This article is reproduced from the autocarweekly WeChat official account, by Karakush.
May 8th, 2021 will definitely be unforgettable for Ding Lei.
That day, he had a drinking session with the car owners and got drunk. Despite usually being able to handle two jin of baijiu, he was unable to keep up with the scene. The hangover was very enjoyable. Ding Lei drank with the first batch of owners of Gaohe Motors that day. Earlier that day, the HiPhi X officially launched its inaugural delivery, and the owners were invited to gather at the boutique factory in Yancheng to witness the delivery ceremony of their little HiPhi. After signing contracts, taking pictures, and making payments, the cars were not directly delivered; instead, they were delivered to each owner’s doorstep on Monday.
The high-end is all about home delivery.
We have blown up the various features of this car a few times. However, at the moment when we actually saw the real delivery, we were still shaken. Did we really wait for this moment of delivery?
The exaggeration is not fake. However, after all, the price is not cheap. The four-seater model costs 800,000 yuan, and the six-seater model costs 680,000 yuan. What can’t you buy with this money? You can’t help but worry about the prince’s recklessness. Holding the world in his hand, why bother with such a bowl of liquor?
However, they really drank, and they drank loudly.
Friends will certainly doubt it and ask why the value is not being delivered. Is this an internally staged delivery event? After all, the first batch of deliveries has just begun, with one or twenty partners and VPs leading by example, and the insult is strong but the problem is definitely not big. From a practical point of view, for a new company, this is nothing to be ashamed of. Control the word of mouth in the early stages, and if you can’t control the problem, you can hold the throat of the problem. This is how the industry precedents are established.
However, from the delivery diary that has been gradually released on the Gaohe app in the past two days, it seems that these car owners are indeed real users. They come from 12 cities across the country and gather in one place, united by the same persistence.
They almost all made their orders immediately after the configuration table was released at the end of March. It was equivalent to relying on a liking and faith and throwing their money at it. In this month, users from all over the country who have tested the car have converted into loyal customers, providing Ding Lei with various suggestions and criticisms like counting the shortcomings of their own children, while waiting for delivery with confidence in the locked configuration.The waiting potential car owners are not short of blind faith in smashing the belief, but they missed the first limited edition batch in Yancheng due to being slow or customized with white interiors that won’t be delivered until August due to production scheduling. In fact, Ding Lei himself is only a “potential car owner” whose identity has been verified and is quietly waiting in line for production.
On the APP, there are many locked-in “potential car owners”, with a gold identity tag indicating that their configurations are already fixed and the 10,000 yuan deposit cannot be shaken. Many of these friends have already installed home charging piles, waiting for the “bride to come out of her natal home.”
Ding Lei said that the first 3,000 cars are a batch, the founding version. This version is now gone, replaced by a flagship version at the same price, which will have fewer customized details and special benefits. According to earlier news, all 3,000 founding versions were fully booked in January; by the end of March, the order volume for the Guagua HiPhi X had exceeded 4,000.
These numbers were flexible when talking, but they also showed an optimistic trend for subsequent growth. The number of large orders is steadily increasing as test drives are rolled out, and potential car owners in the APP will frequently place orders after experiencing the car.
And those who are still watching and small order car owners are actually the most excited about this delivery. In every car delivery post, you can see them asking car owners questions: how is the car, is it worth buying? The answers are all similar: don’t hesitate, just go for it.
The car owners understand their community responsibility as seed players and try to share every detail. For example, one car owner who came from Hainan wrote a complete two-hour post on the entire delivery process, but the APP crashed and he patiently smiled and rewrote it from scratch.
Interestingly, the fanatical attitude does not prevent them from making straightforward evaluations. This APP is just one aspect, and Guagua is not perfect when examined closely, and even has several bugs. But the car owners are serious and the promotion is sincere, even bringing a strong persuasiveness.
After all, who else has more say now than they do?
“On May 8th, it is destined to be a milestone for Guagua,” Ding Lei summed up, “HiPhi X, he is currently the highest-end new energy intelligent new car in true volume production!” In his seemingly calm words, there is a hint of epicness.
He can’t emphasize the words “true production” enough.Firstly, its engineering capability has finally proven itself. After the launch of the engineering vehicle two years ago, despite being affirmed by the public as “what you see is what you get,” the industry still held doubts about the potential for mass production and commercialization from this collection of technology presented as a conceptual vehicle from an unknown emerging company; it was just another project hastily rushed to market under the umbrella of corporate capital.
The most conspicuous example is the iconic Falcon Wing doors, which capture the attention of almost 80% of passersby. Although not a technical hurdle, there are still a great deal of challenges in design and manufacture, such as product yield, water leakage, and long-term reliability. Many industry professionals expressed concern about its completeness.
However, High Mobility and Intelligent Vehicle (HiPhi) has been on time with delivery, at least completing the first step: it isn’t just cool-looking in PowerPoint presentations.
Secondly, and more importantly, it has gained the opportunity to pass the market test and show some degree of sustainability.
The height of luxury is not entirely about expensive prices, but rather in the ability to earn recognition through high premiums and prices. The so-called high-end goods that lack a consumer market are simply self-delusions. Prior to HiPhi, Chinese new brands had attempted to overtake through shortcut marketing tactics and take advantage of the Red Dividend by testing high prices. For example, a pure electric supercar released two years ago by a certain company was priced at 750,000 RMB. As a result, it was a flash in the pan, sold less than 200 units until the company folded, and became a one-time deal.
Compared to being “honored,” “most high-end” is a more dangerous label that implies HiPhi is entering a new territory where Chinese brands have not yet achieved market success. It is cold in the heights, and the brand barriers and customer demand that it faces are higher than those of all its peers.
