In March, Trumpchi sold 33,213 vehicles in March, of which 14,800 were contributed by MPV models.
Nearly half of the sales are provided by MPV, on the one hand, it shows that Trumpchi's MPV is indeed selling well; on the other hand, we must know that Trumpchi is a comprehensive car brand covering almost all model categories, from a well-known automobile website - understand the car emperor to query, Trumpchi has a total of 39 models, and the MPV models on sale are only Trumpchi M6, Trumpchi M8, Trumpchi E8 and Trumpchi E9 four models. Such an unreasonable proportion of sales is enough to show that the sales of other models of Trumpchi except MPV are not optimistic, and it can even be said to be quite urgent.
Specifically, in today's blooming new energy models of major brands, Trumpchi's new energy performance appears to be maverick: car websites such as Chedi have not yet updated their sales in March, but from the sales in February, the highest sales of the three new energy models announced by Trumpchi are Trumpchi E8 - 1280 units, and the sales volume of the rest of the models is Trumpchi E9 - 639 units, Trumpchi ES9 - 418 units. Compared with the sales of other brands, which are as little as six or seven thousand, and as many as twenty or thirty thousand units, the results of Trumpchi New Energy are gloomy and lonely.
At present, the technical quality and large-scale production of major car companies in China's new energy vehicle market have become more and more mature, so many brands have launched a "cost-effective war" for new energy: one is to increase the allocation without increasing it, and the other is to directly reduce the price.
In the face of a new round of market competition, Feng Xingya, general manager of GAC Group and chairman of Trumpchi, said bluntly in an interview with China Entrepreneur Magazine: "Price is used for positioning, value is used for war, and cost is used for profit." And from this point of view to oppose the current new energy price war, and then think of the current sales performance of Trumpchi new energy, people can't help but wonder: does Trumpchi disdain to fight a price war, or dare not fight a price war?
The sword goes sideways - there are few mainstream models of new energy, and the power of vehicle products is dwarfed
From the official website of GAC Trumpchi, it can be found that Trumpchi New Energy is currently selling only three models: Trumpchi E8, Trumpchi E9 and Trumpchi ES9, all of which are plug-in hybrid models, of which Trumpchi E8 and Trumpchi E9 are MPV models, and Trumpchi ES9 is a medium and large SUV model. However, the proportion of car consumers and the more frequent use of cars in sedans and compact SUV models are not covered. Obviously, relying solely on medium and large SUV and MPV models with a smaller audience cannot support the best-selling dream of Trumpchi New Energy.
In terms of product strength, take the medium and large plug-in hybrid SUV - Trumpchi ES9 as an example. One thing to say, the car is not expensive in the current large and medium-sized new energy SUV camp, and it is even at the bottom of the price. The only price that coincides with it is the M7. Let's compare the Trumpchi ES9 2024 143km Max (hereinafter referred to as: Trumpchi ES9), which is also priced at 249,800 yuan, with the Wenjie M7 2024 Plus five-seater rear-wheel drive version (hereinafter referred to as: Wenjie M7).
At the power level, the plug-in hybrid used in Trumpchi ES9, the 190Ps 2.0T engine is matched with a 182Ps motor, which can comprehensively output a maximum horsepower of 372Ps, and the M7 can output a maximum horsepower of 272Ps, compared to Trumpchi ES9 does have more advantages. However, the M7 adopts a rear-mounted motor layout, which is more outstanding than the front-wheel drive Trumpchi ES9 with a 100-kilometer acceleration time and top speed, and has better explosive power and grip on the climbing section.
In addition, in terms of battery life, which users are most concerned about, the CLTC pure electric range of Trumpchi ES9 is 143km, which is not bad in large and medium-sized plug-in hybrid SUVs, but the CLTC pure electric range of the M7 is 240km, which can basically achieve "only one charge in two weeks". In terms of comprehensive range, both cars can reach more than 1200km under CLTC conditions, but the M7 is 1300km. Some friends here may question: it is unfair to compare the pure electric range with the plug-in hybrid Trumpchi ES9 with the extended range of the M7, but the Trumpchi ES9 is positioned as a large and medium-sized plug-in hybrid SUV, and there are very few models in its own camp, and the M7 is the only large and medium-sized new energy SUV with which the price coincides. Moreover, consumer logic never looks at the cause, only the effect.
In addition, in terms of vehicle configuration and travel experience, most of the mainstream hybrid and pure electric models, including the M7, use CATL batteries, which have been recognized by the industry and market users in terms of power performance, endurance and safety guarantee, but the disadvantage is the high price and cost. Therefore, in order to reduce costs, Trumpchi ES9 uses Zhengli New Energy Battery, which is not well-known in the consumer group, and users and the market will inevitably have concerns about its overall quality performance.
