Five Ling has started to roll their own!

This was my first reaction when driving the Air EV Qingkong in Suzhou not long ago.

It is still a micro EV, but there has been a breakthrough in the product positioning, functionality, and configuration.

Different from the simple and straightforward slogan “What the people need, we make” (and of course, at that time, Wuling made not only cars) when Wuling Hongguang MINIEV was launched and was very popular, this time, Wuling has positioned the Air EV Qingkong as higher-end than MINIEV.

Higher quality and a global car are new labels for the Air EV Qingkong. The product logic and business logic are the basic operation of people’s and enterprise’s needs moving to a higher level after getting rid of the most basic survival needs.

Of course, moving to a higher level naturally encounters new problems. How can the product be upgraded more appropriately? How should market share be distributed? These are the most realistic problems facing the Air EV Qingkong.

“If the jade is not cut it cannot be made into a useful object” – Confucius

Is Wuling rolling their own with the Air EV Qingkong?

If we look at this question from a longer perspective, such as “Wuling Hongguang MINIEV has been on the market for five years and has sold over 1 million units,” it seems that Wuling is being too harsh on themselves.

However, the entire market environment is changing.

For example, during January to October this year (November’s sales data has not yet been released), the best-selling new energy vehicle model is no longer the Wuling Hongguang MINIEV. With a score of 341,400 units sold, the BYD Song surpassed the 338,300 units sold by the Wuling Hongguang MINIEV and climbed to the top.

In purely numerical terms, the difference is not very large. However, if we look at the environment of the subdivided market, it reflects that the competitive advantage of this small commuter car has begun to become less obvious.

It should be noted that both Song and MINIEV have no strong comparability in terms of product positioning or product prices, which means that they have defeated models that are more minimalistic and pursuit mass-cross products with their product strengths.

To maintain the original market share and not be eroded by cross-level products, this is the most realistic reason why Air EV emerged.

Of course, many people may think that since it is a micro car, why not look for opponents within the range of micro cars?

In terms of the overall sales ranking of new energy vehicles, the overall sales of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV are still very strong. However, looking at the timeline from January to October, Chery’s QQ ice cream, Chery’s eQ, and Chang’an’s Benben EV have sold a total of more than 250,000 vehicles, which is more than 80,000 vehicles per company when broken down separately. There is no direct competition in terms of individuals, but in terms of actual market share, a large share has indeed been taken away.

Major giants that completely ignore levels and are not yet threatening opponents have truly taken a slice of the market cake. It can be said that Wuling has reached the point where they need to bring new things and new stimuli.

As for the breakthrough upward, the brother brand has also tried. Baonuo, which belongs to the same family as SAIC-GM-Wuling, has launched a more powerful and higher-level micro-car-KiWi EV.

The positioning of this car is higher, the design is better, and naturally, the selling price has also directly increased from 78,000 yuan to more than 100,000 yuan. However, from the current point of view, as of October, its sales have only just exceeded 20,000 vehicles. It can be said that the possibility of breaking through upward has not been seen so far.So, this is the real market opportunity for Wuling to launch the Air ev Qingkong. While maintaining its basic market share, it strives to utilize its previous reputation as much as possible to eat into more market share and bring better single-car profit margins than the Wuling Hongguang MINIEV.

Meanwhile, the Air ev Qingkong has also entered the overseas market.

At present, the upward trend of the product is determined, and the goal of building a “global car” is also determined.

For example, earlier this year in August, Air ev Qingkong first landed in the Indonesian market. With a first-month order of 5,000, it became the highest new energy vehicle in terms of the number of orders in that market for that month.

This kind of car-making model, which exports materials and assembles locally, is obviously a very fresh and scarce product type for the Southeast Asian market, where the new energy vehicle market is still immature and developing.

The global positioning has been established. How can Air ev Qingkong compete in the highly mature and rapidly developing Chinese market and compete for a share in the fiercely competitive market for micro electric vehicles?

How can shopping carts be cultivated with high quality?

From the overall promotional tone of Air ev Qingkong, Wuling’s overall strategy has not changed. The upgraded simplicity, directness, and immediacy are still strategies that can directly hit consumers’ souls and wallets.

Therefore, you will find that the car is still the same car, but in terms of overall product strength, Air ev Qingkong has become stronger and closer to the current mainstream car-making concept.

