Written by | Cao Shuangtao
Edit | Yang Bocheng
Title Picture | Wenxin is a style
Nezha Automobile, which is "stepping on Hot Wheels", is experiencing the cusp.
It was first revealed that the factory was shut down and the year-end bonus was delayed, and then it was criticized by netizens because of CEO Daniel Zhang's "divine language" in the live broadcast. Although it is not a good thing, it has made Nezha Automobile, which does not work hard in marketing, be "forced" into the spotlight.
Recently, even Zhou Hongyi, a shareholder of Nezha Automobile and 360 Company, couldn't sit still and began to teach Nezha Automobile how to do marketing on the spot.
Fast forward to 2 years ago. In 2022, Nezha Automobile will crush Wei Xiaoli with an annual sales volume of 152,100 and become the sales champion of the new car-making forces that year, but in 2023, Nezha Automobile's sales will decrease by 16.2% year-on-year to 127496 units, which not only completes 51% of Nezha Automobile's annual sales task, but also falls directly to the fifth place in the annual delivery list of the new forces.
By 2024, Nezha's automobile sales will continue to decline, and the sales volume of all Nezha models in the first quarter will be 24,434 units, only 8% of the annual sales task of 300,000 will be completed.
Source: Tabulation by DoNews, compiled from publicly available data
Sales continue to decline, and Nezha Automobile's cash flow is also in a hurry. According to the 360 financial report of Nezha Automobile's shareholders, Nezha Automobile's cumulative loss from 2020 to 2022 was 11.148 billion yuan. Under the high loss, 360 chose to transfer part of the equity of Nezha Automobile.
In order to save the declining sales, in addition to completing a new round of government subsidies and strategic financing in March and April this year, Nezha Automobile also released the Nezha L series models with a price starting at 129,900 yuan.
Source: Tianyancha
So can these measures make Nezha Automobile grow "three heads and six arms" and complete the rebirth of Nirvana?
1. Zhou Hongyi tried his best to save Nezha
Whether it is the annual sales of 376,000 units of Li Auto in 2023, or the sales volume of the new Wenjie M7 exceeding the 20,000 mark after the release, or the Xiaomi SU7 winning nearly 90,000 orders 24 hours after its release, these new energy explosive models are all related to the founder or management behind the manufacturer who is good at playing with marketing.
Source: Drawn by DoNews, compiled based on publicly available information
For example, Li Xiang, the founder of Li Auto, is the founder of the two major platform media platforms of Autohome and Bubble.com, and he is extremely sensitive to online marketing. Li Xiang even won the hot search for Li Auto many times with the help of Weibo, which attracted market attention. Mu Feng, president of Chang Motor, once called Ideal the "King of Weibo" and regarded it as a model for social platform marketing.
At the same time, many KOLs in the car circle are either employees who have left Autohome or have gained a foothold from Autohome. This allows Li Xiang to better mobilize industry resources, and at the same time, he also knows how to show the advantages of Li Auto with the help of evaluation scenarios, which is highly concerned and discussed by netizens.
After Huawei entered the new energy vehicle industry, the formula for new energy vehicle explosion = (design + product power) x price effect x emotional value². In terms of product design, consumers have a veto power, product power needs to compete with the comprehensive ability of manufacturers, price is the key to determining the sales of a car, these three determine the lower limit of a smart car sales, and emotional value is the upper limit of a smart car sales.
In order to meet the emotional value of consumers, new energy vehicle manufacturers need to convey through the brand story, and the founder or company senior management plays an irreplaceable role in telling the brand story. After they attract high attention and win high traffic on the online platform, they can bring more test drive customers to the manufacturer's terminal stores, and the store sales will track the test drive customers for a long time, and finally convert them into real sales of the manufacturer.
This is also the deep-seated reason why many industry bigwigs such as Wei Jianjun of Great Wall Motor and Yin Tongyue of Chery Automobile have personally gone live since April this year. Zhou Hongyi, who has been deeply involved in the Internet for many years, understands this principle and has always wanted to teach Nezha Automobile how to do marketing in a variety of ways, but it is too difficult to bring Nezha Automobile.
First, Zhou Hongyi publicly shouted to the public that he had sold the 9-year-old Maybach and replaced it with a domestic new energy intelligent networked car. The original intention was to "lift the sedan chair" for Nezha Automobile, so that the whole network could discuss "why Zhou Hongyi didn't drive the Maybach and chose Nezha Automobile", and increase the popularity and attention of the upcoming Nezha L series models, which is consistent with the Xiaomi SU7's frequent "rubbing" Porsche communication logic.
After the release of the "Red Clothes Car Solicitation Order", friends such as Ideal, Xiaopeng, Star Era, and AVATR acted quickly and sent their models to the downstairs of Zhou Hongyi's office. But this "splashing traffic" Nezha Automobile CEO Daniel Zhang didn't care at all, and the whole reaction speed was extremely slow, and was complained by Zhou Hongyi.
