Author: French fries fish
This summer, at the L9 launch event of Ideal Automotive, there was a classic phenomenon-level communication event called “Dominate the entire network”.
As for this “phenomenon-level”, to be shameless, when I first saw the Ideal L9 real car at the Ideal headquarters, I guessed this car might be popular.
The reason is simple. It has too many product points, so many that the product manager can talk to us relentlessly for a few hours without repeating, and so many that the media have made dozens of minutes of videos to introduce this car one after another.
According to this rule, the Zeekr 009, which was formally unveiled last night, should also have the potential to “dominate the entire network”: its product points are equally numerous. So many that when we first experienced this car dynamically, the public relations media urged the Zeekr product manager to end the presentation quickly because they had already gone way over time.
However, less than 24 hours from the launch event yesterday, where is the figure of Zeekr 009 on the hot search list? The Baidu search index has provided more objective data.
We used “Zeekr 009” and “Ideal L9” as keywords and retrieved the Baidu search index data for the past six months.On the whole, Idealing L9 is almost leading the world in terms of search frequency. As for the day when Zeekr 009 was officially launched yesterday, it should have been the hot topic, but even so, the search index of Zeekr 009 only exceeded Idealing L9 by a small margin, with 36,959 compared to Idealing L9’s 30,750. If we compare the release dates of the two cars, on June 22, the day when Idealing L9 was released, its search index was 101,610, almost three times that of Zeekr 009 yesterday.
With the same starting point of “product power” and different ending points of “spread”, what did Zeekr 009 lack?
Clues from the Technical Communication Meeting
Let’s go back to 11:17 a.m. this morning, fifteen minutes after the scheduled start time of the communication meeting.
As for the reason for being late, as the saying goes, Zeekr 009 has too many product points. Even with Xu Yun and Zhang Song giving us a comprehensive explanation of the car, the “dragging” process can’t be avoided. It’s worth noting that the former is the vice president in charge of product and technology R&D at Zeekr, and the latter is the vice president in charge of intelligentization. They should be the people who are most familiar with this car in the world.
At the same time, these product points are by no means insignificant, and have many outstanding features.
For example, in terms of car architecture, SEA vast platform, Zeekr 009 is the world’s first MPV model based on native pure electric architecture.
In terms of acceleration performance, breaking 100 km/h in 4.5 seconds, Zeekr 009 is the fastest accelerating pure electric MPV in the world.
In terms of endurance performance, CLTC 822 kilometers, Zeekr 009 will be equipped with the Kirin battery with a capacity of 140 kWh from CATL for the first time.Below is the translated English Markdown text, which keeps HTML tags as they are:
For the safety protection, the CEO of Xpeng Motors, He XPeng, mentioned that the 009 model is “the strongest MPV ever” with the world’s largest integrated die-casting rear aluminum body, 128kN roof pressure resistance and 36450Nm/deg car body stiffness.
On the day after the press conference ended and 12 hours after the test-drive experience video was released, facing many media who were not marginal, Xpeng still regarded these “first” and “most” as the focus of the car’s introduction. Indeed, there were many media professionals present who did not fully understand the new features of the 009 model.
Of course, there are many objective factors, such as the pandemic. As far as I know, many media couldn’t attend the first dynamic experience of Xpeng 009 in Sanya due to the health code. However, as the saying goes, where there’s a will there’s a way. Other competitors have already made their hit models public over three months ago, and thoughtful media professionals have even highlighted the key points of these findings.
He Lei, CEO of Nio, mentioned in his article “The Secret of Brushing: I Want to Talk about the Story behind the Marketing Public Relations of the Ideal Last Night” that “since the media couldn’t come because of the pandemic, we sent the cars to Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou in advance. To have a comparison, we could provide the top-level competitive models at the scene anytime. To have more shots, we are also welcoming at night. To give enough time for editing, the team has even left over ten days for the editors…”
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Unfortunately, whether it was due to a “landslide” or tight time constraints, Zeekr Kai almost turned a familiar open-book exam into a closed-door test that did not go well.
This is probably the first problem Zeekr Kai encountered, as they did not show the features of 009 to enough media before the launch of the vehicle.
Signs of the Press Conference
Turning back time to 21:20 yesterday evening, An Conghui had just officially announced the prices of two models of Zeekr Kai 009. In the preceding one hour and twenty minutes, Congcong had used five “soul-searching questions” to fill the whole press conference roughly from the aspects of design, safety, luxury, and performance.
The only controversy may be that Zeekr Kai aggregated a complete set of primary school teaching materials in the ceiling TV in the rear cabin of 009. It has to be said that it is not easy for today’s children.
To get to the point, does Zeekr Kai’s expression make sense to consumers, given its numerous product features of 009?
Take the safety part that Congcong heavily emphasized as an example. We have always said that the safety of MPVs is very important because they carry either important business partners or family, friends, and colleagues, all of whom are important people. The news that “a certain top MPV could not open the door after an accident” some time ago has greatly magnified the importance of MPV safety in the minds of consumers.
From the data given by Zeekr Kai, I believe that they have made a lot of efforts in safety, but these efforts may not be the easiest for potential users to “absorb”.
For example, the “front-center pillar collision test” is actually a very difficult project, which no one has done in MPVs before. The Geely ICON/Star Glory 009 is the first. But many ordinary users cannot understand why they need to test the impact resistance of a center column on such a large vehicle.
