What is the minimum cost to buy a car in China that supports city navigation assisted driving?
As per the official price, the latest answer to this question is: 219,900 yuan.
In fact, on November 30th, JIYUE announced a new pricing and discount policy for all JIYUE 01 car models, which directly reduced the price by 30,000 yuan, bringing the barrier to entry to 219,900 yuan – not only that, with this policy, those who place an order for a JIYUE 01 can also receive a free 12-month subscription to ROBO Drive Max.
With this adjustment in price and benefits, it’s fair to say that JIYUE 01 has brought down the barrier for high-end smart drive experience to the minimum.
For JIYUE, this adjustment in price and benefits is not just an active move towards intense market competition, but also an assertive move in their efforts to practice the idea of “technology equality” and “making high-end intelligence accessible for all.”
A 30,000 yuan reduction: JIYUE 01’s ambition and sincerity
From an industry perspective, this price and benefit adjustment of JIYUE 01 is indeed very bold.
JIYUE 01 was launched on October 27th this year, at which time the JIYUE 01 Max was priced at 249,900 yuan and the JIYUE 01 Max Performance was priced at 339,900 yuan. Also, by placing an order, benefits valued up to 70,000 yuan could be enjoyed. Such price and benefits have already shown JIYUE’s determination to compete with industry giants as a late entrant.
However, just a month after the launch, JIYUE decided to take a step further and employed a completely new pricing and benefits policy that was unexpected by the entire industry.
Cars, as a major consumer product, often pursue stability in their pricing system, partly to maintain the brand’s own positioning and partly to consider the feelings of old car owners and the psychological expectations of potential consumers. Even if automakers desire a certain price reduction to increase market sales, they typically embody it by offering different benefits or model upgrades, rather than directly reducing the official price in the short term.
In this regard, JIYUE’s price reduction operation is undeniably unconventional.
Specifically, under the new pricing and benefits policy, all JIYUE 01 models (including JIYUE 01 Max and JIYUE 01 Max Performance) saw a price reduction of 30,000 yuan. In addition, the price of the long-range lithium battery optional package (100 kWh) was also reduced by 10,000 yuan.
This means that the adjusted starting price for the JIYUE 01 Max is 219,900 yuan, the JIYUE 01 Max long-range version is priced at 254,900 yuan, and the JIYUE 01 Max Performance is priced at 309,900 yuan. Furthermore, those trading in their cars can enjoy an additional 5,000 yuan off the reduced price.
In terms of car purchase rights and interests, beyond the basic price cut, customers who purchase the JIYUE 01 Max will enjoy substantial benefits, including:
- 1,000 yuan to purchase the originally priced 15,000 yuan Comfort Set (including front seat ventilation, massage, Nappa leather seats, real aluminum decoration, faux suede ceiling, ROBO SOUND sound system, driver’s headrest sound, in-car aroma generator, and 3 types of aroma refills).
- 2,000 yuan to upgrade the originally priced 10,000 yuan 21-inch sports wheel hub set.
- 2,000 yuan to upgrade the originally priced 10,000 yuan Galaxy Purple/Star Shiny Orange car paint.
- Benefited from the limited-time promotional offer, 30,000 yuan will be directly deducted if you buy out the ROBO Drive Max advanced smart driving.
Officially, customers who newly purchase any model of the JIYUE 01 series can enjoy benefits such as lifetime warranty for the entire vehicle/three electric parts, free lifetime roadside rescue – and the free subscription market for ROBO Drive Max advanced smart driving has been extended from 6 months to 12 months.
Additionally, for customers who have ordered their JIYUE 01 by 2023, they can upgrade their steering wheel to a U-shape for free, and customers who purchase the car within the year will get a UWB key for free.
Whether it’s the price adjustment itself, or the reinforcement of benefits, it is enough to reflect JIYUE’s strong competitive spirit as an emerging automotive brand. Of course, from another perspective, the adjustments made by JIYUE also fully demonstrate its affordability to potential customers.
Certainly, along with these price and rights adjustments, a pressing question arises: What about existing customers who’ve received their cars or have already placed orders?
In response, JIYUE’s answer is simple and bold: for existing customers who’ve already received their cars, JIYUE will provide a cash compensation of 30,000 yuan based on the latest car price. This, in the entire auto industry, looks like a very impressive and generous move.