For example, Air ev Qingkong is still a shopping cart and a short-distance commuting vehicle, but the cruising range has increased to 300km. In addition, the car is equipped with a 10.25-inch dual-screen display and the Ling OS system that can realize basic human-computer interaction and entertainment properties. Furthermore, the vehicle is also equipped with direct current fast charging, and can reach 30% -80% battery level in 45 minutes.

Although this product still has gaps compared to mainstream upgrade products. For instance, there may still be some error in the 300 km range, and the ability to charge quickly does not match the speed of mainstream charging.

The benefit is that almost nobody would criticize a commuting vehicle because of these issues. After all, even if there is an error in the 300 km range, it is enough to allow you to buy groceries a few more times and pick up your children from school without frequent charging.

The high-definition and larger dual screens provide various imaging systems for the entire car, although the smoothness and number of APPs are not as many. Although this car is less than three meters long and it seems difficult to park and reverse, its safety and likability have improved significantly.

In addition, the biggest function of this screen is entertainment. Firstly, it certainly can provide voice programs based on network platforms, which can be listened to online. At the same time, it retains the function of watching videos through external storage media such as USB drives. Leaving aside whether there are many or few applications for watching videos through the USB interface during short-distance trips, it is quite comprehensive in terms of functions.

Another feature that people like is the storage space. In many cars, storage space is a small detail, and most of them are transformed from space that cannot be completely covered or filled in the engineering process. However, this cannot be ignored in the Air EV.

On the one hand, it really is because the car is small, and people hope to have enough space to store items. On the other hand, the utilization of small spaces may be filling a gap for others, while on this car, it may be a reflection of ingenuity.

For example, this car provides four cup holders for the four front and rear seats. If everyone is not very thirsty, these four cup holders can carry almost all products from keys to mobile phones.The USB port located under the center console of the vehicle is usually intended for charging mobile phones, and there is a net next to the port to hold the phone and complex charging cables while charging. This seemingly simple design can be described as minimalist design in a micro electric vehicle.

As for the storage in the trunk, in the collapsed four-seat mode, it is basically reduced to a “gap” that can only accommodate a few backpacks. If you want to put a suitcase, you will inevitably lose the space for rear passengers. Of course, no one expects high storage capacity for such a commuting vehicle.

In terms of driving, the overall acceleration level and driving experience certainly cannot be compared with those electric vehicles that focus on driving, but then again, people who buy this car will not have high driving requirements. The vehicle’s 140N·m torque can provide all the needs for uphill and downhill driving on undulating city roads, that is, basically it can drive on flat ground.

But the good thing is that the large screen of this car can really meet the mainstream travel functional needs. For example, functions such as voice interaction (it must be said that voice interaction is relatively efficient and the voice simulation is very good), online navigation, etc. can all be realized. In the process of driving, during reverse or parking, the vehicle can switch to the panoramic imaging function of the outside camera, making the whole car easy to master for novices.

The only thing that needs to be improved is the logic and duration of the appearance of the full vehicle image, which can be further optimized to avoid conflicts with navigation.

It is worth mentioning that the vehicle is equipped with leather seats, leather-wrapped steering wheel, and leather-wrapped armrests. Although it is certainly not real leather, the overall sense of class and riding experience has indeed been improved. For example, for short-distance shuttle in the rear seats, the space is basically enough. With these leather coverings, the overall riding experience will not be so uncomfortable (but only for short-distance shuttle).

However, the seating position cannot be adjusted up and down, because a battery is covered underneath from the front seat to the rear seat. This is a trade-off, whether to let the battery protrude upward and compete for space with passengers, or to sink downward and compete with the chassis for positive space. Currently in Air ev Qingkong, the engineer chooses the former.## “Clear Sky” for Thousands of Miles, Mission to be Accomplished?

For products like Air ev Clear Sky, the first priority is to be adequate, and it seems that it has achieved this, even slightly ahead of its time.

Secondly, what it needs to do is to open up a market that is more up-to-date, higher-end and still cost-effective, while the basic market share of MINIEV remains stable. Obviously, this is what a brand that needs to continuously and steadily output sales urgently needs to do.

After all, for a niche market that does not require range, technology or even space and configuration, getting ahead of the competition is the most important thing. But once the market competition really heats up, the advantages will become less obvious. Therefore, the appearance of Air ev Clear Sky actually needs to solve this problem.

That is to say, to position the product higher, provide better quality, establish brand labels, and at the same time earn more profits.

However, how much profit is reasonable and acceptable to more consumers is another test of Wuling’s pricing strategy.

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.