From the beginning of the year to the end of the year, the rim can not only roll but also scold?
Car companies are fighting each other every year, especially in 2023. In the 2023 auto market, which is unlimited, there are various forms of "scolding wars" between car company bosses, and there are many "hard" and "ironic". With the increasingly fierce competition between car companies, the focus of the quarrel between the bigwigs is no longer limited to the event itself, but has been transformed into a marketing method that is easier to obtain traffic.
If you want to say that the first person to fight in the rim, it is none other than Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto. Throughout 2023, Li Xiang has spoken a lot.
In January 2023, Li Xiang commented on the Xpeng P7 daytime running light as "purebred killing Matt".
In June 2023, Mu Feng, president of Great Wall Motors, commented that the ideal is the "king of Weibo", and Li Xiang said: "It's a pity that we can't acquire Weibo...... Such a large gold mine, with a market value of only $3.6 billion, is cheaper than Autohome. ”
On July 11, 2023, Li Auto announced its weekly sales data list for the 28th week of 2023. According to the list, Li Auto's sales volume was 7,900 units, ranking first in the sales volume of new power brands in the Chinese market, and Xpeng Motors' sales volume was only 1,200 units, ranking eighth in the sales volume of new power brands in the Chinese market. In this regard, Huang Honglin, general manager of product marketing of Xiaopeng Motors, said that please pay attention to the official information, and the "roadside society" is indeed not very reliable. Liu Yilin, director of autonomous driving at Xpeng Motors, also commented that there are no surprises. In response to Xiaopeng's counteroffensive, Li Auto replied: the acquisition of data is legal and compliant. This has been explained to the relevant departments before.
In May 2023, the ideal MEGA rendering went viral on the Internet, and Li Xiang said: "If it is really designed like this bird, I will kill the design team and jump off the building by the way." Later, netizens found that the official design drawings of the MEGA released by Li Auto were very similar to the renderings spread on the Internet. In November, Li Xiang posted a video of AI face-swapping and jumping off a building on Weibo, and Ideal MEGA was ridiculed by netizens as a "jumping model".
In December 2023, some bloggers said that Tesla's sales expense ratio data is the best, and the ideal will be close to Tesla's level step by step from 2023, while Xpeng and NIO still have high sales expense ratios. Li Xiang retweeted the Weibo post and said that his marketing and communication expenses are the lowest in the country. In response to this Weibo, Ma Lin, assistant vice president of brand and communication of Weilai Automobile, replied with data: 1. According to the "Sky (Star) Eye (Picture)" system, the content of Douyin for the three cars should be about 90 million this year, and the biggest cost is not Weibo. 2. Shouldn't everyone be most concerned about R&D costs and efficiency?
Ma Lin's reply to Li Xiang is more about using the confrontation with Li Auto to make users pay more attention to NIO's R&D investment. At this year's major press conferences, NIO has frequently emphasized its R&D investment, and it is a "sure to win" choice for NIO by using the traffic that quarrels with ideals.
Look at the ideal sales volume in 2023 - 376,030 units, ranking first in the delivery volume of new car-making forces, it can be seen. Of course, the new high sales of Li Auto must be the result of multiple factors such as products, technology, and services, but the quarrel does earn a wave of traffic for the product at the lowest marketing cost.
There was a successful demonstration of the "King of Weibo" before, and the bigwigs in the car circle naturally did not let go of this cost-effective marketing method and demonstrated it in person.
In August 2023, BYD shouted the slogan "Together, we are Chinese cars" at the off-line ceremony of 5 million new energy vehicles, and Wang Yuanli, CTO of Great Wall Motors, directly replied: "If you just emphasize being together verbally, it must be honey on the lips and arsenic on the heart, so it's better to fight first and then be together." ”
In April 2023, Qin Peiji, President of Volvo Greater China Sales Company, said: "We have learned in three years that the new forces will. We will, the new forces will not learn in ten years. Li Bin, founder and CEO of Weilai, was very unhappy with this remark: "This is obviously not in line with the facts, we will change the battery, it won't; we can't talk nonsense with our eyes open, so many of our peers are very good, each has a unique weapon, it must not have learned, right?"
