Reporter Chen Wei from Dahe Finance Cube
March 11th is the day when Ideal MEGA begins delivery. But this time, Ideal Automobile is not releasing its first sales report, but a response from CEO Li Xiang's social circle: "Everyone should be quite clear about what happened in the past ten days. We are already using legal means to deal with the organized illegal and criminal activities in the incident."
The shape complained about by netizens is just the tip of the iceberg of the ideal MEGA problem. The market capacity of pure electric MPV models and the deviation between the ideal pricing and the annual sales target of 800000 vehicles expected by Ideal MEGA may be the problem that Ideal MEGA needs to face.
Counterattack Ideal MEGA Negative Video
From extended range to pure electric, Ideal's first pure electric MPV model - Ideal MEGA - has been highly regarded since its exposure in October last year. At the press conference on March 1st, Li Xiang, the CEO of Ideal, had high hopes for this flagship product: "I am confident that it will become the best-selling product with a sales volume of over 500000."
However, no matter how full one's ideals are, reality has a bone like texture.
According to third-party statistics, since the release of Ideal MEGA 10 days ago, about 80% of its videos on short video platforms have been negative. Previously, I was very enthusiastic about publishing "battle reports", but this time I have not announced the amount of deposit to be paid, which also means that sales may not be as expected.
Faced with various negative information, on March 11th, Li Xiang, CEO of Ideal Automobile, also responded on his social media: "After careful consideration, we have decided to launch a counterattack, using light to counter darkness. We hope that more people can work together to create and convey beautiful designs, unique creativity, and fortunate moments, so that more beautiful images can appear in our lives."
A car blogger has exposed a complaint notification letter from Ideal Automobile to a certain platform on the internet. The notice letter pointed out that on March 2nd, the user maliciously made a photo of the new MEGA model of Ideal Automobile, pasting words such as "Dien" and "New Energy Funeral Parlor Car" on the body of the vehicle. Ideal requested that it delete the relevant content on Today's Headlines platform. And Ideal Automobile has also confirmed that it has indeed sent relevant notification letters to some bloggers.
In fact, everyone's aesthetic preferences for car models vary greatly, and some bloggers have indeed offended Ideal Cars and Ideal Car Owners in order to gain popularity.
As the first ideal car to achieve profitability, it has indeed been envied in the industry over the past year. Ideal Automobile, relying on its leading sales data, has proposed to voluntarily disclose its monthly sales to Monday, which is undoubtedly a cover up for some car companies with poor sales.
Therefore, some car companies also secretly criticize the connotation of ideal MEGA.
After the release of the Ideal New Car, General Manager Zhuang Jingxiong of SAIC General Motors stated that he will launch the Buick GL8 plug-in hybrid model within the year, and said, "The position of the GL8 leader is unshakable, it has always been chased and never surpassed!"
Zhao Changjiang, General Manager of Tengshi Sales Business Unit, also stated on the same day, "As a groundbreaking intelligent luxury MPV, Tengshi D9 has been developed with luxury vehicles as its core definition, and has always been imitated and never surpassed."
If you can't sell well, you can't just blame the style.
However, aesthetic deviations in design, bloggers blindly exploiting traffic, and peers' backtracking are only external factors contributing to the ideal MEGA dilemma. The MPV field cannot tolerate ideal goals, and whether ideal pricing meets market expectations is the internal reason for achieving orders in the ideal MEGA dilemma.
The company has high expectations for the sales of Ideal MEGA. Liu Jie, Vice President of Ideal Automobile, previously revealed that MEGA's monthly sales target is 8000 vehicles. With the release and delivery of new models, the goal of Ideal Automobile is to return to the monthly delivery level of 50000 vehicles by March. In January and February of this year, the monthly sales of Ideal Automobile have been surpassed by Wenjie for two consecutive months.
How high is this goal? We can look at the monthly sales data of MPVs priced at 500000 yuan.
Taking the best-selling month of December 2023 as an example, the Geely Krypton 009 sold 2310 units, Mercedes Benz V-Class sold 1371 units, and Buick Century sold 1198 units per month. The Lantu Dreamer priced between 300000 and 600000 sold 5285 units per month, while the Tengshi D9 sold 10492 units per month. These two brands barely achieved the ideal MEGA target.
But in fact, the Lantu Dreamer and Tengshi D9 achieved sales of several thousand yuan and exceeded ten thousand yuan, mainly by promoting models worth over 300000 yuan. At present, the Ideal MEGA only has a version priced at 559800 yuan, and at least peers do not have the ability to achieve monthly sales of 8000 units of such expensive MPVs.
MPVs are not popular because they are already a niche market: with seats for 7 to 8 people and some luggage space, MPVs usually have a length of over 5 meters. Its usage scenario is obviously not for a single person driving to and from work, but mostly for the second or third car purchased by a family, serving family outings, gatherings, and other scenarios.
And Ideal MEGA has chosen a more segmented pure electric MPV in this niche market, actively abandoning the business market and highly focusing on affluent families. In response, Fan Haoyu, Senior Vice President of Ideal Automobile, said, "Among the car models sold in China, especially MPVs, family purchases account for over 80%. Moreover, the more expensive the car, the higher the proportion of family purchases."
However, on the second-hand trading platform, we can see the information about the transfer of MEGA orders. The reason why many people give up is not the shape of roast by netizens, but the price.
Therefore, the traffic brought by Ideal MEGA to MPV models has instead been converted into sales by many competitors: Tengshi D9 announced that its order volume exceeded 1700 orders over the past weekend; The Xiaopeng X9, which is about 200000 yuan lower than the ideal MEGA price, has seen a significant increase in its own store entry volume; The entry-level version of the Extreme Krypton 009 has a configuration 60000 yuan lower than the Ideal MEGA, indicating a peak in store entry and small orders.
The release of Ideal MEGA also affected Ideal's stock price, with Ideal Automobile's stock price dropping from a high of HKD 181 on March 1 to a low of HKD 137 on March 11, with the largest drop of nearly 25% in over a week.
However, adjusting pricing with a new version is not difficult for car companies, and it is not ruled out that Ideal MEGA will release entry-level models in the future to win back users. Even if it's really not possible to achieve monthly sales of 8000 best-selling models in the MPV field, there are still ideal extended range models that can top it.
After the facelift, the Ideal L7, L8, and L9 are likely to offer corresponding discounts, and the L6 uses a lower cost lithium iron phosphate battery. It is highly likely to be priced between 200000 and 300000 yuan, making it one of the most popular models of the Ideal car. There are still billions of cash reserves lying on the account, leaving Li Xiang many opportunities for trial and error and adjustment.
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