On April 18, Li Auto released the most important model of the year - Li L6, a five-seat medium and large SUV. The Ideal L6 is only available in two versions, Pro and Max, with the Ideal L6 Pro priced at 249,800 yuan and the Ideal L6 Max priced at 279,800 yuan.
Ideal L6 is the most impossible car to fail.
At the 2023 Li Auto Q2 earnings call, Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, said: "We believe that the Li L6 will become the model with the highest monthly sales in the Li L series. At an investor communication conference in March this year, the scheduled target of the ideal L6 was set to sell more than 20,000 units per month, which will undoubtedly exceed the current sales of the ideal L7, L8 and L9.
However, it is such an important product, at the press conference, Li Xiang himself only appeared for about ten minutes, and then handed over the stage to his colleagues.
Is Li Xiang suddenly low-key?
In fact, Li Xiang, who was once known as the "King of Weibo", last spoke on March 2, and more than one month has passed. The beginning of the silence stemmed from the well-known turmoil.
In the mouths of others, during the days when Li wanted to "hide", public opinion seemed to have reached a certain consensus: "This year's ideal life is not easy." Of course, this conclusion is not seen from the shock sales of Li Auto, it is not sniffed out from the release of the first quarter financial report of Li Auto, and it is not deliberately smeared or fabricated. On the contrary, it is public opinion that smells out of Li Xiang's fragmented expression and manifestation of emotions since the beginning of the year.
Although this year is a big year for Li Auto's products, five new cars will be released in a year, plus the facelift of existing models, which will form a huge matrix of eight car products. However, only extended-range models can support the scale of sales.
Ideal needs pure electric products, and the pure electric MPV model Ideal MEGA released in March, Li Xiang has high hopes.
According to Li Xiang's original plan, MEGA is the sales champion who can reach more than 500,000 units, and at least 8,000 units per month. But after the launch, there were so many negative reviews about the car that in the end, the MEGA barely achieved half of the expected sales.
The failure of MEGA's listing directly dragged down the ideal first-quarter sales performance. According to the previous announcement, Li Auto's vehicle delivery forecast for the first quarter of 2024 was lowered from 100,000 to 103,000 to 76,000 to 78,000, a decrease of about 24%. According to media reports, the original annual sales target of 800,000 units has also been changed. At present, the ideal expectation is for full-year sales growth of 50%-70%, corresponding to a sales guidance of 560,000 to 640,000 units.
At the same time as the sales forecast was lowered, Ideal also reflected on the reasons for the loss of MEGA. Li Xiang himself wrote, "We mistakenly took the 0-1 stage (commercial verification period) of Ideal MEGA as the 1-10 stage (high-speed development period) of Ideal MEGA. The Ideal MEGA and the high-voltage pure electric must go through a stage from 0 to 1 similar to that of the Ideal ONE and the extended range electric. Next, we will patiently operate the ideal MEGA according to the rhythm from 0 to 1. ”
In this case, Li Xiang had to reverse some brand image through the ideal L6. "Once, Li Xiang was the largest traffic of Li Auto, but this failure hit Li Auto and Li Xiang himself very hard, and Li Xiang was low-key this time, which is a normal way. The industry thinks.
However, it must also be admitted that the ideal L6 is the model with the most sales potential of the ideal, but it is also the model with the most competitors.
With a price of more than 200,000 yuan, it is the most competitive market today. According to the statistics of the China Automobile Association, fuel vehicles in the range of 20-300,000 yuan declined significantly last year. Even if you don't look at the growth rate, only look at the absolute value of new car sales, and the sales proportion of new energy vehicles in the price range of 20-300,000 yuan last year has been close to 38%. This proportion is even higher than the overall penetration rate of new energy vehicles in China last year.
Coincidentally, both Huawei and Xiaomi have completed their layouts in this price range.
Huawei's Wenjie M7 originally had a starting price of 249,800 yuan, but in order to consolidate its market share, it was reduced by 20,000 yuan not long ago. The Zhijie S7 has also been re-released, and the price of some models has been reduced by 20,000 yuan in the case of a comprehensive upgrade of the configuration. The price range of Xiaomi SU7 is 215,900-299,900 yuan, which almost completely covers the range of 20-300,000 yuan.
In the battle between Xiaomi and Huawei, whether the ideal L6 can take advantage of the tiger's mouth needs to be marked with a big question mark. You know, Ideal has always been good at finding the blue ocean market. From the earliest ideal ONE to the later ideal L9, it is because of the development of new market segments such as six-seat SUVs of more than 300,000 yuan that sales have soared.
But now, the Ideal L6 has entered the Red Sea market. In the level of 200,000 yuan, a new car must not only meet the extremely high cost performance, but also ensure that the product is strong enough, and also achieve the most basic quality and reliability. Even traditional OEMs such as BYD and Geely are a little unstable at the price of 200,000 yuan.
Obviously, whether the ideal L6 can stand firm depends on the final delivery results.
Therefore, from this point of view, Li Xiang in such an "understatement" form, after playing the "life and death card" of L6 to the market, it is inevitable that people who pay attention to ideals will cry out rashly, but out of rational thinking, Li Xiang needs more time to heal his weakness, and Li Auto also needs time to sort out and think. (Written by |Cars have wisdom and fire)