Have you ever wondered what Li Bin, Li Xiang and he Xiaopeng, sitting off the stage at Xiaomi SU7’s launch conference, were thinking about as Lei Jun watched Lei Jun swallow mountains and rivers for nearly three hours on stage? Related memes have become popular online, and as the three new power brands CEO, they have become household names.
In front of Xiaomi, Weilai, ideal and Xiaopeng, as representatives of the new forces, can already be regarded as car-building “veterans”.
After years of touching, crawling and fighting, they have gradually gained a foothold in the market, but I am afraid that the problems that these three enterprises need to solve are no easier than Xiaomi.
Each of them has its own troubles and difficulties.
We don’t know how the three entrepreneurs who watched Xiaomi SU7 debut felt.
But to be sure, Li Xiang’s March must not have been very comfortable.
All kinds of gossip, all kinds of guesses and doubts, the pressure on the person at the helm of any enterprise will be out of breath.
After all, the new car-building power reached the milestone of 500000 new car delivery in just 46 months, the first of the new car-building powers.
Everyone is surprised by the speed of the ideal cultivation market, which has aroused countless people’s discussion.
There are all kinds of noisy voices, including praise, criticism, sarcasm and irony.
There is no fire without wind.
Recently, an ideal insider revealed that the next step would be to lay off staff.
According to the source, the current state of the company is that all approval of the new offer will be suspended, the budget will be reduced by more than 30%, and because the current staffing structure is based on annual sales of 800000 vehicles, in a state of relative redundancy, the next step will be to lay off staff.
In response to such news ideal Motor officially responded on April 8 that online layoffs and sharp budget cuts were not true.
The ideal is refuting the rumor, but the onlookers are still whispering.
Especially when the sales results of the first quarter are released, there is a big gap between the performance of the ideal car and the expected target, so it is inevitable to make adjustments.
Therefore, if the layoffs are true, it is also a reasonable adjustment according to the performance of the market.
According to the plan, in order to achieve the target of annual sales of 800000 vehicles, the number of stores will reach 800 by the end of this year, which is also the cornerstone of supporting the delivery of these 800000 new cars.
As the ideal stores are operated directly, and the dealer model will not be adopted in the short term, the huge sales force will account for a large proportion of the ideal total number of employees.
Therefore, the spectators’ suspicions are reasonable.
In the past year, the number of ideal stores has almost doubled from 288 to 467.
Reaching the number of 800 stores by the end of the year means adding one store almost every day, which is a test for any car company.
As of March 31, there are 474 retail centers, 356 after-sales maintenance centers and 356 authorized sheet spray centers across the country.
Different from the plan, in the first three months of this year, the ideal only added seven direct stores, while the number of after-sales service stores decreased by 4.
It seems that some of the ideal plans for sales targets are already slowly shrinking.
The ideal is very plump and the reality is very bony.
In March, a total of 28984 new cars were delivered, an increase of 39.
2% over the same period last year, while a total of 80400 vehicles were delivered in the first quarter, an increase of 52.
9% over the same period last year.
Despite the strong year-on-year growth, it is certain that such figures will not support the annual sales target of 800000 vehicles.
The trickier situation is that the ideal has been “pinned down” since the beginning of this year, losing its position as the monthly sales champion of the new power brand, and not even the weekly sales report.
Both January and February ranked second, and the ideal originally wanted to fight a beautiful turnaround in March, but unexpectedly, MEGA did not enter the scheduled “track” after its listing, and even had some “counter-phagocytic” effect on the original L series.
The ideal “dumb fire”, but also let Li Xiang, who loves to post on Weibo, has not updated the content for more than a month, the ideal is facing a critical test.
Change an internal letter that Li wants to send to employees that came to light on March 21.
In the internal letter entitled “how to solve the current problems facing the ideal car”, Li Xiang reflected on the company’s recent performance and put forward a clear plan for the future development strategy.
Li Xiang said that he would reduce the expectation and desire of sales and return to healthy growth.
Since then, ideal has adjusted its annual sales target for 2024 from 800000 to 560000 to 640000, with an estimated annual growth rate of 50% and 70%.
For MEGA, the challenge expected before the launch was revised to the current monthly sales target of 2000 vehicles, and then climbed to more than 4000 vehicles in the fourth quarter, steadily returning to the normal track.
In the face of the unfavorable conditions of the market, the ideal does not choose layoffs, which is a good thing for the maintenance of corporate image, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
As of March 31, 2024, a total of 713764 ideal cars have been delivered.
As a company that started delivering new cars at the end of 2019, ideal has set a number of milestones, including the first new power car company to deliver 500000, 600000 and 700000 new cars, and over time, they will continue to create myths.
The achievement of the ideal is obvious to all.
