Author: Huangshan
Do you still remember the Chery QQ from years ago?
With a small body, two big round headlights and a smiley face in the middle…
This small car was the micro-car champion in its time. It was released in 2003 and sold over a million units in 2013, making Chery the first domestic independent brand with a single model selling over a million units. It can be said that the QQ has made great contributions to Chery’s achievements in the automotive industry.
In its time, the Chery QQ became a trend with its extreme price-performance ratio, unique appearance and colorful colors. Nowadays, you may rarely see it on the road. However, Chery’s another electric car, “Little Ant,” is a continuation of the QQ.
Little Ant is an old model that has been on the market for four years, priced between 50,000 and 80,000 yuan. In October 2021, it sold over 10,000 units, and its cumulative sales exceeded 230,000 units this year. As an electric car, its momentum has continued to grow over the past few years, which is not easy. It makes people wonder where this tenacious vitality comes from.
For Little Ant, Chery New Energy has always been creating a car model with the design concept of “good looking, good driving experience, high cost-effectiveness,” which is reminiscent of QQ in its heyday.
On November 13th, Chery New Energy released an upgraded version of Little Ant – the Sweet version. It provides two endurance versions of 301km and 408km, with prices ranging between 66,900 and 81,900 yuan.
In fact, on June 28th of this year, Little Ant just released a new model called “Ant Powder” version. Four months later, it launched the “Sweet Powder” version. In addition to upgrading the interior and exterior designs, the most important thing, in my opinion, is that two new colors have been added. The official names are “Sweet Peach Pink” and “Meeting Purple.”
What is the purpose of doing this? I understand it as continuously enhancing Little Ant’s personalized and feminine design concept.
In this release event, the venue was filled with cute and colorful things like beaches, barbecues, cats, and dogs. These are all romantic and fun things that girls like.
Without a professional host, three female car owners were personally invited to attend the event. One was a knowledgeable working woman, one was the owner of a children’s clothing store, and the other was a KOL for food blogs.The female car owners praised Xiaomaoyi as “good-looking and easy to drive” first. With such user-friendly design for women, Xiaomaoyi has been continuously upgrading to improve its appearance. Therefore, it is apparent that Xiaomaoyi is committed to the female-oriented market.
Anyway, if your wife likes it, would you buy it even though you are a male?
In terms of cost-effectiveness, before the Hongguang MINI EV, electric cars were basically limited to A0 level, priced at around 50,000 yuan, which is the market for elderly mobility scooters if we go further down.
Xiaomaoyi has been competing in the price range of 50,000 to 80,000 yuan. Although the price is higher than that of Hongguang MINI EV, its vehicle quality, materials, endurance, configuration and other aspects far exceed those of Hongguang MINI EV.
Compared with Chang’an’s Benben estar, although the prices of the two are similar, Xiaomaoyi is a pure electric platform developed with an all-aluminum body, while Benben estar is an oil-electric conversion model.
Moreover, what is even more important is that this level of electric car has been able to fully compete with gasoline cars in terms of purchase costs, and if we consider the later use and maintenance costs, it is much lower than that of gasoline cars. This is also an important reason why A-level electric vehicles can currently account for 30-40% of the market sales.
At the same time, we analyzed the insurance data of Xiaomaoyi in October and selected the top 20 cities in terms of sales volume, and found several patterns.
First, the top 20 sales are mainly concentrated in second and third-tier flat cities, and mainly in cities in the central and eastern regions such as Shandong, Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, where the economy is relatively underdeveloped, and the purchasing power of the user group is relatively low, and they are more sensitive to prices.
Second, these cities have also been the main market for elderly mobility scooters in the past few years. In the past two years, elderly mobility scooters have been strictly inspected nationwide, plus the popularization of electric cars and consumption upgrades, Xiaomaoyi has just filled this part of the market gap.
Starting from QQ and continuing to Xiaomaoyi, Chery’s experience in A0 level small cars has been for 20 years. QQ caught up with China’s golden decade of automobile development, and now Xiaomaoyi has also caught up with the fast-growing stage of electric cars. It must be said that Chery has made a good move, but can Xiaomaoyi continue to shine?
It is still impossible to draw a conclusion at present, but breaking through 200,000 vehicles has already succeeded in half.
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.