After successfully making a profit last year, Ideal Auto once again won the title of the first domestic new force to produce one million vehicles. On October 14th, Ideal Auto announced that its one millionth vehicle will be rolled off the assembly line at Ideal Auto's Changzhou base. As an L9 with a license plate of "1000000" rolled off the production line, China's first luxury new energy vehicle enterprise with a million vehicles was born. Behind the continuous record breaking revenue and sales of Ideal Automobile, it not only reflects its sustained leading position in products and technology, but also highlights its deep investment and innovation commitment to technology and intelligent industry. In this process, Ideal Automobile has continuously developed, deepened its intelligent manufacturing capabilities, and improved its supply chain system and management standards. By adhering to cooperation with local suppliers, it has achieved the goal of producing millions of vehicles while further enhancing the global influence of its local supply chain. As a cross-border player, the achievement of millions of Ideal Cars has also released the strength of China's new car making force to the outside world.
From zero to millions of vehicles
In November 2019, Ideal Auto's Changzhou factory welcomed the launch of its first new car, the Ideal ONE. The success of the first model opened the door to the new energy vehicle market for Ideal Auto.
At that time, the development of the new energy vehicle market technology route was still in the exploratory stage, and pure electric became the first choice for many entering car companies. However, it cannot be denied that in the development process of the new energy vehicle market, range extending and plug-in hybrid models that can solve users' range anxiety have gradually become the preferred solution. In 2019, as a new entrant in the automotive industry, Li Xiang, CEO of Ideal Automobile, accurately identified the route of advanced technology and successfully "entered" the new energy vehicle market. Data shows that the cumulative delivery of Ideal ONE, the first product of Ideal Automobile, has exceeded 210000 units.
Three years later, Ideal Auto underwent a comprehensive product overhaul. With the launch of the Ideal L9, Ideal Auto has comprehensively upgraded its models, technology, and intelligence, and is now actively competing for sales from luxury brands. At present, Ideal Automobile is expanding its presence in the extended range market with multiple models including L9, L8, L7, and L6. With full stack self-developed technology, Ideal Automobile has acquired technologies such as Extended Range Electric 2.0 system, TMS 2.0 thermal management system, XCU vehicle central domain controller, etc., continuously improving the technical quality, and its vehicle product strength is also constantly refreshing. At present, the Ideal L series models adopt a new four-wheel drive extended range electric system, equipped with self-developed and self-produced 1.5T four cylinder range extender, a new generation of large capacity battery pack, and front and rear dual drive motors, completely allowing consumers to bid farewell to range anxiety.
After successfully commercializing extended range electric vehicles, Ideal Motors also understands that meeting consumer needs is more important. When the predecessor of Ideal Auto, "Chehejia," was established in 2015, making cars for Chinese family users became the mission of Ideal Auto. Li Xiang said, "Creating a mobile home is our self realization. We need to rely on the latest technology, very good operations and management, and very good products to create a mobile home
In the process of development, Ideal Automobile has laid a solid foundation for fully realizing the concept of "quantity on the market and high quality on the market". It is committed to making Chinese manufacturing synonymous with luxury quality, truly surpassing user needs, and creating value for travel. Starting from the Ideal L9, refrigerators, televisions, and large sofas seem to have become the labels of Ideal Cars, and the home concept created by Ideal Cars has been further improved. With its innovation in extended range electric technology, large six seat space layout, multi screen full car voice interaction technology, intelligent driving technology, and 5C fast charging capability, it has reshaped the standards of the electric vehicle market, greatly meeting and surpassing the needs of Chinese household users. Ideal cars have also become the target pursued by many car companies.
Data shows that in 2023, Ideal Auto's sales reached 376000 units, a year-on-year increase of 182.2%. Ideal Automobile has achieved remarkable results with only L7, L8, and L9, becoming the first domestic new force car manufacturer to break through 50000 sales in a single month. The unstoppable sales have also brought substantial financial returns to Ideal Auto. In 2023, Ideal Auto's revenue exceeded 100 billion yuan and achieved a net profit of 11.81 billion yuan. While many car companies are still struggling with gross profit and losses, Ideal Automobile has become one of the three new energy vehicle companies in the world to achieve profitability. From choosing extended range entry to a rich product layout in the later stage, achieving millions of vehicles has proven that the ideal car has chosen the right track.
Forging the Rise of the 'Chain'
In addition to choosing the right path and continuously improving one's own technology, the achievement of millions of ideal cars also relies on win-win cooperation with local supply chain partners. 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 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".
As the chain owner, the R&D, quality, and process teams of Ideal Automobile delve into the frontline work processes of our partners, forming a new team of equal trust and resource sharing with them. We customize development and upgrade iterations based on the needs of Chinese families, and in cooperation, Ideal Automobile also grows and innovates together with our supply chain partners.