People are impressed not only in terms of brand sales, but also in terms of corporate profits.
Ideal Automobile is now the first Chinese automobile company with the largest cash reserve.
According to the financial report, in 2023, the revenue of ideal car was 123.
851 billion yuan, an increase of 173.
48% over the same period last year, and the net profit was 11.
809 billion yuan, a big increase of 681.
06% over the same period last year.
In the fourth quarter, the company’s revenue was 41.
73 billion yuan, an increase of 136.
4% over the same period last year, and a net profit of 5.
75 billion yuan.
Today’s ideal can be said to be one of the healthiest car companies.
Looking at the books of the past five years, the cumulative net loss from 2018 to 2022 exceeded 6.
45 billion yuan.
Two years after landing in US stocks, the ideal revenue in 2022 is less than 50 billion yuan, with a net loss of more than 2 billion yuan.
Ideal last year earned back all the money from the past five years at once.
In this way, the ideal has grown from a seed to the sturdiest tree in the brand of new power.
No one but understands the truth that a big tree attracts wind.
“the best SUV with less than 5 million yuan”, “Let them drive the ideal L9 together on Rolls Royce Curinan”.
“sales of more than 500000 yuan regardless of energy form”, “Welcome owners of Elfa cars to test drive the ideal M”EGA “.
Obviously, not only are the trees attracting the wind, but Li Xiang is still desperately trying to “create the wind.
” This kind of “self-release” speech has brought a lot of attention to the ideal.
So much so that xxten thousand yuan once became a hot stem on the network, and the words such as “the best car in xxten thousand yuan” also appeared frequently at the new car press conference of various competitors.
Fortunately, the market performance of the ideal L9 is that Li Xiang has propped up.
After 72 hours on the market, the ideal L9 completed 5000 yuan small orders of more than 30, 000 vehicles, and sold more than 10, 000 vehicles in the first month after delivery, and has been the leader in the full-size SUV market ever since.
But this time, MEGA made the ideal turn over.
After the launch of MEGA, ideal did not give the order within 72 hours, nor did it have any sales information.
What is even more rare is that Li thinks that the Weibo microblogger, who usually sends back several Weibo posts a day, has never updated Weibo except to retweet one exclusive interview after the listing of MEGA.
There is no doubt that the terminal performance of MEGA has taught Li Xiang and ideal a hard lesson.
In March, ideal MEGA sold 3229 vehicles, less than Xiaopeng X9’s 3946, and ranked second among all pure electric MPV markets.
Even such a subdivided market failed to win the championship, let alone the key point to run more than 500000 of the market.
You know, the BMW X5, with a starting price of more than 600000 yuan, sold 7448 vehicles in March, more than twice as much as the MEGA.
On MEGA, I’m afraid Li also understood the truth of “big trees attract wind”.
After the listing of MEGA, attracted a large number of netizens to its appearance style ridicule, objectively speaking, some comments are indeed excessive, but the ideal this time there is no way to use sales performance to respond to questions.
It’s a real stumble this time.
After a long silence, Li Xiang posted a moments on March 11, saying: “although I am in the dark, I still choose the light.
” This time Li wanted to think of himself as a victim, but he seemed to forget who he was when he set up flag.
Everyone seems to have memorized such an aphorism when they were in primary school, “when they are full of losses, they benefit from modesty.
” Of course ideals don’t hit rock bottom just because a MEGA car doesn’t reach its ideal goal.
Li Xiang is also actively adjusting and improving the strategy in a timely manner.
The employee letter that Li wanted to release also expressed his attitude of correcting when he knew he was wrong, which is also worth affirming.
Long before Li Xiang made his voice, ideal had already adjusted the configuration and naming of the whole series of models in terms of products.
The original Ari/Pro/Max versions of L7 and L8 were renamed Pro/Max/Ultra, and a new Air version with lower configuration was added, which made the starting price of the L series go down further.
The ideal of not fighting a price war seems to have joined in this way.
The previous only Max version of MEGA has also changed its name to Ultra.
Some people speculate that this is to make room for the launch of lower-equipped models, so that MEGA can also have a “justifiable” price reduction.
These are really just gimmicks.
Most importantly, the ideal is about to usher in its sales of the absolute pillar product, the ideal L6 has been confirmed to be officially released on April 18.
For the ideal, no matter what the MEGA’s record is, it still has room for manoeuvre, and the L6 is a key product that cannot be lost.
If the car is “dumb” again, the ideal sales target may have to be changed.
However, judging from the current facts and the current situation, the ideal L6 must have performed well.
The only worry is that Li Xiang’s performance at the press conference had better be “insipid” rather than “golden sentences” as frequently as before.
After all, we also have a saying, “be careful to sail for ten thousand years.
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