles, and today, technology has been the first element of luxury car competition.
We can know from the sensation and attention caused by BYD looking up and asking the world M9 that BYD looks up to U8 behind the blessing of exclusive technology. Among them, the most concerned is the four-motor drive technology "Yi Sifang", the four-motor has brought a higher ceiling to the car's capacity, to achieve four-wheel independent control, it is not just as simple as a pile motor, there is a complex control strategy behind it.
Behind the M9 is the industry's strongest intelligent driving capability, its first HUAWEI ADS 2.0 intelligent driving system that can be driven nationwide, the world's largest integrated die-casting process, the industry's highest mass production of 22,000 rpm motors, the strongest on-board artificial intelligence Xiaoyi smart assistant, and Huawei Tuling intelligent chassis.
NIO, which is now taking the route of pure electric luxury cars, is also investing heavily in research and development at the level of motors, batteries, chips, and intelligent cockpits.
For example, the HiPhi X battery uses a CATL ternary lithium battery, the front and rear motors are all from Bosch, and the chassis is also from ready-made suppliers, from the three-electric system, the car machine, to the audio and cockpit, all from the supplier, there is no Gaohe own things.
The second is that the accumulation of domestic new energy brands is not enough, in the past, the high-end influence of old car companies such as Porsche BBA has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, even if it is an old luxury car brand, there is also technology, such as Faraday in the brand itself in addition to the accumulation, product design and material luxury, its core is the engine.
However, from the perspective of Gaohe, in addition to the lack of representative self-developed technologies, the necessary competition points for high-end new energy such as vehicle ecology, intelligence, performance, and battery life are basically lagging behind.
Especially now, Huawei and Xiaomi are accelerating their layout in the automotive field, and the competition in intelligence is becoming more and more intense, and the field of autonomous driving has just touched the ceiling of Gaohe.
Xiaomi entered the game, the M9 was strong, the high-end track was crowded, and there was not much time left for Gaohe
A car company without technical dominance and brand accumulation, established for a short time, at the beginning of the high-end, as the new energy track into the mature period, the problems and troubles of Gaohe are predictable.
2024 will be an extremely fierce year for new energy vehicles, and the entry of Xiaomi Auto will act as a catfish that stirs up the competitive landscape of the industry, triggering a storm from price reduction to product competition.
In addition, there are more and more players pouring into the luxury car market, and Huawei Wenjie M9 focuses on 50~600,000. The price of the ideal MEGA is 600,000, and the price of the BYD Denza D9 is 660,000. The Great Wall Tank 700 is 700,000, the Geely Krypton 001FR sells for 769,000, and the NIO ET9 sells for 800,000. BYD looks up to the U8 is 1.098 million, and it is rumored that the Xiaomi SU7 standard version is priced at 369,000, and the high-end version is nearly 500,000.
In the past two years, there have been fewer domestic new energy sources in the price range of Gaohe, which has just allowed Gaohe to enjoy dividends, but now, Gaohe has to compete directly with Wenjie M9 and Ideal MEGA, Ideal L9, NIO ET9, Denza D9, and Xiaomi SU7.
Especially now XiaomiSU7At the design level, everyone's first feeling is quite similar to Porsche, the sense of appearance design is online, plus Xiaomi has strong competitiveness in performance, speed, battery life, space, intelligence, which will also bring a certain impact to the high-end design of the main appearance.
In the past year, more than 300 units can be sold per month, but in 2024, the crisis of Gaohe will be very severe.
Gaohe does not have the ability to be backward compatible, and the route of luxury cars of new forces is becoming more and more difficult to walk
From the current point of view, Gaohe began to gradually shift its focus to middle-class families, and launched the 339,000-449,000 yuan HiPhi Y. In fact, that's how Tesla plays, the first Roadster and Model S/X are all $100,000-level models, and the real volume and money behind are still Model 3 and Model Y.
Can this backward compatible style of play save Gaohe?
It's difficult, because the track of the market of more than 300,000 is crowded with opponents, and it has rolled out a high sense of technology and product experience. The core of the track of more than 300,000 is the ability to drive intelligently. Earlier, after the new question world M7 came out, Ideal realized that there was a gap between itself and Huawei's intelligent driving, and said that it would invest in intelligent driving at all costs.
In this mainstream space, Gaohe has not established a brand mentality, and does not have its own intelligent driving, which means that there is no backward compatibility ability. In the mainstream space of 300,000~400,000, Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng, and motor cells also rely on suppliers, but they all have self-developed intelligent assisted driving solutions, but Gaohe does not.
Therefore, under this trend, the possibility of Gaohe's bankruptcy from rumors to reality is entirely existent.
In 2024, a new round of price war for new energy vehicle companies will start, and everyone will form a consensus to compare who can lose more. Gaohe's situation is one of the aspects of the deterioration of the market, there have been dozens of new forces that have fallen, this speed will accelerate this year, many new forces financing interruption or will also occur this year, some industry insiders estimate that there may be 15 new forces this year to go bankrupt.
Gaohe's predicament is a signal, in 2024, there is no technology to support the new forces to take the high-end luxury car route, will be more and more difficult to go, because Huawei, Xiaomi and other opponents are strong competition is setting a standard and reference for this competition, the trend of hard power to support the brand will become more and more obvious, relying on materials and gimmicks to blindly go high-end is very dangerous, leeks are not as much as imagined, backward compatibility is not a retreat, speculation to go high-end ideas will not work.
Having its own core technology and being able to decentralize the hard-core configuration to the mainstream price space will be an important competitiveness for car companies. This means that in 20204, it will be more and more difficult for the second- and third-tier new forces to take the route of high-end luxury cars, and technical support will be a hurdle that high-end automotive products cannot bypass, which may be worthy of vigilance and reflection on all domestic new energy brands that are playing speculation and gimmicks.
Author: Wang Xinxi, Senior Reviewer of TMT This article is not reproduced without permission