With an official drop of 100,000, how long can Cadillac's "price for volume" last?

The tide of price reductions in the auto market continues to hit.

And the car companies that have already played the "price reduction card" can only increase the weight again.

Recently, SAIC-GM's official Cadillac official Weibo announced that the price of the 2024 Cadillac XT5 will be adjusted, and the price of all models will be reduced by 100,000 yuan, and the adjusted guide price range will be 252,700 to 352,700 yuan. At the same time, the 2024 Cadillac XT5 can also enjoy a purchase tax halved.

It is reported that behind such a large price reduction is the "inventory clearance" stage of replacing the old and new models, and the mid-term facelift Cadillac XT5 is expected to be released in May this year. But the price fell to the range of 250,000, and for Cadillac, it has long lost its luxury background.

Cadillac, which was once a "presidential car", is becoming a "discounted product" on the fringe of sales.

In China, Cadillac has become the brand with the largest number of second-tier luxury car shipments through the method of "price for volume".

According to the data, in 2018, Cadillac's sales in China were 228,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 31.8%, becoming the fourth luxury brand after BBA to sell more than 200,000 units annually in the Chinese market. By 2019, Cadillac's cumulative sales in the Chinese market finally exceeded 1 million units.

But behind such achievements, there is a controversy of "price for quantity".

In 2019, Cadillac, which was once nicknamed "Seven-Fold Kai", was ridiculed for "degenerating" into "Five-Fold Kai". At that time, there were rumors on the Internet that the price of Cadillac ATS-L had been as low as 150,000, although Cadillac made it clear that "this is an oolong during the period of the national five clearance inventory", but the collapse of ATL-L terminal prices is indeed a fact, and many car owners reported that "200,000 can buy ATS-L with a minimum guide price of 298,800 yuan", and some dealers also revealed that "the bargaining space is indeed very large".

In 2023, the sales volume of Cadillac's models with more than 300,000 yuan will decrease by 20,000 units year-on-year, and the average transaction price of fuel vehicles will drop to less than 250,000 yuan.

Over the years, "exchanging price for volume" has fulfilled Cadillac's status as a second-tier leader, but it has also buried the risk of a thunderstorm at any time.

As we all know, in the luxury car market, the core of competitiveness is not only reflected in sales figures, but also in the brand's ability to premium. However, the behavior of exchanging price for volume is self-evident to damage a luxury brand: once it leaves consumers with the impression of "discounted Kai", it is not only difficult for the brand to go higher, but even the sales will be "backlashed".

Cadillac's sales have fallen 21% over the past three years. According to the data consulted by Motor, in 2023, Cadillac will deliver a total of 183,600 vehicles in the Chinese market, a slight decrease from 2022, but a lot lower than the achievement of more than 230,000 units in 2021. Even the CT5 and LYRIQ Ruige, which are more powerful discount models, have failed to reverse the overall rout.

According to public information, in May last year, Cadillac's new CT6 was officially launched, and the official guide price was reduced by up to 50,000 yuan compared with the old model; in December, before the new CT5 was launched, the old CT5 was discounted to less than 200,000 yuan, and the new model was listed for less than a month, and the channel naked car price was discounted by 4-50,000 yuan. XT5, which is also the main sales model, has a discount of nearly 100,000 yuan for naked cars.

For the failure of price reduction, some analysts say that on the one hand, it is due to the fact that the long-term discount has completely washed away Cadillac's luxury attributes, and on the other hand, with the spread of the price war, the market has more options. In addition, it is worth mentioning that Cadillac's main battlefield has also emerged new energy players such as Tesla Model 3, BYD Han, and NIO ET5.

However, under the general trend of new energy transformation, Cadillac's electrification transformation is a bit dumb.

In 2019, Cadillac announced that it would be fully electrified by 2030, and in 2021 it said that it would gradually discontinue the production of gasoline-powered models from 2025 to 2026. But at present, Cadillac only has one pure electric model, the Cadillac LYRIQ Ruige, and the results are dismal. The sales volume in 2023 will be about 5,400 units, which is not even as good as the sales of the L series in a week at the end of last year when the ideal impulse was ideal.

As Cadillac's first new energy vehicle in China, LYRIQ Ruige is quite expected, and its significance is not only to open up the new energy market, but also to represent the high-end pure electric upward, and even General Motors executives have claimed that this has brought Cadillac back to its leading position.

However, the reality is very different, LYRIQ Ruige not only before the official delivery, because the front and rear lights, wheels and other publicity do not match the reality, causing dissatisfaction and joint complaints among Dading car owners. Moreover, the pre-sale price of 439,700 yuan at that time also directly dissuaded a large number of potential users.

In order to reverse sales, Cadillac once again staged a "price for volume" drama. In July last year, the price of all LYRIQ Ruige models was reduced by 60,000 yuan, and in November, the new rear-wheel drive standard range luxury version of Ruige was officially launched, with a price starting at 297,700 yuan, but it still failed to arouse the enthusiasm of the market.

Nowadays, in the new energy market where all the rules of the game have changed, traditional car companies not only lose their original advantages, but also are at a disadvantage of product catch-up, and the cost performance has lost its original gold content. And when the dividends of the price card are exhausted, what kind of memory points can Cadillac have in the market?