Let me briefly explain the difficulty of the project. In order to cope with increasingly strict crash tests, especially subjects such as 25% offset collisions, modern cars will set a longitudinal beam in front of the driver and front passenger for resisting local impacts from the front. However, between these two longitudinal beams, there is often only one cross beam to resist impacts. The so-called “center column collision test” is setting a fixed column-like object on the vehicle’s center axis. The position is located in the center, with as small a cross-sectional area of the obstacle as possible, which means that the two longitudinal beams in front of the driver and front passenger are only responsible for bearing the pressure but cannot withstand sufficient impact. The pressure then comes to the front cross beam. If the cross beam cannot resist impact, the danger may even penetrate straight into the cockpit.
The difficulty is why many MPVs are unwilling to do this test, but the existence and importance of the demand is why the Geely ICON/Star Glory 009 did it.
This highlight of “not only did we do it, but we also did it well when others didn’t do it” is only worth one sentence from Congcong at the press conference.In my opinion, it should be one of the core selling points of Zeekr 009 in terms of safety. Due to time allocation, it may only account for a small percentage of the press conference, but it is definitely worth preparing for in advance through special explanation and MG animation to present it to consumers in a more understandable way. After all, only safety that users can understand before a collision is the safety that builds user trust.
Unfortunately, so far we have not seen Zeekr take similar actions. The example of only piling up data without understanding and expanding it is by no means unique to 009.
This is probably the second problem that Zeekr exists, in popular words, Zeekr has failed to “visualize” its advantages.
The heading of the product
The attention is back to Zeekr 009 itself. In the video released yesterday, disregarding the appearance, overall, I have a great impression of this car itself. For example, the emphasis on seat comfort, the consideration of getting on and off the third row, and the comfortable adjustment of driving style, I believe that Zeekr has found the so-called “luxury” path beyond the materials.
However, when we truly start to measure 009 with the standard of luxury, its performance is difficult to satisfy.Even with a lot of double-layer soundproof glass installed, the wind noise during high-speed cruising of the Zeekr 009 is still significant; Even with air suspension + CDC damping assist, the fine residual vibrations on non-paved roads are still unsatisfactory; Even though the Soft Nappa leather material is used for all three-row seats, the soft touch seems to create the problem of easy wrinkling…
Regarding the first issue, Zeekr explained that there is a consistency problem with the assembly of the front grille, air conditioning air inlet, and other parts. The specific reason has been identified and will be greatly improved in the mass-produced version; For the second issue, the version of the firmware we test drove pursues the ultimate softness in suspension style, resulting in residual vibration problems. In the latest version, which will be launched soon, this issue has also been resolved; For the third issue, one of the main reasons for the wrinkling of the seat leather is the alignment of the size of the contents’ tolerance. After process optimization, the mass-produced version will also improve this phenomenon.
These answers are all from the Zeekr 009 product development engineer I just spoke to today.
Of course, we would prefer to get answers on the spot during the test drive, but from the accompanying personnel, it is clear that the combination of driving instructors and public relations media cannot achieve this goal. At the same time, we can feel that they are also bound by many constraints and cannot handle these trivial but detailed experience issues with the information they have. Compared with them, the product manager or development engineer is a better choice.
To some extent, I can understand the importance of Jidu Auto’s emphasis on the new model 009. However, in many cases, the restraint brought by emphasis is also difficult to lead to the positive side of the coin.
This may be the third issue of Jidu Auto’s existence, with the new product on the market, Jidu Auto lacks a bit of openness and trust.
Sales Expectations
For any mass-produced car, sales will be the ultimate parameter that determines its fate.
Especially, against the background that Jidu Auto’s 001 just exceeded 10,000 units delivered in a month in October, when asked about the specific data of the big orders for Jidu Auto’s 009 after its release yesterday, Lin Jinwen, Vice President in charge of marketing and product planning at Jidu Auto, did not directly respond.
“The specific data of big orders cannot be disclosed, but they far exceeded our expectations.”
And the first-hand feedback we obtained from other channels also confirms this to some extent–several Jidu Auto salespersons we consulted last night received 2-3 big orders.
“Cannot be disclosed” may be due to limited overall volume? I think it is better to be straightforward, because MPV itself is a market with relatively limited capacity. Jidu Auto also has corresponding awareness internally on this point.
When responding to our inquiry about the monthly sales expectations for Jidu Auto’s 009, Jinwen Lin used “boss’s assessment” as an answer.
“As for the future sales expectations, our boss does not have sales KPI assessment for us right now.”
Behind this decision, as explained by Lin Jinwen, is the fact that they suffered a lot from quality issues in the first half year of Ji.ke001 delivery. They have finally crawled out of the “quality pit”, and Ji.ke does not want to fall into the same pit twice. Therefore, all their efforts are now aimed at improving the product quality of Ji.ke009.
For Ji.ke, focusing on the quality of Ji.ke009 is important because they are well aware of the limited market capacity of the high-end MPV market, but they firmly believe that as long as their product is outstanding, they will naturally gain consumer recognition. In this regard, the great market performance of Ji.ke001, a personalized pure electric hunting crossover, has given them the greatest confidence.
However, as a less popular type of car compared to popular models such as sedans and SUVs, MPVs are ultimately the choice of few and the focus of few, which is the natural disadvantage Ji.ke faces as they enter this market.
Therefore, this is likely the fourth challenge Ji.ke faces: as a less popular category, MPVs are naturally disadvantaged in terms of mass appeal.
Exposure, visualization, openness, market capacity… There may be more reasons why Ji.ke009 fell short of expectations, but the fact that the first shot was not loud enough is already apparent.
Just, I still hope that Geely GE11 can go further because I like its riding comfort, appreciate its smooth driving experience, and have high hopes for its exploration of Chinese luxury concept and feasibility.
The problem facing Geely now is that it took half a year to climb out of the quality pit of Geely 001, while the marketing is in a low ebb. How long will it take for Geely GE11 to break free?
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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.