Writing | Zhang Ruichen
Editing | Wu Xianzhi
Recently, Avatr Technology announced that as of October 31st, the first batch of orders for its first model, Avatr 11, had officially exceeded 5,000 units, with an average order price of over 4 million yuan, and Avatr Technology achieved this achievement in less than 10 days.
At first glance, “less than 10 days to sell 5,000 units, with an average price of over 4 million, it’s really good! But how come I don’t even know what Avatr is?”
People who are familiar with Avatr are not many, and they may think it is a new force in the automobile industry created by an internet company. In fact, Avatr (AVATR) is a high-end intelligent electric vehicle brand jointly created by Changan, Huawei, and CATL in the fields of whole vehicle research and development, intelligent automobile solutions, and smart energy ecology. The three parties provide support for Avatr Technology, jointly create a new generation of intelligent electric vehicle technology platform CHN, which has three major features of “new architecture, strong computing, and high-voltage charging”, and build an integrated core competitive advantage to create a high-end intelligent electric vehicle global brand.
By the way, CHN is short for China, and for Avatr, C is Changan, H is Huawei, and N is CATL. It can be seen that Avatr is quite confident in its own brand.
The fact that it took less than 10 days to sell more than 5,000 units is impressive, but in fact, Avatr 11 has been available for pre-order since early August, which means that the final order volume for Avatr in the past three months is only 5,000 units. For comparison, after the release of NIO’s first mass-produced car ES8, the number of orders reached 17,000 within 24 hours, and within 72 hours of the release of the Ideal L9, over 30,000 users had placed orders, indicating that there is still a significant gap between Avatr and NIO, Ideal.Why is Avita, which has a large sales channel of Changan Automobile and the ability to build its own channel, cooperating with Huawei? It seems that Avita also hopes to increase its sales volume, and has decided to settle Avita 11 in Huawei stores, perhaps trying to emulate the successful mode of AITO AITO.
But it is not yet known whether this settlement will help Huawei with sales or only be displayed in the store, and Avita has not released any official news about it.
With less than three months since the new car was launched, Wang Lin, the chief marketing officer of Avita, quietly resigned, which may mean that there will be major changes in the marketing direction of Avita, or there may be significant differences among the marketing team, leading to top-level personnel changes. In any case, the departure of senior executives before formal delivery is not a good sign.
Then, why is Avita’s sales volume not as good as early competitors like NIO or Ideal, although they all sell high-end new energy vehicles?
Firstly, the pricing is unreasonable. The price range from 349,900 to 409,900 yuan already belongs to the middle and high-end models of new energy vehicles. The brand is critical for vehicles above 300,000 yuan, but obviously Avita’s brand is not enough for the public to accept. Just looking at the name, how many people can remember the word “Avita” after reading it once?
Secondly, it is about the Avita 11 itself, which lacks eye-catching core selling points and has no obvious advantages compared to new energy vehicles at the same price range or even below 300,000 yuan. It is said to be a mid-to-large SUV, but it is actually a four-seater midsize SUV. As a new energy vehicle with a price of 400,000 yuan, it is neither equipped with air suspension nor electromagnetic induction suspension, and its comfort needs to be studied.
From a product perspective, equipped with intelligent cockpit developed by Huawei based on Harmony OS, the parameter configuration of the AVITA 11 is just as good as the set of Huawei family on the Alpha S HI version. However, the battery provided by CATL is not the latest Kirin battery CTP 3.0, but the three-element lithium battery pack with CTP 2.0 technology. With a 750-watt high-voltage platform for charging, it can run for 200 kilometers in 10 minutes and its maximum range is 680 kilometers. However, the actual range is only a little over 500 kilometers, which is not better than the current range of 700+ kilometers offered by its competitors such as ROBO-01, NIO ES7 and BYD HAN.
In addition, the first owners of AVITA 11 do not have a lifetime warranty policy, and if you search for AVITA 11-related discussions on forum websites, you will find many buyers who are transferring their orders.
Of course, there is no fatal flaw that can be seen in the AVITA 11 itself, but there is no outstanding feature either. This may be because there is still a big gap between AVITA 11 and the original plan, and it was only unveiled in 2021. If we have to wait for the CTP 3.0 technology of the Kirin battery and the maturity of automatic driving technology, it is estimated that it will not be available until 2023.
As the first mass-produced vehicle of the AVITA brand, it may not be realistic to have high sales expectations for it. The role of AVITA 11 includes raising the tone of the brand, and then developing lower-priced models such as AVITA 7, 9, etc. to fully occupy the market, and even launching AVITA 13 to enter the new energy field at multiple levels.
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.