Chang'an Zhu Ronghua angrily sprayed BBA's "backward things": marketing is right, but there must be a commercial bottom line

Zhu Ronghua, chairman of Changan Automobile, said that his jaw dropped.

Here's a quote from Changan Automobile's Global Partner Conference:

Audi, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, these backward things have entered the era of electric vehicles, but many of our partners cannot be said to be ignorant and really insensitive to the experience of new cars. There is no perception of electrification and intelligence, so you have to think about how backward these people are, I really say it without any doubt today, and I say it unceremoniously, so you go and experience AVATAR.

Boast of innocence, but in moderation

When I saw this description, I immediately thought of an allusion, that is, Wang Po in the Northern Song Dynasty - the allusion of Wang Po selling melons and boasting comes from Wang Po, and the melons he sells are not ordinary watermelons but courgettes, which are the cantaloupe mentioned today. One day, when Song Shenzong went out of the palace to inspect, he met Wang Po, and saw Wang Po shouting hard, so he went to the melon stall to taste it; after tasting it, he found that it was really sweet, so he asked Wang Po: Why do you have to shout hard when your melon is so sweet?

Wang Po replied: This melon is a variety of the Western Regions, and the people of the Central Plains do not know it, and no one wants to taste it if they do not shout hard.

Song Shenzong said with emotion: It is better to boast about doing business than to boast, and it is not good to sell and boast like Wang Po.

This is the allusion of Wang Po selling melons and boasting, and the reason why Wang Po is called Wang Po is only because her mouth is too chatty, so she has the nickname Wang Po. The person with the most Wang Po's characteristics in Huawei's ecological brand is Yu Chengdong, and almost every press conference is selling and boasting, but this degree is not strictly derogatory, and the current concept actually refers to the importance of brand and product marketing.

Electric vehicles in the automotive field is like a "courgette", it is difficult for people to buy without vigorous marketing, but everything must have a degree, even if Wang Po is a mother-in-law to the level of Wang Po, he only talks about how sweet his own melons are, and does not talk about the local melons in the Central Plains.

In other words, Wang Po at least holds the bottom line of brand and product marketing, does not break through the lower limit of business ethics, and does not do things that respect himself and inferiority! However, Yu Chengdong of Huawei's automobile brand often does things that respect himself and inferiority, for example, a "far ahead" is equivalent to saying that the vehicles built by all competing companies are inferior to his own cars. Some third-party marketing companies only dare to point out individual or a few competing products in a small range when they play "SJ", and Yu Chengdong really "swept a large area".

So even Zhu Ronghua of Changan Automobile couldn't stand it, and he angrily denounced the industry advertising as having no bottom line, saying:

Hundreds of thousands of cars have to say tens of millions of (value), this industry is terrible.

Yu Chengdong shouted "Wenjie M9 is the best SUV within 10 million" when the Wenjie M9 was listed, and it is not clear who Zhu Ronghua is referring to, but Yu Chengdong objectively really said such a thing. But now it's Zhu Ronghua's turn again, and there is no problem in praising his own AVATR 11/12, but when he praises his own products, he has to evaluate the three major brands of Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz as "backward things." How is this approach different from Yu Chengdong? AVATR is a brand created by Changan Automobile, Huawei, and CATL through a tripartite cooperation.

Are BMW, Mercedes and Audi things that are left behind?

One thing is an objective fact that cannot be denied, that is, the focus of the top three German companies is still fuel vehicles, and the proportion of sales of new energy vehicles is relatively low, but BMW cars seem to have delivered more than 90,000 pure electric vehicles in 2023, which is far more than AVATAR.

However, this is not to promote Made in Germany, but to tell an objective fact.

Electric vehicles are not industrial products that only appeared in the 21st century, in fact, the first popular cars were not fuel vehicles, but electric vehicles! Electric vehicles appeared more than 100 years ago and were briefly popularized once. When telling the history of electric vehicles, it will be accompanied by a picture, this picture is a small electric bus, the company that built it is called Porsche, and the brand is currently owned by the Volkswagen Group, which also has Audi.

The emergence of electric vehicles is very early, and European and American car companies are not unaware of the characteristics of this technology, and the phased elimination of electric vehicles is not because of technical loopholes, but because of the progress of oil exploitation technology and the huge commercial value generated around oil. After more than 100 years, the fundamental factor of returning to the development and promotion of electric vehicles is not because of breakthroughs in drive technology or energy storage technology, but because of the development and change of the energy market structure.

At this stage, the decisive factor of the preference for electric drive technology or insisting on building fuel vehicles is not the company's R&D ideas, but the energy strategic development direction of the country where the company is located.

Therefore, car companies that insist on building fuel vehicles are not necessarily backward in concept, and they are not necessarily far ahead of the electrification track in advance.

Finally, I would like to say eight words:

Arrogant and arrogant.

In the past, most of the independent car companies were arrogant, believing that they were inferior to European and American car companies in the field of internal combustion engine technology, and even thought that they could not catch up, let alone surpass, but the technology of internal combustion engines and transmissions had already seen a bottleneck, and it was only a matter of time before they caught up. In the same way, European and American car companies have hundreds of years of accumulation, as well as mature industrial chain construction experience, the key factor that determines whether to create high-quality and low-cost electric vehicle products is the industrial chain, and objectively the construction experience of the industrial chain is more mature in Europe and the United States, so the current leading edge is not impossible to be equaled, and the upper limit of electric drive technology is also in sight.

Therefore, we cannot go from one extreme to the other, the future of cars will be close to full electrification, the world's huge car market share will not be fully digested by any one car series, a balanced automotive ecology requires the deep integration of major car series, only cooperation is the basis for maintaining structural stability.