Regarding these series of adjustments, JIYUE CEO Xia Yiping stated that these decisions are based on feedback from users and the market after the launch of JIYUE 01. Considering the value of “technological equity” to users and the automotive industry, JIYUE set up a special team to carefully analyze and iterate quickly, leading to the establishment of new car prices and rights and interests programs.
Moreover, Xia Yiping also underscored the complex thought process behind this new pricing, including organization, brand, marketing system, among others. Hence, it’s a very cautious decision and there’ll be no further price reductions for JIYUE 01.
When the Auto Industry Meets ‘Smart Value-to-price Ratio’
With the recent price and rights adjustments of JIYUE 01, Xia Yiping further stated, “Cost-to-value ratio” has become a thing of the past, the “smart value-to-price ratio” is the now; comparing to a leading advantage, JIYUE prefers to make high-end intelligence more accessible for all.In this context, he brought up a refreshing new term: “intelligence-to-cost ratio”.
Indeed, within the global embrace of electrification and intelligentization by the automobile industry, the attribute of differentiation of car products in terms of electrification is diminishing, with intelligence becoming the key bearer in creating differentiation in car products and enhancing user experience.
In other words, at the current stage of industry development, how to allow users to experience better intelligentization by lowering the threshold of access is indeed a critical issue that each automaker needs to contemplate and confront during their transition – From this perspective, the proposal of the ‘intelligence-to-cost ratio’ is not only timely but also indicative of the industry’s direction.
In actuality, under the all-new pricing and rights system, the JIYUE 01 indeed possesses the highly market competitive “intelligence-to-cost ratio”.
One key point needs to be clarified here: The premise of JIYUE 01 possessing an “intelligence-to-cost ratio” is because it already owns a considerably formidable “body” – that is, the mechanical quality and safety system of the vehicle based on the vast framework of Geely SEA, for example, a low wind resistance coefficient of 0.249, 0-to-100 acceleration in 3.8 seconds, CDC real-time damping adjustable shock absorber, etc…
All of the above have provided JIYUE 01 with a high level of driving quality, laying a solid foundation for its intelligent experience.
From an intelligent perspective, JIYUE 01 is first able to demonstrate its ‘intelligence-price ratio’ in the realm of its intelligent cockpit experience.
Purely from a hardware perspective, JIYUE 01 comes standard equipped with the latest generation of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 chip, which also has the highest computing power for cockpit chips in the industry; At the same time, JIYUE 01 carries a 35.6-inch 6K super-clear one-piece screen which is currently the largest size, thinnest border, non-sliced, non-spliced integrated large screen – with the added computing power of the Snapdragon 8295, its smooth experience can rival that of a smartphone.
Based on the aforementioned hardware, JIYUE 01 offers a very unique SIMO intelligent cockpit experience. For instance, the intelligent AI partner it carries has become the first to achieve full localization of the voice AI algorithm, with a recognition speed up to 500ms and offline interaction even in areas without network coverage such as mountains and tunnels. According to JIYUE’s statistics, the penetration rate of SIMO voice users reached a staggering 98.9%, with a task success rate as high as 98%.
According to JIYUE officials, the SIMO system is fully integrated with the Wenxin Yiyi AI large model aboard the JIYUE 01, bringing a better interaction experience to users. Additionally, with the added abilities of Baidu AI, Baidu Maps and Xiaodu, which are being restructured based on the AI large model for the first time, will also be fully integrated into SIMO, with the ability to call up thousands of capabilities within the map and connect to over 1500+ ecosystem brands of Xiaodu via a single voice command, which also helps to facilitate vehicle-home control.In other words, the JIYUE 01, with the assistance of Baidu Wenxin Yiyuan, will implement large models, thus bringing more possibilities in the aspect of intelligence.
Of course, beyond its intelligent cockpit, JIYUE 01’s performance in advanced intelligent driving is its greatest leverage in the aspect of ‘intelligence-cost ratio’.
In fact, thanks to the enablement by Baidu Apollo’s advanced autonomous driving capabilities and safety system, JIYUE 01’s BEV+Transformer’s ‘pure vision’ advanced intelligent driving has already become the only mass-produced one domestically, making it one of the few brands globally with pure vision mass-production capabilities. The starting price of 21.99 yuan and a 12-month free trial package of ROBO Drive Max have unprecedentedly lowered the threshold for experiencing JIYUE 01’s advanced intelligent driving, even surpassing competitors such as Xpeng G6 and IM LS6.
