On October 14th, Ideal Automobile welcomed its one millionth complete vehicle to be rolled off the production line at its Changzhou base in Jiangsu Province, marking the official birth of China's first million vehicle new energy vehicle enterprise. Since the first Ideal ONE was launched in November 2019, Ideal Auto has set a record for the fastest luxury car in China to reach one million units in just 58 months. In contrast, Tesla achieved cumulative delivery of one million vehicles in nearly 8 years. Not only that, in September of this year, Ideal Auto's monthly delivery volume reached 53000 units, setting a new historical high. In addition, for the first time in the domestic market, its weekly sales in September surpassed luxury brands Mercedes Benz, BMW, and Audi, winning the championship in luxury brand sales in the Chinese market.
Focusing on user value, creating popular products, and adhering to self-developed core technologies
The formation of China's first million new energy vehicle enterprise is mainly attributed to Ideal Automobile's continuous product innovation and surpassing user needs in products and services. Li Xiang, Chairman and CEO of Ideal Automobile, said, "We focus on user value and create products that exceed user needs. The recognition and support of our customers are the driving force for our continuous progress
Ideal, with its own efforts, has ignited the popularity of range extender, star ring lights, 6-seater, full-size SUV, multi screen voice interaction, refrigerator, TV, sofa, mobile home... "An employee of Ideal Automobile expressed his pride in this way.
It is worth mentioning that in the early stages, the development of extended range technology for Ideal Automobile was highly questioned and even defined by the outside world as "outdated technology". With the passage of time, extended range technology has become an increasingly popular model for car companies to follow and emulate, including those that have already launched extended range products such as Wanjie, Zero Run, and Deep Blue. Xiaopeng, Zhiji, and others have also made it clear that they will gradually join the extended range camp. At the same time, Ideal Auto has also sparked a trend of "refrigerators, televisions, and large sofas" in the industry, and these configurations have gradually become standard for mid to high end models. The industry inevitably jokes about "questioning ideals, understanding ideals, and becoming ideals", which shows that Ideal Automobile's contribution to the industry is indispensable.
Not only that, the above-mentioned Ideal Automobile employees also emphasized that Ideal comes standard with intelligent driving, which lowers the price of optional intelligent driving, comes standard with popular domestic air suspension, achieves new heights of voice interaction with the Mind GPT large model when getting on the car, achieves rapid iteration and upgrading of end-to-end+VLM intelligent driving, takes the lead in mass producing 5C ultra fast charging and building large-scale supercharging stations
Zhang Yongwei, Vice Chairman of the China Electric Vehicle Hundred People's Association, also pointed out that "China is at the forefront of the world in the field of new energy vehicles, and in this process, emerging technology companies like Ideal Automobile have played an important role
By creating a series of popular products, Ideal Auto has also become an "unavoidable" option for consumers in the domestic luxury market. The first product, Ideal ONE, redefines the family SUV with a cumulative delivery volume exceeding 210000 units; The cumulative delivery of the Ideal L9, a flagship SUV for families with six seats, has exceeded 210000 units; The cumulative delivery of the Ideal L8, a six seater luxury SUV for families, has exceeded 180000 units; The cumulative delivery of the Ideal L7, a flagship SUV for families with five seats, has exceeded 220000 units. In the new energy vehicle market worth over 300000 yuan, from 2023 to present, the Ideal L7, Ideal L8, and Ideal L9 models have become the undisputed preferred products for household users. Since its launch in April this year, the Ideal L6, a five seater luxury SUV for families, has delivered over 110000 units, setting a new record for the fastest delivery by a new force. Thanks to the rapid expansion of the market size and the continuous improvement of enterprise operating efficiency, Ideal Automobile has become the first new force car company in China with an annual revenue exceeding 100 billion yuan, the first new force car company to achieve profitability, and the youngest Hurun Global 500 enterprise.
The sustained hot sales, of course, cannot be separated from Ideal Auto's insistence on self-developed core technologies. Since last year, Ideal Automobile has invested an average of 100 million yuan every three days in technology research and development, establishing leading technological advantages in fields such as intelligent driving, intelligent space, intelligent electric, and intelligent industry. Since the beginning of this year, Ideal Automobile has made breakthrough progress in the field of intelligent driving, and the Ideal Intelligent Driving Technology Architecture end-to-end+VLM system has started mass testing with tens of thousands of people.
Is it still far from the 2 millionth vehicle of the local "Li Chain" that the ideal chain owner wants to ignite?
While adhering to self-developed core technologies, Ideal Automobile collaborates with partners in research and development, production, and quality traceability of key components, and opens up cooperation in enterprise digitization and intelligent industry. It shares massive data with the supply chain to achieve full lifecycle traceability of products, driving quality and performance improvement. Li Xiang, Chairman and CEO of Ideal Automobile, stated that Ideal Automobile insists on cooperating with local high-quality suppliers, continuously improving the supply chain system and management standards, and enabling the rapid and healthy growth of the "management chain".