Second, Zhou Hongyi originally wanted to emulate Lei Jun's Xiaomi SU7 publicity method through Douyin live broadcast, that is, packaging the product through numbers, percentages or other adjectives, so that the originally ordinary or not so powerful technology instantly became high. In addition, laymen who do not understand the automobile production process and technology feel that Nezha's automobile technology is high, and enhance the user's sense of trust.
But Daniel Zhang took Zhou Hongyi to see the production plant under construction in Nezha, and I don't know if Daniel Zhang is hinting that the old Zhou Nezha car has no money, which makes Zhou Hongyi complain about what is good about a construction site under construction. And the Nezha production line that Daniel Zhang took Zhou Hongyi to visit gave people an extremely lazy feeling, and the entire publicity effect can be imagined.
Third, Daniel Zhang followed the pace of the live broadcast of the car circle boss, but the defense was broken by the three or two sentences of netizens. not only scolded netizens on personal social platforms, but also insinuated Lei Jun between his words. Although Daniel Zhang later apologized for the inappropriate remarks, at Nezha Automobile's 2024 spring press conference, Daniel Zhang not only closed the comments, but even alluded to other new energy vehicle manufacturers as "little brothers".
Source: Weibo
In contrast, Lei Jun recommended other domestic new energy vehicles on his personal social media platform, wished AVATR 12 a big sale, and said that he wanted to learn from Tesla. This made many netizens feel that the pattern and emotional management ability of the two are not at the same level.
Source: Weibo
Perhaps Daniel Zhang is also aware of these inappropriate remarks, and can only joke that this is a good thing, which can stimulate the desire of some young people to strive for progress.
Source: Weibo
Daniel Zhang doesn't know what marketing is behind or has to do with Daniel Zhang's personal experience. During his time at BAIC New Energy, Daniel Zhang made efforts in the TOB market through the "flood irrigation" method, and the annual sales of BAIC New Energy exceeded 100,000 units. Nezha Automobile has also followed the TOB end method, and many owners of Nezha AYA, Nezha U-II, and Nezha X are TOB online car-hailing customers. Daniel Zhang also pointed out that Nezha will increase investment in the TOB market.
From the perspective of the domestic SaaS industry, the core of TOB sales is customer development, price power, long-term customer maintenance, product delivery, etc., which is fundamentally different from the products, prices, channels, and promotion sold by TOC. Daniel Zhang's marketing thinking may still stay on the TOB side, but in the current era when the aroma of wine is also afraid of deep alleys, marketing has been very bad and cannot usher in a breakthrough Nezha, how to get new growth?
Under Zhou Hongyi's immovable Nezha Automobile Marketing, Nezha's internal desire to completely reverse the original marketing thinking was not something that could be completed overnight. If it is just Daniel Zhang's "black and red" on the Internet, various inappropriate remarks continue to cause dissatisfaction among netizens, which will affect the brand image of the entire Nezha Automobile.
In other words, Nezha's marketing breakthrough still has a long way to go, but the most fundamental thing should be Daniel Zhang's change in his views on marketing.
Second, the large model is on the car, can Nezha explain it clearly?
Daniel Zhang's crotch-pulling performance in marketing made Zhou Hongyi more and more dissatisfied. Zhou Hongyi once pointed out that Nezha Automobile may become the first car that may be on board a large model among the hundreds of thousands of civilian cars.
Source: 2024 Nezha Automobile Spring Conference
Just as mobile phone manufacturers are accelerating the implementation of large models, car companies are also accelerating the launch of large models.
At CES in January this year, Mercedes-Benz and BMW respectively released the MBUX virtual assistant developed based on the large language model and the new generation of BMW intelligent personal assistant based on the Amazon Alexa large language model. Volkswagen showcased the first models to integrate ChatGPT and IDA's voice assistant. In March, BYD's Xuanji AI model and NIO NOMI GPT were also unveiled one after another.
At present, including Ideal, Xiaopeng, Geely, Chery, Deep Blue, etc., have introduced their own large-scale models in some of their models, and Wenxin Yiyan and Huawei Pangu large-scale models have also been mass-produced and landed on cooperative brand models. Xiao Meng, general manager of Baidu Intelligent Cloud Automotive Industry Solutions, once said that the penetration rate of large models in new cars in China should reach more than 80% in 2025.
Judging from the large models that have been put on the car, the main core function points of the manufacturer are similar. The first is the voice control of the vehicle, and the owner exchanges the specific scene of the specific vehicle through voice. For example, the M9 supports six-seat wake-up in the whole car, and the wake-up free command range covers 12 types of user scenarios and 500+ skills.
The second is the owner's itinerary planning and driver assistant, which are standard functions of the large model. Ideal Mind GPT, Geely Galaxy full-scene AI model, BYD Xuanji AI model, Xingtu Star Era ESLION AI, Deep Blue Automobile, etc. are all equipped with this function.
