Some would say this title is clickbait!
Haha, playing an old joke. Interestingly, in recent years, new energy vehicle brands that have been established always like to choose names with beautiful implications for the future. Coupled with their own rocky destinies, so, as bad jokes like “NIO has no future”, “Ideal has no ideals”, “Future has no future” frequently emerge.
But what about the LanTu?
This company is really different from the previous ones.
The advantages of having a strong backing are fully demonstrated
Outside the LanTu conference, I saw a row of Coaster minibuses, a row of GL8s and a row of special police vehicles. I knew it wasn’t going to be a simple brand launch event.
Sure enough, after waiting patiently for more than half an hour in the cool, but also hot and flashy venue, the big shots finally appeared. To be honest, they really impressed me.
- A standing committee member of the Hubei Provincial Party Committee, Secretary of the Wuhan Municipal Party Committee, Vice Governor of Hubei Province, Mayor of Wuhan, and Chairman of Dongfeng Motors all showed up. In addition to local leaders, there were also leaders of partner organizations, such as the Chairman of the China Electric Vehicle Hundred Association, the Chairman of Ningde Times, the President of Huawei’s Automotive BU, and the Vice President of Tencent’s Automotive Business. I dare say that the first third of this press conference is definitely heavyweight. *
Although I don’t remember Secretary Wang’s passionate and enthusiastic speech very clearly, overall, he did elevate Dongfeng to a considerable height and tied it to the fate of Wuhan, which is extremely rare for a company.
For a newborn brand, if it weren’t born in the state-owned Dongfeng family, who could have thought of such a treatment.
After the aerial acrobatics and Doraemon door performances, Chairman Zhu gave a speech. The specific content is already fuzzy in my memory, but overall, it can be summarized as “many big shots are very concerned about the future development of the LanTu brand”, “Dongfeng Motors is a powerful support for the LanTu brand”, and “the LanTu brand will have considerable independence, which will be reflected in R&D, production, and sales”.
Products were only concept displays
In order to awaken the audience who were sleepy during the speeches, LanTu brought out the car, “i-Land”, maybe “drove” it out, or maybe just opened the curtain.
i-Land, a coupe with gull-wing doors, at first glance, one can tell that its production volume is likely to be very small. It is a vehicle for concept display also an object for the press conference.In addition, there are some exciting prospects for Voyah’s future new car plans. Under the ESSA architecture, Voyah will cover various segmented markets such as sedans, SUVs, MPVs, crossover vehicles, and high-performance cars within 3-5 years. Starting from next year, Voyah will launch no less than one new car per year.
In my opinion, Voyah had advantages over many new brands in its early days in terms of policies, funding, research and development, production, and sales. All of these help Voyah to form its own platform and release its products without any major issues.
However, the question is whether Voyah is truly independent enough. Can it draw a clear line with Dongfeng? Can it avoid the “care and love” of leaders from various fields? Can it become an independent and innovative brand that keeps up with the trend of intelligent electric vehicles and produce corresponding products that are not influenced by policies?
The model of mature car companies + new car-making forces is great, but it is hoped that Voyah can be even more independent in the future and surpass the leaders like a bluejacket surpasses a blue.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.