According to JIYUE official statement, in the daily use of current JIYUE 01 users, the usage rate of its PPA function has exceeded 58.5% of total mileage, with an astounding user penetration rate of 96.7% for automatic parking.
Meanwhile, JIYUE officials also stated that this year, ROBO Drive Max will roll out city-level advanced intelligent driving to all users in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou. Its core function, PPA, has covered 90% of elevated highways nationwide. In January next year, the JIYUE 01 will upgrade and update OCC occupied network technology through OTA, greatly enhancing the recognition of irregular obstacles and scene generalization capabilities of ‘pure vision’ advanced intelligent driving. Besides, PPA will also gradually open up in more than 200+ cities nationwide next year.
It is worth noting that, to achieve such capabilities, JIYUE also relies on a significant increase in user scale and the data-driven effect resulting from it, which is also an advantage of JIYUE’s ‘pure vision’ scheme – from this perspective, JIYUE 01 is trying to build a positive cycle from expanding user scale to accumulating data to evolving technology and finally improving user experience by lowering the price.
The Market is Too Fierce, Proactive Attack is Good
Looking at the overall market competition, the JIYUE 01’s adjustments in price and benefits also objectively reflect a basic fact: the current automotive industry is simply too competitive.
Indeed, looking at the situation in 2023, the entire automotive industry is under immense competitive pressure from the transitions to new energy and electrification, and intelligent transformation. Price wars have transformed from potential threats at the beginning of the year to routine actions that the automotive market has to face. Major automakers are seeking survival space through subsidies, discounts, and other means in this ruthless market competition.
Against this backdrop, JIYUE 01’s decision to cut prices by thirty thousand is undoubtedly a proactive measure to adapt to this market situation and confront competitive pressure. In reality, JIYUE has informed us that this price and benefit adjustment is also putting huge cost pressure on JIYUE, considering that, whether in terms of mechanical quality or on the intelligence level, the configuration of JIYUE 01 is basically maxed out.So, why does JIYUE 01 dare to do this?
A decisive factor is the strong backing behind JIYUE’s growth. After all, as the strategic partners of the JIYUE robot project, Geely Holdings Group and Baidu Group can provide robust financial support for JIYUE. Beyond the financial assistance, the deep accumulation of Geely Holdings Group in car manufacturing, alongside Baidu Group’s extensive layout in AI and intelligence, guarantees an enhanced user experience from JIYUE.
During the dialogue segment, JIYUE’s CEO, Xia Yiping, acknowledged that this price and rights adjustment was indeed heavily supported by Geely Holdings and Baidu.
In other words, the ability of JIYUE 01 to offer a higher “wisdom-to-price ratio” this time is also due to the inherent advantage of being ‘sheltered by a large tree’.
Of course, besides the sturdy support, the direct price cut made by JIYUE also benefits from its profound internet genes as a new type of car company. This enables it to pursue simplicity, directness, and efficiency in its operation and possess stronger sensitivity at the user’s perception and experience level.
However, Garage 42 reckons that the price and rights adjustment by JIYUE 01 also represents a powerful step for JIYUE towards promoting the universal access and equal rights of intelligent cars in the industry.
After all, in this round of automotive technological revolution, intelligent cars represented by autonomous driving and intelligent cockpit are advancing fast at a technical level. However, due to the high-cost input, more advanced intelligent experiences like city navigation assisting driving and large models are still limited to vehicles in around the price range of 300k; despite a downward trend, the overall threshold is still higher; and they are far from users.
From this perspective, the price and rights adjustment made by JIYUE 01 this time could be seen, to some extent, as the use of its advantage to spur a “tech equal rights movement” for ordinary users in the auto sector. This move objectively propels advanced intelligent features to everyday users.
It is foreseeable that in the coming two or three years, the Chinese car market will inevitably become more competitive. If car companies wish to survive in such fierce competition, they must respond with noticeable initiatives to enhance user perception, much like JIYUE — however, for ordinary consumers, the opportunity to experience better intelligent automotive features in such competition is indeed a boon.
This article is a translation by AI of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.