Author: Xuan Wang
In the movie “Let the Bullets Fly”, Zhang Muzhi and Ma Bangde organized a mobilization meeting to raise funds to fight bandits from Huang Sirong and two major families. Zhang Muzhi was the only one of the five who wore modern clothes and was the most pure. The four people around him had ulterior motives and their clothes revealed their difficult-to-cut-off old ideas.
Last week, I saw the same scene under the Guangzhou Tower. On the evening of September 16th, Ean Huan released the new brand logo and also unveiled the “China’s first supercar” Hyper SSR.
Supercars are the most pure product in civilian passenger cars. Its attributes do not include comfort, terrain capabilities, loading capacity, and cost-effectiveness, only the pursuit of performance.
Performance used to be the highest technical threshold on cars, and supercars were expensive because of this. However, for some people, the supercar in their eyes is only expensive, and the reason for its high price is not important.
Clever Naming, Attracting the Wealthy
In the posters released by Ean, their thoughts are evident, “Leading a group of top celebrities to gather together.”
At this release conference, Ean invited two CEOs from supercar clubs and a female jewelry designer to endorse the Hyper SSR, all of whom are representatives of the high-net-worth circle. I guess everyone has heard about the “urban legend” of the supercar club. Although they hold activities on the track day all year round, there is no driver who has come out of the supercar club. It is just a place for social elites.
When I talked with a professional racing team manager, he revealed to me that in the circle of Chinese boss-drivers, only the Porsche and Ferrari Cup races are considered the “ceiling”. The former requires drivers to have high technical level, while the latter values banquet specifications more. The game rules of the supercar club are similar to the latter.
As for the female jewelry designer, this is a profession that has nothing to do with supercars, but if you search the name Wan Baobao on Baidu, you will find that she is a member of the third generation of a wealthy family. Only standing from the perspective of social status can I understand why she appeared in such an occasion.
In a sense, this supercar is only a supporting role at the press conference. Obviously, Ean values the expensive attributes that come with supercars.If you think that Aiways is trying to boost the sales of Hyper SSR through soliciting celebrities and relying on personal networks, then you are only seeing the surface. Aiways has put all its thoughts into the classic line uttered by Ge You.
“The new county official must resort to trickery to find a pretext to round up the local gentry, make them pay taxes and donations, and only when they pay up, can he then persuade the common people to follow suit. After collecting the money, the gentry are reimbursed in full, and the commoners’ money is split 70/30.”
Aiways’ move from a national-level new energy brand to launching a supercar is quite ambitious. Even SSC Supercar Club’s CEO, Zhou Li, said at the press conference that it would be difficult to change Aiways’ brand image in the minds of consumers in a short period of time, even if they were to round up 100 international brand supercars on the racetrack day to surround Hyper SSR, as depicted in the TV drama Thirty But Seventeen, where wealthy wives all carry Hermès bags. Even if you wear a limited edition Chanel, you may be cropped out of the group photo.
Therefore, the essence of Aiways’ announcement of the supercar is to convey a sense of “yearning,” which can make users who are already its base unfamiliarly impressed and thus achieve its upward brand purpose.
Aiways’ Red Line
According to the 2022 Geranlu New Energy Vehicle Insight report on the “Main New Energy Brand Mention Rate,” Aiways ranks only 1.5% among 35 new energy brands, and BYD tops the list, with a monopolistic 30.4%.
I bring up this data because the contrast between Aiways’ “main mention rate” and sales figures is striking. In the Pacific Automobile’s new energy vehicle sales list released in August, BYD ranks first and Aiways second, with a sales gap of nearly 140,000 units. However, Aiways’ “main mention rate” lags behind seven brands.
Behind this anomaly may lie Aiways’ red line: its products can’t be “Ubered.”In 2021, Aiways released the Aion S Plus model, which is not a redesign or replacement of the Aion S, as the 2022 model of Aion S was still launched and is still on sale. In contrast, the Aion S Plus has significant changes in appearance, with the original in-car touch screen replaced by an independent central control screen, more abundant base configurations, and a higher starting price.
The scene of “two generations of car models competing in the same market” is more common in car models that are often used for ride-hailing. The new car models intend to wash away the labels on the old car models, while demand for the old car models is still considerable and difficult to abandon. For example, the Nissan Sylphy, which is sold in two generations, is the flagship car model in the ride-hailing market. After the large-scale replacement of the car models, the higher cost-effective “classic Sylphy” has become a “ride-hailing special edition” by conventional wisdom.
Therefore, the purpose of the Aion S Plus is to “whiten” itself, which is essential for Aiways itself because the label of “ride-hailing car” has deeply penetrated the bone marrow of the Aiways brand. At present, most electric cars adopt the strategy of lifetime quality assurance for the three-electricity system to enhance user confidence, but Aiways dealers explicitly stipulate in the sales policy of the Aion S that the three-electricity system quality guarantee will not be provided after the annual mileage exceeds 30,000 km. This is clearly a clause to guard against the wise, and the reason behind it can be imagined by everyone.
