MEGA drops 30,000! Li Xiang "withdraws from the network" for nearly two months, and the ideal whole system reduces prices to deal with the "price war"

High beams

2024-04-22 10:10Posted on the official account of Hebei Tencent Automobile's "High Beam" column

Tencent Auto's "High Beam" author Aodun

Nearly two months after "withdrawing from the network", Li Xiang offered the first price reduction strategy for the whole system in history.

On April 22, Li Auto announced a new price system. According to the latest price system, the ideal L7 decreased from 319,800 to 379,800 yuan to 301,800 to 359,800 yuan, the ideal L8 from 339,800 to 399,800 yuan to 321,800 to 379,800 yuan, and the ideal L9 from 429,800 to 459,800 yuan to 409,800 yuan. MEGA cut its price by 30,000 yuan, from 559,800 yuan to 529,800 yuan.

From now on, the 2024 Ideal L7, Ideal L8, Ideal L9 and Ideal MEGA will adopt a new price system, and new users and users who have ordered but not delivered can enjoy the new price.

Li said that it will provide cash rebate to owners of the 2024 Li L7, Li L8, Li L9 and Li MEGA, and will push cash back notifications through the Li Auto App.

This is the first time that Li Auto has adjusted the price system since its establishment, and Li Auto insiders told Tencent Auto's "High Beam" that the introduction of the new price system is mainly to deal with the market "price war".

"From the feedback from the sales front line and the judgment of the overall situation, we feel the different sales pressure and competitive pressure from 2023. Although the data of customer flow into the store is still very good, compared with last year, the average decision-making cycle of users is longer, and the conversion is more difficult, which means that the overall wait-and-see mood is getting stronger, and consumers actually have expectations and expectations for the price reduction of various car companies. That's why we're taking the initiative to make price adjustments in response to the potential for intensifying competition. The above-mentioned person said.

The price war for new energy vehicles continues to heat up, and Tesla, whose sales in the first quarter were "less than expected", also followed up last week. Tesla China announced that the price of Tesla Model 3, Y, S and X products in Chinese mainland will be reduced by 14,000 yuan, of which the starting price of Model 3 will be reduced to 231,900 yuan, which is 16,000 yuan more expensive than the Xiaomi SU7 standard version. The day before, Tesla took the lead in announcing a price cut for some of its models in the U.S. market.

The ideal whole system reduced prices to deal with the "price war", and the ideal L6 was the first to test the water

In fact, Ideal has adopted a new pricing strategy for the newly released Ideal L6. In order to gain more market share, the final price of the Ideal L6 is 249,800 yuan for the L6 Pro and 279,800 yuan for the L6 Max, which is lower than the previous market expectation of 259,800 yuan.

The Ideal L6 is positioned as a high-volume model, and industry insiders predict that the Ideal Future will not rule out the launch of lower-priced models. Due to cost considerations, the L6 lacks air suspension compared to the L7, and the battery is also replaced by a ternary lithium battery to a lithium iron phosphate battery, which helps to reduce costs.

Ideal L6 is located in the most competitive market range of 20-300,000 yuan, the main opponents are Tesla Model Y, Wenjie M7 and other models, it is reported that the ideal L6 monthly sales are expected to be 30,000 units.

According to reports, Li Auto has adjusted its sales target for 2024 due to the failure of the MEGA model. Initially, Li Auto planned to achieve its annual sales target of 800,000 units in 2024, which was based on the forecast of market penetration and the judgment that Li Auto's market share in the new energy vehicle market of more than 200,000 units continued to increase.

In March, Li Auto delivered nearly 29,000 new vehicles, up 39.2% year-on-year and 30.1% month-on-month. 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 reduction of about 24%.

According to the data of the Passenger Car Association, the Ideal MEGA delivered 3,299 units in March this year, ranking eighth in the MPV sales list. However, the real delivery date of Ideal MEGA only starts on March 11, and March is not its first full delivery month.

Industry insiders told Tencent Auto's "High Beam" that Li Auto had previously "reduced prices" in the form of terminal subsidies, and the price reduction of the whole series showed that Li Auto had indeed encountered the pressure of slowing sales, coupled with the pressure of public opinion brought by Xiaomi Auto, Li Auto must accelerate its response in order to recover the losses caused by MEGA. Li Xiang moves quickly and expects to see results next month. The person added.

Li Xiang "withdrew from the network" for nearly two months, and the ideal organization underwent a major change

From the first official announcement in August 2023 to the official release on March 1 this year, the outside world has continued to discuss its appearance and sales performance, and Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, has stopped updating Weibo since March 2.

After the Ideal MEGA was blocked, the outside world began to question the ability of Li Auto to create a hit, and Li Xiang even made an internal statement to reflect, and Li Auto also launched a new round of organizational reform.

On the afternoon of March 21, Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, issued an internal letter to all employees, reflecting on the rhythm and sales of Li MEGA.

Li Xiang said in the letter that in the process of rapid growth, Li Auto misjudged the market rhythm, especially in the promotion of the ideal MEGA, the commercial verification period was mistaken for the high-speed development period, which led to the distraction of the sales team and affected the service and sales of the main model Li L8.

Li Xiang said that he would adjust the rhythm and patiently operate the ideal MEGA according to the rhythm from 0 to 1, focusing on the core user groups and cities with strong high-end pure electric consumption capacity. In addition, Ideal will abandon the full-scale sales strategy, concentrate on large retail centers in head cities for product experience and test drives, and accelerate the construction of supercharging stations in these cities. When the stage from 0 to 1 is effectively completed, it will be promoted to more cities and larger user groups.

Subsequently, on April 3, Li Auto announced the start of the matrix organization 2.0 upgrade and adjusted the organizational structure of several departments. Ideally, the adjustment is to better focus on user value, improve the quality of decision-making and operational efficiency, and better undertake the matrix organization of version 2.0 for the scale of 100 billion.

At the heart of this reshuffle is the renaming of the CEO's Office to the "Product & Strategy Group", under which a "Product Line" department and a "Quality Operations" department will be established, which will weaken the supply chain and commercial sales functions. At the sales level, Ideal further learned from Huawei and set up a Go-To-Market (GTM) department to formulate online and offline operations and marketing strategies to ensure the achievement of sales tasks.

View original image 125K

•