The "official surrender" of the ideal car is rare.
On April 22, Gasgoo noticed that the official Weibo of Li Auto announced that the 2024 Ideal L7, Ideal L8, Ideal L9 and Ideal MEGA will adopt a new price system.
According to the price list, the price of the Ideal L9 series, as well as the top Ultra version and the mid-configuration Max version of the L8 and L7 are reduced by 20,000 yuan, the price of the low-end Pro version of the L8 and L7 is reduced by 18,000 yuan, and the price of the flagship MPV Ideal MEGA is reduced by 30,000 yuan, with a starting price of 529,800 yuan.
At the same time, Li Auto also said that it will provide cash rebates for owners of the 2024 Li L7, Li L8, Li L9 and Li MEGA.
In other words, while providing discounts for new car owners in the future through price reduction, Li Auto has not forgotten to "refund money" to old car owners who have already picked up the car. Compared with the previous price reduction of some car companies, which has caused dissatisfaction among many old car owners, Li Auto's operation is really "soothing".
However, when new and old car owners were "laughing and laughing", on April 22, the share price of Li Auto's Hong Kong stock fell by more than 9%. Ideal for this "price reduction promotion", what is the point of it?
The "sequelae" of pure electric errors?Is the price reduction of the L series related to MEGA?
You must know that from the end of 2022 to the present, in the field of new energy vehicles, even though the "price war" of the whole vehicle has come and gone, Li Auto has rarely participated in it publicly. Although Li Auto has also taken more or less price reduction measures, they have all taken indirect forms and have not adopted the official reduction method in a big way.
For example, in October last year, Gasgoo learned that a salesperson of an ideal store told relevant media: "Ideal Auto L7 and L8 are very rare now, and they can directly discount 31,000 yuan, and give gifts such as 20,000 points and mats." ”
Based on this calculation, the price of the ideal L7 at that time had reached 288,800 yuan-348,800 yuan, falling below the 300,000 yuan mark, and the price of the ideal L8 was 308,800 yuan-368,800 yuan after the discount.
However, Li Auto has not officially publicized this. Even until March this year, Li Auto still insisted on adopting "low-key and roundabout tactics".
According to a previous report by Gasgoo, on March 12, Li Auto announced that the starting prices of Ideal L7 and L8 would drop by 18,000 yuan, 301,800 yuan and 321,800 yuan respectively, which is on par with the price of the 2023 model after the promotion.
In addition, at that time, Li Auto also announced that it decided to adjust the first sales rights and interests of the ideal L series: users who ordered the 2024 L series before March 31 will add a deposit of 5,000 yuan to deduct the rights and interests of 10,000 yuan on the basis of the original 5,000 yuan optional fund, and for users who have paid and picked up the 2024 L series, 80,000 points will be provided.
However, it still needs to be mentioned that even though the price of Li Auto's L series (except for the recently released L6) has been significantly reduced at that time, it still needs to be called a "disguised price reduction".
For Li Auto that remained "calm" in the face of the "price war" in full swing at that time, some analysts said that the reason why Li Auto did not choose to reduce prices was to stabilize consumers' perception of prices, and second, it did not have the pressure to clear inventory under the general trend of the implementation of "China VIB".
But until April 22, Li Auto "couldn't sit still".
Li Auto's official WeChat official account directly released the "New Price!2024 Ideal L7, Ideal L8, Ideal L9, and Ideal MEGA New Price System" to boost customers' desire to buy cars.
Since then, Li Auto has directly participated in the "price war" that has lasted for more than two years in its "official capacity". The reason for this is still the mistake of Li Auto's first attack on pure electric - MEGA "does not sound".
Source: Li Auto
In Li Auto's vehicle price adjustment strategy, the price adjustment range of each model is uneven, and the details are worth scrutinizing.
Obviously, MEGA has the largest price reduction, and its latest price is 529,800 yuan, a direct drop of 30,000 yuan. This is not unrelated to Li Auto's monthly sales target for MEGA.
It is reported that after the adjustment, Li Auto's internal monthly sales forecast for MEGA has been lowered to 2,000 units per month, and is expected to gradually increase to 4,000 to 5,000 units per month. According to relevant industry data, MEGA sales in the second week of April were only 265 units, and in the first week it reached 418 units.
In other words, the sales volume of Li MEGA in the first half of the month was 683 units, which is still far from the sales target of Li Auto after being lowered. This may also be one of the reasons why Li Auto has significantly reduced the price of MEGA this time.
It should be added that according to industry insiders, Ma Donghui, co-founder of Li Auto, proposed to reduce the price of Mega, and the cost of the whole vehicle may be borne by the supply chain after the price reduction.
The price reduction of the L series (except for the latest L6) was proposed by Liu Jie, vice president of Li Auto, and the price adjustment of Li Auto's L series (except for the latest L6) is also related to MEGA.
Ping An Securities Research Report said that after the listing of MEGA, the sales resources of the ideal terminal were tilted to MEGA, which squeezed the sales resources of the L series, resulting in a decline in the conversion of orders for the L series, the main sales force.
As Li Auto mentioned in the announcement: "The company will operate the ideal MEGA according to the rhythm from 0 to 1, focus on the core user groups, focus on cities with strong high-end pure electric consumption capacity, and the sales resources of the subsequent L series will increase, and the sales of the L series are expected to return to the previous level." ”
Ping An Securities also believes that the L series of Li Auto is the company's sales and profit base in 2024, with the adjustment of the company's sales resources, the L series is expected to get back on track, maintaining the sales forecast of 650,000 units of Li Auto in 2024, of which the L series will account for more than 80% of the company's total sales, and the company's net profit in 2024 is expected to reach 14.56 billion yuan.