The third is scene interaction and work assistants, such as Galaxy L6 can chat with children, and BYD Xuanji AI model can help car owners record meeting summaries, send and receive emails, etc. Fourth, the common knowledge question and answer scenarios of large models.
However, if the large model wants to be actually put on the car, it still needs to solve a series of problems.
On the one hand, smart driving cars need to be equipped with a large number of hardware such as infrared sensors, lidar, millimeter-wave radar, cameras, GPS, etc., and how to continuously clean and train the different scenarios and massive data collected by these hardware, and continuously improve the accuracy of large models, is a test of the manufacturer's ability.
On the other hand, how to achieve efficient linkage of hardware from different suppliers, and how to achieve a balance between R&D costs and profits in the current price war of new energy vehicles, will be a problem that manufacturers need to continue to solve.
If the above problems are industry-wide problems, then the urgent problem that Nezha Automobile needs to solve is how to transform the large model capabilities into specific scenarios in the sales process of Nezha L, so as to improve the purchase willingness of potential customers. This is especially important in the information cocoon formed by consumers in the sinking market who do not understand AI large models and short videos.
Daniel Zhang once pointed out that Nezha's automobile communication method is old, and there are good things that cannot be said. If this cannot be solved, the increment brought by the AI model to Nezha Automobile may need to be observed.
More importantly, Nezha Automobile is already positioned in the low-end market, and the current sales of Nezha Automobile continue to decline, which means that Nezha Automobile needs to be adjusted in terms of sales commissions to terminal stores, so as to increase the willingness of terminal sales to sell cars. In terms of communication methods, terminal sales training and commission system, perhaps Nezha really wants to learn from his peers.
3. Can Nezha L become its new increment?
It is undeniable that the Nezha L series models released by Nezha Automobile this time are indeed competitive compared with friends in the domestic market of 100,000-150,000 yuan. For example, the 2023 Navy SLO3 200Max Extended Range Edition and the 2024 BYD Qin plus DMi Glory Edition are not equipped with fatigue driving reminders, active DMS fatigue detection, refrigerators, automatic parking, tracking reversing, etc., but these can be seen on the Nezha L series.
Source: Understand Chedi
Daniel Zhang also said that Nezha L is the car with the biggest response after the launch of Nezha's new car, and has been praised by dealers and prospective car owners.
In the overseas market, on the one hand, Nezha actively lays out overseas markets. From January to February this year, Nezha Automobile exported 4,516 vehicles, ranking fifth in the export volume of new energy vehicles of Chinese enterprises. Since its establishment, Nezha has delivered nearly 400,000 vehicles worldwide, and has sold more than 100 overseas vehicles.
On the other hand, due to the influence of international and other factors, many overseas countries are mired in high inflation, and the consumer market is becoming more and more K-shaped. In the face of the continuous decline in sales, Tesla said that it will accelerate the promotion of more affordable electric vehicles, and Nezha Automobile, which focuses on cost performance, can also gain a certain increase in overseas markets.
However, it may still need to be seen how much growth Nezha L can bring to Nezha Automobile. In the overseas market, although countries have formulated many positive policies to promote the development of new energy vehicles and accelerate the construction of new energy charging piles, the current global demand for new energy vehicles has weakened.
South Korean battery company LG's latest financial report shows that net profit in the quarter fell 75% year-on-year due to weakening downstream demand. With high overseas inflation and reduced downstream demand, some countries are still mainly promoting oil vehicles, and more manufacturers will launch models with major price comparisons in the future, which will also have an impact on Nezha L.
In the domestic market, Daniel Zhang said that the biggest problem of Nezha L is that the production and delivery speed is a bit slow, and the production of new cars generally requires a process, and the exhibition cars and test drives of 400 dealerships at the end of this month can all be in place.
However, similar to new energy vehicles and consumer electronic products, generally after the press conference, due to the increase in the attention of netizens, the number of people entering the terminal store will increase, which can drive the increase in sales of manufacturers.
Just as netizens questioned Daniel Zhang, why didn't Nezha L put a large number of test drives in the terminal market in advance like other manufacturers before the press conference, and asked the store to sign a confidentiality agreement, taking advantage of this wave of heat to complete a wave of determination?
From the follow-up point of view, in addition to Xiaopeng Motors, it will launch the first 100,000-150,000 young people's intelligent driving car. As the price war of new energy vehicles in China continues to escalate, the prices of more models will come to this range in the future. At the same time, the price of Wuling Hongguang and other brands has broken through, and whether Nezha L can continue to maintain competitiveness is still full of uncertainty.
Epilogue:
Perhaps Nezha Auto has always wanted to break through, but if Daniel Zhang's performance has never been recognized by Zhou Hongyi and other investors behind it, what kind of transformation can Nezha Auto complete with the funds raised in the past two months?