Ma Donghui, co-founder and president of Ideal Auto, added that in the early stages of development, the domestic automotive industry was criticized as an "assembly plant" due to the inability to master core technologies. Now that we have mastered the core technology and possess true self-developed capabilities, we have a stronger initiative in choosing our partners. We can work together with those who are willing to create truly automotive products that belong to this era, just like us.
As the chain owner, Ideal Automotive's R&D, quality, and process teams delve into the frontline operational processes of our partners, forming a new team with equal and resource sharing capabilities. We tailor our development and upgrade iterations to meet the needs of Chinese households. As the scale of Ideal Automobile continues to expand, more than 20 partners on the "Li Chain", including air suspension supplier Kong Hui/Baolong, LiDAR supplier Hesai, intelligent driving chip supplier Horizon, HUD supplier Future Black Technology, have gradually grown into industry leaders. The collaborative innovation of the industrial chain continues to create user value, promote technological equality, drive cost reduction through localization and scale, and make top of the line automotive configurations a standard.
Li Xiang stated that Ideal is not just about growing and expanding oneself, but also about having stronger supply chain partners. Ideal's followers have also achieved good results and contributed greatly to the development of the local automotive industry. We are proud to use a large number of local Chinese suppliers. If consumers dare to buy Chinese branded cars, we dare to boldly use local Chinese supply chain enterprises.
Zhang Zuqiu, Chairman and President of Baolong Technology, stated in an interview that obtaining opportunities is crucial in the automotive supply chain. In the field of air suspension, without the rise of independent brands represented by Ideal Automobile, which provides domestic suppliers with the opportunity to leap from 0 to 1, the possibility of breaking down barriers is very low.
It is worth noting that air suspension started relatively late in China and has a high technical barrier. In the past, air suspension was mainly used for luxury brand models such as BBA and Porsche, which cost over 800000 to 1000000 yuan. Before 2021, the air suspension supply chain was basically controlled by two or three foreign companies, including mainland China and Wipac.
Wang Xianyong, General Manager of Baolong Technology's Intelligent Air Suspension Business Unit, recalled that in the cooperation with Ideal Automobile in air suspension, Ideal Automobile had a lot of co creation from the top management to the supply chain, R&D team, and our internal R&D team. From product positioning to equipment, processes, and parameters at the supply chain end, everyone worked as a team, which was very different from the traditional cooperation mode. At present, the market landscape of air suspension has undergone earth shaking changes. According to data, the market share of the three domestic air suspension suppliers has reached 82.2%, while domestic manufacturers such as Wiesback have been far behind.
Regarding this, Yang Ruicheng, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Suzhou Huichuan United Power System Co., Ltd., shares the same sentiment. Huichuan United Power started with commercial vehicles, but when it began to layout the passenger car market and attempt to enter the supply chain of traditional OEMs, it lacked experience in the passenger car field and had not had many opportunities. With deep cooperation and mutual growth with Ideal, today Huichuan United Power's product competitiveness has gained recognition from more traditional OEMs. At present, in the third-party supplier shipment ranking, Huichuan United Power ranks first in electronic control, second in electric drive assembly, and second in motor, firmly establishing its market leading position. Huichuan United Power has also become the largest supplier of ideal automotive electric drive categories. During the cooperation process, Ideal Automobile provided billions of R&D and production line investment costs for Huichuan United Power, and fully empowered Huichuan through its advantages in product definition, technology development, procurement system, and supply chain quality management system.
In addition, Ideal Automobile and CATL jointly developed the industry's first mass-produced 5C supercharging battery, assisted Xinwangda in building and operating a battery PACK production line in Jiangsu, and greatly improved the quality management capabilities of electronic brake system supplier Bethel. Based on technological innovation capabilities and joint research and development cooperation models, Ideal Automobile has collaborated with local enterprises to achieve key technological breakthroughs, creating new value for the industry chain.
In the future, Ideal Automobile will accelerate the construction of the parts industry park and guide the development of the "Li Chain" near ground cluster. At the million vehicle offline event of Ideal Automobile, Li Xiang revealed that the current level of near ground supply of Ideal L series is close to 60%, and it is expected that by 2026, 70% of key components will be supplied near ground.
In 2024, Ideal Automobile will invest an additional 1.6 billion yuan to renovate and upgrade its Changzhou base. The Changzhou base will officially be named "Jiangsu Ideal" and will restructure its research and development, manufacturing, sales, and parts businesses under a new identity, achieving group operation. Tesla's global delivery from 1 million to 2 million vehicles only took 18 months, and is the Ideal Car still far from the production of the 2 millionth vehicle?