With the rise in the price of car models, the sales of different car models under Aiways have shown a cliff-like change. The official guide price of Aion S (including Plus) is 139,800-191,600 yuan, and the sales volume in 2021 was 69,000 units; the official guide price of Aion V is 187,600-269,800 yuan, and the sales volume in 2021 was 15,000 units; the official guide price of Aion LX is 286,600-469,600 yuan, and the sales volume in 2021 was only 1,003 units.
Since 2021, many car companies and brands have released plans to move up the ladder. However, launching high-end sub-brands is a common practice, such as Zeekry, Deep Blue, Avita, and Voyah. Few have followed Aiways’ approach of renewing the brand logo and changing the appearance to move the brand to a higher level.
In fact, Aiways never intended to position itself as a cost-effective brand from the beginning. Their first product release was the Aion S, which began delivery in May 2019, followed by the Aion LX, which is geared towards the 250,000-300,000 yuan market, and began delivery in October 2019.
There were ten months during the lifecycle of the Aion LX with sales of less than a hundred units.Estimates suggest that E’an’s marketing department is very aware of their positioning in the hearts of consumers. Hence this “China’s #1 supercar” launch was a manifestation of their urgent need to improve their brand image. In fact, they were so desperate that E’an’s CEO Gu Huinan openly stated during the event “to get promoted, own an E’an car”.
Achieving sales targets is crucially dependent on how a brand’s story matches its image in the minds of consumers. There are countless examples in the automobile market where mismatch of image and story has led to poor sales. For instance, XPeng G3 and P5.
In August, XPeng Automobile delivered a total of 9,578 cars. Among them, XPeng P7 delivered 5,745 units, XPeng P5 delivered 2,678 units, and XPeng G3 series delivered 1,155 units. As the flagship model, the delivery of P7 was even higher than the sum of G3 and P5. Generally, different products under a brand would sell less as the price increases. However, XPeng is an exception, where cars with lower price points are harder to sell.
As a new force in the market, XPeng is dedicated to delivering the impact of intelligence on automobiles to users. Therefore, their two core product points of autonomous parking and roof-mounted driving recorder are promoted in their G3 model. However, sales data is enough to prove that XPeng is overly optimistic. For users in the price range of 150,000-200,000 RMB, they value affordability more. P5 was no exception, otherwise there wouldn’t be posts online about its owner selling its LiDAR.
Only when the price range reaches 250,000-300,000 RMB does adding science highs such as automatic parking, all-scenario smart voice, and advanced assisted driving resonate with end-users. This is also the reason why P7 is relatively successful.
Can launching a supercar change a brand’s image in the minds of consumers? Perhaps it can, but not necessarily for E’an.
Their “stitched-together” launch, from slogans, to visions, to marketing verbiage, is far from original. “Where there’s a road, there’s an E’an car”, “Cooperate with China Aerospace to launch E’an rockets”, “All competitors are priced above 5 million”, Toyota, Tesla, and Ideal’s creative ideas are all being copied. Even the name Hyper SSR is capitalizing on the popularity of online games.Why bother piggybacking? After all, not everyone has “tap water” flow like Wei Xaoli and Tesla. However, those who can be brainwashed by such a press conference probably can’t afford 1.286 million yuan anyway.
Ai An doesn’t respect sports cars
Just a week after the release of Hyper SSR, another sports car has arrived in the domestic car market. This product named “Little Sports Car SC01” is like a joke in the eyes of many people. The background of the manufacturer is actually a small workshop that is unheard of, and it started with modified cars and media business.
The styles of the two press conferences before and after are completely different. The person in charge of the latter appeared on stage wearing “hole shoes”. Although the black background has some feelings of an Apple press conference, if you didn’t say he was making cars, you might think he would take out a microphone from his pocket and tell some stand-up comedy about “the world is not worth living in” in the next second.
There were no “queen” and CEO at the press conference, but stories familiar to car enthusiasts were told. For example, “When I look around, there is no dream car.” This is the core plot of the story of Ferdinand Porsche’s creation of the first Porsche 911.
It is not necessarily the big factories that can make good sports cars, and small factories making sports cars are just playing around. When Porsche 901 was launched, Porsche was also a small factory. Starting from “let more people feel the charm of sports cars”, Porsche 911 has gone from a “popular sports car” with a four-cylinder engine to its current unshakable position in the sports car world, experiencing from 0 to 1.
From 0 to 1 is very important, which history has proved to us. Enzo Ferrari left the Fiat team at the age of 49 to establish the Ferrari brand. Before this, he had accumulated 29 years of racing experience. Another racing genius in the racing circle, Colin Chapman, started modifying cars during his college years. Lotus also came out of Chapman’s workshop. In the 1970s, they used the “ground effect” to race cars and achieved great success in the F1 arena. Today, the “aerodynamic monster” is still an indelible label of the Lotus brand.
In the face of these legends, don’t you think that the practice of being born to “aim at the peak” is a bit ridiculous? In this respect, it is “Little Sports Car SC01” that respects the development of sports cars.
last
I believe that it is completely feasible to build sports cars with the current strength of China’s automobile industry, but the purpose of making sports cars determines its results. A million-dollar sports car cannot prove the progress of Chinese car culture, it can only reflect the anxiety of car companies and their inability to face upward brand challenges.
A sports car that comes for the sake of marketing can only be short-lived.
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.