The sales system of Ideal Automobile is striving to pave the way for its annual sales target of 800000 vehicles.
On January 12th, Zou Liangjun, Senior Vice President of Ideal Automobile, stated in an interview with media such as The Paper that Ideal's sales system is facing great challenges this year, "This year is a big year for products, and we need to simultaneously operate multiple range extenders and pure electric models, as well as achieve sales surpassing BBA (Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi) to become the best-selling luxury brand in the Chinese market. Some argue that the competition between new forces and BBA is beyond our capabilities, but all questions will be answered in December of this year."
For 2024, Ideal Automobile has set an annual sales target of 800000 vehicles. In the fiercely competitive new energy vehicle market, this number has also raised doubts among many industry insiders.
Zou Liangjun candidly stated, "800000 vehicles is our challenge target. In the field of new forces, no company has yet achieved annual sales of 800000 vehicles." He believes that the average annual production and sales of over 20 million vehicles in the Chinese market, accounting for one-third of the global automotive market share, have a great chance of achieving the goal of 800000 vehicles.
He split the sales of 800000 vehicles. Firstly, the ideal sales base is the L7/L8/L9 models currently on sale, which are about to receive 24 configuration updates to maintain competitiveness. "We need to ensure that the market share of these three models does not decline. We sold 376000 vehicles in 2023, and the sales of L7/L8/L9 models in 2024 should reach at least 400000 vehicles."
Secondly, Zou Liangjun believes that there is a serious shortage of pure electric vehicle products worth over 500000 yuan in China, and Ideal MEGA will challenge monthly sales of 8000 vehicles after its launch. It is reported that Ideal MEGA will be officially launched and begin delivery in March this year.
In addition, this year is an ideal product year. The first model of Ideal Automobile, the L6, priced below 300000 yuan, will be launched in April 2024. "The market space for models priced between 200000 and 300000 yuan is twice that of models priced above 300000 yuan, and of course, the competition is even more intense. For example, the Model Y can sell 40000 to 50000 units per car." Zou Liangjun said that the goal of the L6 is to challenge monthly sales of 30000 units. In the second half of the year, Ideal will also launch three high-voltage pure electric models.
In order to achieve the sales target that is considered an "impossible task" by the outside world, Zou Liangjun, who comes from Huawei, has brought the management model of the mobile phone business into his ideal, managing product inventory on a "day" basis.
In Zou Liangjun's view, the biggest risk for a company is inventory, and the inventory coefficient of traditional automotive companies is calculated on average on a monthly basis. Many disappearing manufacturing companies have been consumed by inventory, which has eaten up their cash flow and profits. "They are not starving to death, but rather struggling to survive.".
According to the introduction, Ideal Automotive requires an average of 7 days to complete the process from the customer placing a deposit to picking up the car. The average transportation time for a car to be transported from the Changzhou factory is 3-4 days, with the remaining 1-2 days to complete all delivery work. "Objectively speaking, we have learned and borrowed from the management experience of the previous mobile phone industry, which is essentially improving efficiency."
In 2023, the number of direct sales stores of Ideal Automobile increased from 288 to 467. Zou Liangjun stated that in order to support the sales target of 800000 vehicles, the number of stores will expand to 800 by the end of this year, with an average of one new store opened per day.
In 2023, AITO WENJIE is undoubtedly a dark horse in the automotive market. With Huawei's strong appeal, WENJIE's new M7 model has achieved monthly deliveries of over 20000 units. With the start of delivery of the new M9 model, AITO WENJIE expects to deliver over 30000 units per month this year.
Regarding the sudden rise of Wenjie, Zou Liangjun bluntly stated, "Huawei's release of Wenjie has made the late stage public begin to accept electric cars, which is very good for us." He added, "Ideal Automobile and other emerging intelligent electric vehicle brands are doing a large-scale replacement of fuel vehicles. This matter cannot be achieved by an Ideal brand, only a few Chinese companies can work together to achieve it."