To be frank, HiPhi is not a friend to brand building. Its window for brand shaping was very short. From concentrated product promotion from August of last year until pre-sale began in September, it has been less than a year of urgent publicity. Many people may only know that there is a car with six doors that can be lifted, but not that it is called HiPhi X.
Prior to this, HiPhi continued with a long period of enigmatic operations, persistently telling the story of “vehicle-road cooperation” and large-scale narratives. This is a good story, but it is a story for the capital market, a story for the B-side industry, and it does not exclude the possibility of forward-looking users raising their cups to empathize with it, but its influence on consumer decision-making is minimal.We can refer to NIO’s path, which is a successful example of a Chinese brand breaking through the ceiling. Its average transaction price is 430,000 yuan, and the current quarterly sales volume exceeds 20,000 units. Its first product received 10,000 orders upon its launch, which could not have been achieved without the brand’s early marketing groundwork, which took two or three years without products. By the time of its 80 million yuan launch event, it was already a small but well-known brand.
The reason that GAC Aion has come this far in delivery is due to two correct strategic decisions:
Firstly, it accurately and effectively identified a blank niche market.
We thought it would be difficult to enter this market because it is full of pits. Competing cars at this price point are mature, well-known and prestigious. GAC Aion, as a completely new and self-owned brand, was disadvantaged and needed to provide a better experience, which meant they had to offer configurations that surpassed what was imagined by competitors in the lower price ranges just to barely keep up.
But looking at it from a different angle, all these cars are luxurious and positioned at the same level, as if they have reached some kind of industry consensus, “Oh, our D-class cars should look similar to these.” GAC Aion completely disregarded these industry norms in their product, and instead detached the product definition from established industry sequences, prioritizing design and engineering to earn some money through cost-containment. This was what created an opportunity for the so-called “new species.”
Of course, such a car is not perfect, as mentioned earlier. There are numerous straightforward test drive summaries on the app, which list many shortcomings. The most vigorous criticisms usually come from car owners and potential car owners, who, as they complain, continue to vote with their wallets, exhibiting a high degree of tolerance toward the brand.
For example, some address the sound quality of the speakers, the high notes are insufficiently bright, and the low notes are not adequate–it is English after all, and its performance has failed to meet expectations. Others criticize the logic of the car’s UI as too strange, with menus as layered and complex as an old cabbage. Still others mention that the interior sewing of the central armrest was not aligned, what kind of work is this, it needs improvement.
If you look more meticulously at the owners’ opinions, you will discover that some suggest adding an umbrella slot like Rolls-Royce’s, some suggest the sound system should optimally be adjusted to the level of the Land Rover, and others suggest that some materials could be more upscale. Demands that exceed the threshold can be seen as the users having high expectations of GAC Aion, while simultaneously exhibiting a level of endurance. It is not a car that can be bought for 800,000 yuan and is the “best” in everything, but it is difficult to find any alternatives on the market that compare to what it offers for 800,000 yuan.Just like what a female car owner said, when she was about to make a small deposit, she hesitated a lot. But after a friend of hers saw the car and exclaimed that it was at least a 1.5 million car, she made up her mind to make a big payment. This is a very simple idea. Who says that friends who buy cars for 800,000 yuan do not want to get more value for their money?
Those car owners and potential car owners are not as most people think, simply toy-buying rich people, although the proportion of “Zhang Zong” and “Li Zong” in the crowd is a bit higher. Among them are office workers who strongly urge not to deliver cars on workdays, as it is difficult for working people to arrange; there are also fathers who changed their cool four-seater into a six-seater version, saying that they thought about it and decided to be more practical.
There are more opportunities in this market than we think.
On the other hand, Gaohe has taken the attitude of a latecomer, drawing on the strengths of others, especially in its attitude towards users. On the day of delivery, the biggest feeling of all car owners is that they are respected by this company. This respect is not limited to delicacies and the company’s CEO accompanying them.
It’s very interesting that on the day of delivery, the Gaohe team condensed all the high-frequency points into a post and published it on the official stewardship account… The title is “Voice of the User”.
Some are explanations – they have reached the limit and can’t provide more; more report progress: those UI issues, interior stitching, and the problem that the semi-aniline leather seats are prone to wrinkles have been corrected and improved before delivery; it is worth mentioning that in terms of UI, Gaohe has collected all user opinions as usual and updated HiPhi OS 1.0 in a low-key manner; engineers have been studying new solutions for issues such as sound quality and the second-row decorative plate not being high-end enough; and problems such as low success rate of voice control will also be updated through OTA in the later stage.
Material foundation must be the product definition, which is the architecture that the whole car can evolve. However, the sincerity of these optimizations is more noteworthy.
One car owner said that he thought these flaws could no longer cover up the many advantages of this car. At this price point, other domestic new energy vehicles, as well as international and even traditional fuel vehicles, cannot compare.
Another car owner also wrote that China needs such companies, such entrepreneurs and such cars to prove to the world that China is strong enough.
Of course, the current size is not enough to prove any success. For the young Gaohe, this milestone is only the beginning of the road to Chinese-style luxury, which is just about to begin.The first batch of delivery centers have been fully opened, and by the end of May, the experience stores, delivery centers, service centers, and service outlets will increase to 85, and will reach 120 within the year.
I recall a friend who once registered for the Gaohe APP and received a call from a salesperson inviting him for a test drive. At that time, he declined and expressed that he was not considering it for the time being. The salesperson inquired further, asking if he could learn the reason.
My friend replied that he didn’t feel the brand was popular enough and would probably choose another brand. However, he was impressed by the salesperson’s confidence and sincerity when they said, “If you have a chance, you can wait a bit longer. We will deliver more and more cars, and the brand will become more well-known.”
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.