Text: Understand the original Che Emperor Wang Yan
On the evening of April 18, Li Xiang, chairman and CEO of Li Auto, returned to the public eye with the ideal L6, but the new car did not seem to have won the confidence of the capital market. On April 19, Li Auto fell more than 7%, down 7.58%, to HK$106.1 per share, with a total market capitalization of HK$211.3 billion.
Li Auto share price
Compared with the previous high-profile, this press conference not only adopted the form of recording and broadcasting, but as the CEO of Li Auto, Li Xiang only made a 5-minute opening speech. And throughout the publicity period, Li Xiang, who was originally full of activity, has always remained silent on social media.
Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto
In fact, for a new car, this press conference did not leave much suspense, in addition to the final price, the appearance, configuration, battery and other relevant information of the ideal L6 have long been known to the outside world.
The focus of this conference is on price. The Ideal L6 was only launched in two configurations, of which the Pro version is priced at 249,800 yuan and the MAX version is priced at 279,800 yuan.
Ideal L6
If you calculate the upper time discount, 5,000 deposits to 10,000 rights, as well as 10,000 yuan of optional and 5,000 yuan home charging pile gifts, the starting price of L6 will be as low as 229,800 yuan.
As Li Auto's fourth mid-size extended range SUV, the L6 is the first model within 300,000 yuan. It is not difficult to see from the price positioning that this will also be a new car that will bear the task of moving volume.
Not long ago, Ideal lowered its sales target for this year, from 800,000 units to 560,000-640,000 units, that is, to achieve a year-on-year increase of 50%-70%. In 2023, the ideal annual delivery volume will be 376,000. As of the end of March, Ideal delivered 80,000 units in the first quarter of 2024, a year-on-year increase of 53%.
Even according to the minimum annual target plan, if you want to meet the full-year target on time, it means that you want to deliver 480,000 new vehicles in the next nine months, that is, an average of more than 53,000 vehicles per month.
However, judging from the current monthly delivery volume, the difficulty is not small. In December 2023, Li Auto's monthly sales exceeded 50,000 units, but this year, it has fallen back to the level of about 30,000. In March of this year, the ideal delivery volume is 29,000 units.
In the short term, if we want to return to the monthly delivery level of 50,000 units, we can only hope for the ideal L6 if we want to return to the monthly delivery level of 50,000 units.
According to the product plan, in the second half of the year, Ideal will also release three high-voltage pure electric models. This also means that in 2024, Li Auto will launch a total of 8 new cars with 4 range extensions + 4 pure electric vehicles to hit the annual sales target.
But in today's new energy market, the decline in prices also means more fierce competition.
According to the data previously released by Cui Dongshu, Secretary-General of the Passenger Car Association, in 2023, the retail sales of passenger cars with a price of 200,000 ~ 300,000 yuan in the Chinese market will account for 15.9%, the retail sales of passenger cars with a price of 300,000 ~ 400,000 yuan will account for 11%, and the retail sales of passenger cars with a price of more than 400,000 yuan will account for 3.2%.
Orient Securities previously pointed out that in 2024, Ideal and other models will be launched one after another, coupled with the launch of new models such as Huawei and Xiaomi, it is expected that the competition in the new energy vehicle segment of 20-300,000 yuan will continue to be fierce.