Ideal Auto, pay for "conceit".

On the evening of April 21, Li Auto just announced that the ideal L6 72-hour order exceeded 10,000, and at 9 o'clock in the morning of April 22, the news of the price reduction of the entire ideal series came.

The first is the controversial ideal MEGA since its listing, with a price reduction of 30,000 yuan, and the current price is 529,800 yuan, which is also the model with the largest drop in this round; in addition, L series models, including L7, L8, and L9, have reduced prices by 18,000-20,000 yuan according to different configurations.

The two news were released one after another, fully exposing the sense of urgency within the ideal.

Although the ideal L6 order looks relatively "ideal", but for the ideal itself, it is actually far lower than expected, after all, the L series products have always been resistant, if placed in the past, L6, the price is within 300,000, the clear volume target of the product to achieve more than 10,000 orders will take less time. However, for the car itself, whether it can stand up to its image and competitiveness in the 250,000-level range extension market is actually a matter of later words, and its more important mission at the moment is to act as a "springboard" to squeeze out some breathing time for the ideal.

In the opinion of Sister Yi, the ideal operation is precisely to take advantage of the popularity of L6 listing and call on the L series "brothers and sisters" to jointly launch a large-scale "impulse action". Because for the ideal, the most urgent moment has come.

MEGA蝴蝶效应让理想"破防"

Why did the ideal "disarm" the market so quickly? In the end, we still have to talk about the "initiator" of the ideal MEGA. Now it seems that this high-end pure electric MPV, which has been given high hopes by Ideal, has brought a greater impact to Ideal and Li Xiang himself than imagined.

At that time, MEGA was criticized by consumers because of styling design problems, and it was about to "collapse" before it reached the "middle road", and it was originally going to challenge the goal of selling 8,000 units per month, but now it was "cut in half" at the beginning, and it could not even match the factory production capacity of 5,000 units per month. In fact, the problem with MEGA is not only in the appearance, the starting price of up to 559,800 yuan is also destined to make consumers weigh between the Xpeng X9 which is 200,000 yuan lower than it and the Zeekrypton 009, which is stronger than it.

Of course, the main culprit that led to the failure of MEGA was Li Auto's overconfidence in its own product definition ability, so that after the success of L9 and other models, Li MEGA could no longer listen to the advice of real users.

Not long ago, 360 Chairman Zhou Hongyi broke the news on the short video platform that he had made suggestions to the ideal MEGA, hoping to ensure the privacy of the vehicle, and you can choose partitions and other configurations between the front and rear rows, but it is a pity that Li Xiang insisted that MEGA is the main family model, so he decisively rejected Zhou Hongyi's opinion.

In fact, this is a classic strategic blunder. Because in actual use, the scene of a family of 7 people traveling roughly only exists in self-driving tours. The attributes of the MEGA pure electric MPV mean that during long-distance self-driving, the car needs to constantly enter the service area to queue up for charging and replenishment, and the time consumed in this process will affect the play experience of children and the elderly.

Therefore, whether it is talking about the quality-price ratio, or the cost performance, or the product definition ability that Ideal has always been best at, the result of MEGA's failure is inevitable, just like Li Xiang's reflection - misjudging the rhythm of MEGA's launch, so that desire transcends value.

Now, it is reasonable that the MEGA has become the model with the largest decline in the whole series, but the "butterfly effect" brought by the MEGA is actually continuing indefinitely. According to Li Auto's announcement, the monthly sales target of MEGA is tentatively set at 2,000 units, and on this basis, it will gradually increase, and the annual sales target will be adjusted from the original 800,000 units to 56-640,000 units.

This is a last resort.

Because the problem faced by the ideal is not only that its own research and judgment has deviated, but the current external competitive environment has made the ideal worse. The price war provoked by BYD at the beginning of the year is still continuing, and it is intensifying, also yesterday, Tesla announced a price cut of 14,000 yuan for the whole series, and the starting price of Model 3 has come to 231,900 yuan. Look, even Tesla, which has always done its own thing, has adopted the strategy of "joining if you can't beat it", and it has been attacked by peers such as Questioning and Leap, and if you don't take action, it will only be difficult.

Fortunately, although L6 did not meet expectations, but for the audience, this car is still worthy of being included in the car purchase list, after all, from the price and configuration, you can see that the ideal has "done its best", just like Wang Xing, the major shareholder of the ideal, said, L6 is the car that employees make for themselves. Whether Wang Xing is to cheer up the ideal, or to correct the market's criticism of the ideal, but there is one thing to say, L6 at this moment does play a certain positive role in the ideal "warm-up", and at the same time with the operation of the whole system of price reduction, although the ideal is fighting against the water, but it is not without a chance of winning.

Of course, one-third of 2024 has passed, assuming that after adjusting the target, the ideal is still not achieved, then it will cause a certain blow to the ideal, whether it is within the ideal, suppliers, or the various industrial chain ports involved. At that time, the ideal is not only limited to the problem of product strategy, but also related to the loss of vitality of user stickiness, and even means the complete collapse of the trust of car owners, which is a worse result than participating in the price war and the loss of MEGA.

真金白银“填坑”成效几何？

At the same time as the price reduction, the official announcement is also the "compensation clause" for the owners of the 2024 full range of products: those who have purchased the ideal MEGA can get 30,000 yuan, those who buy the ideal L9 series and L7 and L8 Ultra and Max can get 20,000 yuan back, and those who buy the Pro version of the ideal L7 and L8 can refund the 18,000 price difference, which is also applicable to users who have paid a deposit and have not picked up the car.

How much does this compensation cost in total? Someone calculated an account for the ideal cash return policy - if according to the March sales data released by the car emperor as the benchmark, the ideal L7 sales are 10,768 units, the ideal L8 sales are 6,392 taels, the ideal L9 sales are 8,595 units, and the ideal MEGA sales are 3,229 units. After a rough calculation of the price difference between the above compensations, the ideal will pay at least 550 million yuan to 600 million yuan in subsidies for this.

According to Li Auto's 2023 financial report, its cash flow reserves are 103.6 billion yuan, much higher than that of Weilai and Xiaopeng, so the expenditure of five or six billion yuan should not have much impact on the overall financial situation, but from a perceptual point of view, this money is really "worrying", after all, it is filling the hole that he has dug before, which is somewhat significant and a little "difficult to settle".

After all, for adults, buying a car is rational, and "buying and leaving" is the transaction rule, and you always have to pay for your choice.

Perhaps the ideal thinks that it can reap a wave of goodwill with real money, but in reality, the result may not be as optimistic as the ideal expects. After the official announcement of the price reduction this morning, netizens on social media spoke on the left and right, and some people directly posted the ideal "payment list", thinking that the ideal is responsible and sincere, and some people believe that the ideal price reduction is hurting the hearts of 700,000 old car owners, even if they are compensated, they cannot make up for the gap between the lack of configuration of the old products. 

It's just that the current ideal should have no time to take into account the "feedback" from car owners. At present, the Beijing Auto Show is close at hand, and the new energy counterparts have been waiting for the ideal of expressing "price sincerity" before the auto show, and can we "recycle" the trust of more users at the Beijing Auto Show? With the rise of many range extender rookies, can the ideal still rely on the "heating" of L6 to complete the next stage of sales tasks?

is paying for the ideals of his recklessness and conceit, and his mood at this time may be more mixed than ever, and there is no way back but to move forward.