In other words, after the sales of MEGA fell short of expectations and it was difficult to recover in a short period of time, Li Auto returned more sales efforts to the L series.
Stop selling the Air version to avoid "competition with the same door"?So why not drop the L6?
However, it is worth noting that in the price adjustment of the Ideal L series (except for the newly released L6), the Ideal L7 and L8 Air versions are not among them.
Gasgoo checked an automotive information service platform and found that the ideal L7 and L8 Air versions were both discontinued.
The picture shows the discontinuation of the Ideal L7 and L8Air versions, and the picture comes from an automotive information service platform
The reason for this, in addition to the positioning factors of the L7, L8 and L9 series in the model matrix of Li Auto, may also be related to the latest Li L6 of Li Auto.
According to the release information, the ideal L6 has launched two configuration models, Pro and Max, with a price range of 249,800-279,800 yuan.
Compared with the ideal L7 Air version, the minimum guide price is nearly 300,000 yuan, if it participates in the price adjustment of the ideal car, its price will drop to less than 300,000 yuan, or it will directly "reduce dimensionality" to the latest ideal L6. In order to avoid the dilemma of its own products, Li Auto "rejected" the Air version.
From this point of view, the ideal L7, L8, and L9 have tightly covered the price range of 301,800 yuan to 439,800 yuan, and these three models will be fully responsible for the 300,000-450,000 market, and the ideal L6 will specialize in the 25-300,000 market.
Source: Li Auto
As for the reason why the latest ideal L6 did not participate in the price adjustment, it is reported that Li Auto said that L6 has been released at a reduced price. Liu Jie previously said that the L6 Pro version was originally priced at 259,800 yuan, but it was eventually adjusted to 249,800 yuan for release.
It is reported that in fact, the ideal L6 has considered positioning to 269,800 yuan in the early pricing process in 2023. However, with the arrival of 2024 and the difficulties encountered by Li MEGA, Li Auto took the initiative to make a decision to lower the price of L6 after organizational adjustment.
In addition, the relevant industry insiders interviewed by Gasgoo said: from the perspective of new vehicle product pricing, the ideal L6 as a new model that has just been released, it is not realistic to reduce the price within a week of release, which will not only "stab" the owner who has placed an order to the greatest extent, but also will have a negative brand effect.
From the perspective of the communication effect of vehicle price reduction, if the price of new models is to be greatly reduced to attract users, the second price reduction is not as strong as the first price communication. This is true, the pricing strategy of Xiaomi SU7 may be one of the most typical marketing cases.
Will the price continue to drop after learning Huawei and Xiaomi?
On April 21, Li Auto released data showing that within 72 hours of its launch, the cumulative number of orders for the Ideal L6 exceeded 10,000 units.
For this order data, some industry analysts told Gasgoo: although it is not a surprise, it can be called "stable".
Compared with the old version of the M7 launched in 2022, according to the official data released at that time, the order volume of this model exceeded 10,000 units within 2 hours of launch, 20,000 units after 4 hours, 50,000 units in 48 hours, and 60,000 units in 72 hours.
At that time, the competitor of the old version of the M7 launched in 2022 was the Li ONE, which had a non-negligible impact on the Li Li. It was also at this time that Li Xiang, after deep thinking, decided to study Huawei in depth.
But the truth is that since then, the ideal of "learning with an open mind" has often felt pressure from the world of inquiry.
Gasgoo noticed that since the beginning of this year, the sales of Li Auto have been surpassed by the world for many months.
In the first quarter of this year, Li Auto's sales were 80,400 units, a year-on-year increase of 52.9%, lower than the 85,800 units (a year-on-year increase of more than 600%). Relevant retail data show that the highest sales in the first quarter were the ideal L7, with 32,800 units, and the sales of the ideal L8 and ideal L9 were 24,000 and 20,900 respectively.
To this day, the latest ideal L6 on the market still can't escape the "pressure" from the world. As soon as the L6 was released, it went straight to compete with the new M7, which was launched last year.
Source: Li Auto
In October last year, Yu Chengdong talked about the sales of the new Wenjie M7 in the circle of friends. He said: "On October 6 (last year), the new M7 reached 7,000 units, yesterday (October 5 last year) 3,500 units, and more than 10,000 units in two days. ”
That is to say, compared with the ideal L6 "the cumulative order exceeded 10,000 units within 72 hours of listing", the new Wenjie M7 was still able to set a record of more than 10,000 units within 48 hours after being on the market for more than half a month, and the lowest price of the new Wenjie M7 at that time was 249,800 yuan for the Plus five-seat rear-wheel drive version (consistent with the lowest price of the ideal L6). The performance of this market should not be underestimated.
For the comparison of the new Wenjie M7 and the ideal L6 vehicle, Gasgoo interviewed relevant analysts, who said: "The difference between the world and the ideal is that the ideal has been pursuing 'refrigerators, color TVs, and large sofas', in fact, the innovation has not changed much. Ideally, the most important thing to learn from Huawei is the intelligent driving of the world. ”
The person also said that in the future, the ideal will only increase in the face of pressure from the world. "If the M5 is sold at 200,000 yuan, then there are three ideal coping strategies: either pull a new car out, or add equipment to the existing model, or reduce the price. Perhaps a price reduction is more likely. The person said.
In addition, Gasgoo also noticed that there was a news that "after the ideal learned from Huawei, a large number of processes were introduced, and the elite soldiers were transferred to manage the process, which weakened the combat effectiveness of the business." This round of adjustment will subtract from the process, reduce the number of meetings by half, and let the backbone of the original process return to the front line of the business, and the internal adjustment and iteration will last for at least one year. Also, the ideal has been learning from Xiaomi recently and returning to user value. ”