Compared with the same 249,800 Wenjie M7, Trumpchi ES9 does not support fatigue driving detection and prompts, rear side airbags and automatic parking, and there is no more peace of mind for consumers in active and passive safety, which is not sincere enough. Not only that, in terms of the user's experience of getting on and off the car, Trumpchi ES9 only supports key unlocking, if the owner forgets to bring or leaves the key, he will not be able to open the door to get into the car, which is not the performance of more than 200,000 yuan models. In the intelligent comfort experience, the intelligent voice of Trumpchi ES9 does not support the wake-up recognition of the second row of voice partitions, which cannot take into account the personalized car needs of the rear passengers, and there is no multi-layer soundproof glass in the rear row, and the silent performance is not excellent.
At the level of user word-of-mouth, the number of complaints about the car quality network of Trumpchi ES9 is small, but the sales volume of the car in January was only 1337 units, and it dropped to 418 units in February, so the proportion of complaints in sales volume is not low. In addition, from the content of the complaint, including manufacturing process problems - uneven left and right trunk tailgate, driving problems - high-speed driving steering wheel shaking, power system problems - inaccurate mileage, marketing service problems - mobile phone data monitoring when buying a car, etc. It can be seen that there is still room for improvement in the vehicle manufacturing and after-sales service of Trumpchi ES9.
Reluctant to exchange silver for real quality, too little R&D investment hinders the upgrade of Trumpchi's new energy
On March 28, Guangzhou Automobile Group Co., Ltd. announced its financial report that in 2023, GAC Group will achieve operating income of 128.757 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.48%, and a net profit of 4.429 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 45.08%.
We all know that R&D is the fundamental driving force for the upgrading of automotive technology and quality, and while profits are declining, GAC Group's R&D investment is not optimistic - GAC Group's R&D investment in 2023 will be 8.388 billion yuan. In comparison, SAIC Group's R&D investment is 22.013 billion yuan, in addition to BYD's 39.57 billion yuan, Great Wall's 11.03 billion yuan, and even Weilai's R&D investment, which accounts for less than half of GAC Group's revenue and only 8 models on sale, has also reached 13.41 billion yuan.
What we need to know is that GAC Group, as an extremely large automobile group, is divided into three types of passenger cars, commercial vehicles and motorcycles in the vehicle business, of which passenger cars include GAC Passenger Vehicle, GAC Aion, two independent brand automobile enterprises, GAC Honda, GAC Toyota, GAC Hino and other joint venture cooperative automobile enterprises. And our protagonist today, Trumpchi New Energy, is only the new energy field of GAC Group, the passenger car sector, GAC Passenger Vehicle's own brand, and the Trumpchi brand.
With few models, weak products, and R&D investment that is not as good as mainstream new energy vehicle brands, how can such Trumpchi new energy achieve good development?
The "calf guard" fuel model, which does not pay attention to new energy, runs counter to the general trend of the auto market
We all know that Trumpchi's main sales come from fuel models, so it is understandable to stabilize the fuel base in marketing communications. However, it seems that the sales of fuel vehicles are not high, but in fact, it misses the opportunity for new energy consumers.
Judging from the daily dynamics of the @广汽传祺 official Weibo, hundreds of dynamics throughout March, mainly focused on the three models of Trumpchi Shadow Leopard, Trumpchi GS4 MAX and Trumpchi M8, about the three new energy models on sale - Trumpchi E8, Trumpchi E9 and Trumpchi ES9 The dissemination is very small, of which Trumpchi E8 has a series of product force videos, disseminating a total of 11 dynamics, but focusing on space and design interpretation, for the core of the plug-in hybrid model of the three-electric system, The transmission of battery life and so on is less;Trumpchi E9 has 2 fuel-saving tips long picture,Trumpchi ES9 has not seen any transmission。
In the @传祺新能源 official Weibo, in March, the video interpretation of the product power was mainly carried out for the Trumpchi E8 and the video communication of the Trumpchi E9 celebrity owner, Lin Fan, the founder of Maimai, was relatively single in the form of communication, lacking regular creative communication outside of brand/model news or marketing events, and the copywriting style was relatively monotonous. In addition, it is worth mentioning that @传祺新能源 official Weibo has almost no welfare distribution and lottery interactive activities in March, which can also be seen that the marketing expenses allocated by the Trumpchi brand to Trumpchi New Energy are less, and it can also be seen that the Trumpchi brand does not attach importance to the new energy sector.
EV Says:
The current new energy vehicle market has evolved from "incremental competition in technical allocation" to "cost-effective involution after general maturity". BYD, Wenjie, and Ideal are among the leaders, and Tesla is the largest catfish in the entire new energy vehicle market. Under such a high-pressure competitive situation, Trumpchi New Energy has neither new energy explosive products, nor large room for price reduction, nor the technical quality confidence and strength to position high-priced prices. Most of its profits are used to stabilize fuel channels and marketing, so that it cannot achieve more competitive new energy technology quality upgrades. Therefore, the problem facing Feng Xingya is very specific and difficult to solve. If we hope that we will neither join the price war nor increase R&D investment, so as to avoid capital losses and be eliminated by the market, then it is only a matter of time before the enterprising Trumpchi New Energy actively or passively withdraws from the Chinese auto market.