With weekly sales of only 173 units, why is the Ideal MEGA so thoroughly cool?

Electric cars point north

2024-04-26 00:10Published in Shandong

"We are confident that the Ideal MEGA will become the No. 1 product with more than 500,000 sales, regardless of energy form or body form."

"Suppliers and partners, the supply of production capacity must keep up, and do not be misled by the assumption that there is no sales of high-end pure electric vehicles. ”

Before the launch of the ideal MEGA, Li Xiang and its team were full of confidence in this car, but soon the reality slapped in the face, after the cumulative orders of the market for a month were exhausted, the terminal sales in April immediately "showed the original shape", and the first three weeks of April were 418, 265 and 173 respectively, so that 1000 units a month will not be enough, it can be said that it is "cool".

You must know that Li Auto is a "hot model maker", from the ideal ONE to the L series, each of them is a hot model, why is it that it doesn't work when it comes to MEGA?

Although Li Auto claims that the big reason for the loss of MEGA is "hacked", that is, it lost in public opinion, but I personally think that is only the secondary reason, and the ideal ONE was "not hacked" when it came out? At that time, Ideal was still losing money, and it entered the game later than Weilai and Xiaopeng, and it was also very passive in public opinion, but the biggest reason why Ideal ONE was able to succeed was its accurate product definition, which really touched many consumers who wanted to buy a family SUV.

"If you prosper with this, you will die with this", Li Auto has succeeded because of the successful product definition, and MEGA has also reaped the failure because of the failed product definition.

Let's talk about why the ideal MEGA product definition is a failure.

Failure point 1: abandon the commercial scene and only do the household market

As a father of 5 children, Li Xiang is also very sensitive to the travel needs of family users, and the slogan of Li Auto is also "Create a mobile home, create a happy home".

These are fine on the Ideal ONE and L series, but they are a bit out of place on the MEGA of more than 500,000.

(Photo courtesy of San Antonio Little Stonemason)

We can take a look at what are the current cars with more than 500,000 yuan.

Judging from the cars with a transaction price of more than 500,000 yuan in 2023, they are mainly medium and large SUVs and D-class executive sedans, and the brands are concentrated in German luxury brands such as BBA and Porsche.

Let's take a look at the ideal MEGA, although the second row is also quite comfortable and luxurious, but the main promotion is that the third row is also the same spacious and high configuration, the core concept is "everyone in the family can sit comfortably", so the second row retains the central aisle, so on the one hand, it limits the seat width of the second row (the second row is not extremely luxurious), on the other hand, there is less isolation between the second row and the third row, and there is more family atmosphere and lack of commercial atmosphere.

Let's take a look at the more business ZEEKR 009 This is also a 500,000+ pure electric MPV, ZEEKR 009 obviously focuses on the second row, there is no central aisle with two wide seats, there are two screens for control on the seat handles, and there are a lot of carved and chrome elements around, which can add a lot of business sense, in line with most people's definition of a business MPV.

However, judging from the actual sales volume, ZEEKR 009 and Ideal MEGA are also "half a catty, eight taels", and the weekly sales are only hovering around 100 units, which has to be said to be the second failure point of Ideal MEGA - giving up range extension and adopting pure electric (which is also a problem with ZEEKR 009).

Failure point 2: Give up the range extension and adopt pure electric

As for why the ideal MEGA adopts pure electric and does not adopt the range extension mode that has been successfully verified by ideal, ideal has a very logical explanation: because the range extension system has an engine and exhaust system, the space cannot be as extreme as pure electric, and the mission of ideal MEGA is to give users the most extreme experience......

But reality has proven that more than 500,000 units, especially MPV models, are hard to sell for pure electric vehicles.

In fact, it can be seen from a picture at the SAIC-GM GL8 PHEV launch event: the Buick GL8 travels more than 500km a day about 70% of the time, and more than 1000km a day about 15% of the time.

At this time, the importance of the "fuel tank" is self-evident, needless to say in commercial scenarios, time is very precious, it is impossible for customers to wait for you to charge slowly, even in the home scene will be a little embarrassing, it is okay to charge it alone, and it is not suitable for the whole family of 6 or 7 people to wait together.

The ideal is a 5C overcharging solution, which can last more than 500km in 12 minutes, but obviously this is "far from water can not quench the thirst", at present, there are more than 300 ideal supercharging stations, some of which are still 2C, the real 5C supercharging station is still a drop in the bucket compared to the vast territory of the mainland, and users can not change the route according to the layout of your 5C supercharging station.

Gas stations are available all over the country, and they are universal, and they can be filled up in a few minutes, and there will be no difference in the speed of 5C and 2C.

Failure point three: overconfident pricing

Pure electric MPV + pure household, these "two thunders" ideal MEGA have stepped on, but the ideal brand power and the ability to polish and market products are there, if the ideal MEGA sets a more "pragmatic" price, it will not be like this today.

In this regard, on April 22, the ideal announced that the price of MEGA would be reduced by 30,000 yuan, and the price difference would be refunded directly to the old car owners, so the current price of the ideal MEGA is 529,800 yuan, but it is obviously not enough.

The pricing of the Xpeng X9, which is somewhat similar to the positioning of the ideal MEGA, is 359,800-419,800 yuan, which is more than 100,000 yuan cheaper than the ideal MEGA, but the monthly sales can only barely maintain more than 3,000 units, and the ideal MEGA wants to have good sales, and its pricing must not be much more expensive than the Xpeng X9, such as 469,800 yuan is a good choice.

Of course, Ideal also has its own scruples, and the pricing of Ideal MEGA as its own flagship product must be "high", otherwise what about the "little brother" below?

In addition, the MEGA is equipped with a 103-degree CATL Kirin 5C battery, which should be the most expensive production car on the market at present, and the cost will naturally not be low.

Of course, the most important thing is to adhere to the ideal "more than 20% gross profit", indeed from the perspective of the healthy development of a car company, using the direct sales model, the gross profit of 20%+ is more reasonable, but Li Xiang himself underestimated the tragedy of the price war and the difficulty of doing high-end pure electricity, Weilai will lose more than 200 billion yuan in 2023, and Xiaopeng will also have a negative gross profit, and Li Xiang still follows the idea of the ideal ONE and L series: it can not only be a hit in sales, but also achieve a gross profit of 20%+.

Therefore, I suggest that the ideal MEGA sell the car in a way of 0 gross profit, and the price will be directly hit to 459,800 yuan, so that MEGA still has a chance to revitalize, otherwise the continuous loss of MEGA will also affect several pure electric models of the M series in the future.

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