As the first strategic partner, when talking about the cooperation with Ideal Automobile, Xu Jian, CEO of Desay SV, first used the term "partner". Good partners promote and learn from each other, "said Xu Jian. When making the three screen display of Ideal ONE, the selection of solutions, product forms, technical cooperation, and even business models were unique models. During the cooperation process, both parties jointly developed and shared their core technologies and costs, which was a unique model at that time. Our cooperation with Ideal is constantly deepening and upgrading, and this cooperation model requires a very strong relationship of mutual trust
Under this collaborative concept, Ideal Automotive's partners have made significant progress in the field of technology and have also enhanced the influence of their supply chain partners. As Huichuan United Power, which provides dual electronic control and other components to Ideal Automobile, the sales of Ideal Automobile continue to rise, bringing about economies of scale. Zhang Pingjian, Deputy General Manager of the Passenger Vehicle Sales Department of Huichuan United Power, stated that the production of the Ideal Million units is actually one million units of Huichuan United Power. With the continuous development of the industry, more and more promising domestic manufacturers have entered the field of vision of the host factory. In the process of exploring cost reduction, Ideal Automobile will provide us with a stage and window to verify these materials and conduct sufficient verification. Zhang Pingjian believes that cooperation with Ideal Automobile not only allows Huichuan United Power to increase its scale, but also improves product quality and platform capabilities. In this situation, Huichuan United Power will be more competitive when facing other customers.
In fact, as the scale of Ideal Automobile continues to expand, more than 20 young partners on the "Li Chain", including air suspension supplier Kong Hui, LiDAR supplier Hesai, intelligent driving chip supplier Horizon, HUD supplier Future Black Technology, have gradually grown into industry leaders. Among them, Ideal Automobile and CATL jointly developed the industry's first mass-produced 5C supercharging battery, and collaborated with Huichuan to develop a front wheel drive five in one assembly, helping Xinwangda build and operate battery PACK production lines in Jiangsu.
Industry insiders believe that collaborative innovation in the industrial chain continuously creates user value, promotes technological equality, drives cost reduction through localization and scaling, and makes once expensive luxury configurations standard. Based on technological innovation capabilities and joint research and development cooperation models, Ideal Automotive collaborates with local enterprises to achieve key technological breakthroughs and create new value for the industry chain.
The post million vehicle era
After Ideal Auto added refrigerators, televisions, and large sofas as standard equipment to its cars, the automotive industry's competition for configuration has become increasingly fierce, and the degree of product homogenization continues to increase. Standing at a new starting point of millions of vehicles, how Ideal Automobile will take the next step in the fiercely competitive market layout has become the focus of external attention.
At the beginning of this year, Ideal Auto launched its first pure electric model - Ideal MEGA, which is Ideal Auto's first 5C high-voltage pure electric product and a super flagship MPV specially designed for large families. From this moment on, Ideal Automobile began to enter the stage of "pure electric+extended range" bipedal walking. After entering the dual track, Ideal Automobile is building the entire system of research and development, business, ecology, and supply chain with the short-term goal of strategic 2025. Through the core technologies of five platforms including extended range electric, high-voltage pure electric, intelligent driving, intelligent space, and computing architecture, more users can have high-quality mobile homes.
In order to further build and layout, Ideal Automobile will focus on self-developed areas for investment. Data shows that 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. And this investment speed has been further strengthened this year. In the first half of this year, the R&D expenses of Ideal Automobile increased to 6.076 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 42%, and the R&D expenses increased by about 1.8 billion yuan.
As of September this year, Ideal Automobile has established a total of 89 research and development laboratories in Beijing, Shanghai, and Changzhou, which can achieve full chain development and verification capabilities including material level, component level, system level, and vehicle level. Among them, the innovative intelligent space laboratory has achieved integrated layout and functional verification of all intelligent functions in the car. The self built space audio laboratory is a professional laboratory focusing on car audio, which has obtained professional certification from the National Institute of Metrology and official certification from Dolby.
With continuous breakthroughs in self-developed technology, the improvement of intelligent technology is not simply a matter of stacking configurations. Ideal Automobile is constantly increasing its intelligent capabilities to cope with future competition. This year, Ideal Auto officially launched the "end-to-end+VLM" dual system intelligent driving solution. At the same time, the intelligent driving interaction between Ideal Car and the infotainment system has also been updated. The "end-to-end+VLM" dual system displays clearer and more comprehensive information on the infotainment interface, allowing users to feel more at ease throughout the entire process of using intelligent driving. In the second half of intelligent competition, Ideal Automobile has made rapid progress along the way. Nowadays, Ideal Auto no longer uses traditional methods for autonomous driving, but fully embraces artificial intelligence. The ideal car, which successfully seized the opportunity of intelligence, has entered a faster lane of development and will provide profound reference for the development of new energy vehicles in China in the future.