When the rhetoric of the rim is further penetrated into the technical field, it is no longer a simple "war of words", but further escalated to a more sharp "offensive and defensive war".
In March 2023, Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, made a statement on unmanned driving: "It's all nonsense, it's all fooling, it's just an emperor's new outfit, autonomous driving is just a concept that is coerced and hyped by capital, and it is ultimately an advanced assisted driving." "Intelligence has always been one of the selling points of the new car-making forces, and Wang Chuanfu's remarks are tantamount to touching the anti-scales of the new car-making forces.
In this regard, Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei, CEO of Device BG, and CEO of Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, said at the new car launch conference: "There are two reasons why it is nonsense to say that autonomous driving is nonsense, either because I don't understand the industry, or I say it on purpose. "The big guy who said this should be deliberately attacking the industry, and being far ahead is not a casual thing, only if you do it can you brag. ”
He Xiaopeng also emphasized: unmanned driving is not nonsense, today it can be said that no autonomous driving really does a good job, one is because it is difficult in the city, the second is very expensive, and the third supports very few models, but all these problems will be solved within five years.
He Xiaopeng and Yu Chengdong just scolded Wang Chuanfu together in March, and in November 2023, the two of them quarreled again.
The reason is that He Xiaopeng said in an interview: "Friends talked about AEB, I think 99% of it is fake" "Our people also asked, its AEB can't be opened at all, and there are too many cases of misbraking on the road." ”
Yu Chengdong immediately sent a reply to the circle of friends: "Even what AEB is, there are car companies who still don't understand it at all!" "Some people don't understand what AEB is at all! It's almost the same as someone who says that intelligent driving is nonsense and flickering! Lack of basic understanding of the industry's technological progress and future development! Some car companies are busy doing intelligent driving all day long, and the AEB active safety test results are very poor. Either let his subordinates fool, or lack the most basic understanding of the development of the automotive industry!"
Yu Xiaopeng counterattacked: "The industry is not in a hurry, but the non-industry is in a hurry, I don't know what he is anxious about." ”
Since then, other car company executives have also participated, including Zhao Changjiang, general manager of DENZA Sales Division, and Daniel Zhang, CEO of Nezha Automobile, either to explain their views on AEB or to take the opportunity to promote their own products. This scolding battle finally ended with He Xiaopeng posting on Weibo, shaking hands with Yu Chengdong and ending the play: "Thank you for Lao Yu's advice and generosity", Xiaopeng Motors will "expand AEB functions through OTA", Xiaopeng will work with Huawei to "work together to lead the innovation of intelligent driving technology", "I believe that the competition of this technology will benefit users in the end".
With the new energy vehicle market all the way "soaring", diversified technical routes have emerged, whether it is the scolding war between Yu Chengdong and He Xiaopeng, or the executives of major car companies taking the opportunity to bring goods, the essence of the debate on technology lies in the competition for the right to speak for "intelligent driving" by players on the new energy track.
Write at the end
In the era of traditional fuel vehicles, car companies also have scolding wars, but compared with the scolding wars in the era of new energy vehicles, the frequency and combat effectiveness are far from the same. Why are car companies scolding more fiercely in the era of new energy vehicles?
In the view of automobile observation, in the era of new energy vehicles, there are more and more cross-border players involved in automobile manufacturing, and most of these cross-border players are from the Internet and digital circles, and their grasp of traffic passwords is more accurate. Attracting users' attention through a large number of topics and converting them into brand traffic and popularity is a routine operation of Internet marketing. When these cross-border players move the marketing methods of the Internet to the automotive circle, the higher heat and topic attracted by them make traditional car companies also begin to imitate and Xi.
Of course, there is controversy before there is progress, when the length of the major car brands are taken by the bigwigs to the face of each other, it also means that the automobile marketing ecology has undergone new changes, this seemingly "war of words" business war model will eventually become a new way to encourage car companies to work products and technology, from this point of view, the final winner is still the consumer.