*Author: Huangshan
This slogan was shouted by Ford Motor Company after inventing the T-model car, and now, nearly a century later, it has been picked up again by Lingbao Motors.
The direct result is that Lingbao Motors has refreshed the lowest price of 28,800 yuan for the minimodel electric vehicle created by Hongguang MINI EV. On April 12th, at the press conference where Lingbao Motors and Alibaba Cloud announced their comprehensive partnership, Lingbao Motors announced the latest prices of its two models. Among them, Lingbao COCO has a sales price of 26,800 yuan and 31,800 yuan, and Lingbao BOX has a sales price of 32,800 yuan, 35,800 yuan, 38,800 yuan, and 46,800 yuan.
The most economical Lingbao COCO is 2,000 yuan cheaper than the basic model of Hongguang MINI EV.
Hongguang MINI EV has already pushed cost reduction to the extreme. Who is Lingbao Motors? Why can it dig deeper? What is it trying to do?
Who is Lingbao Motors?
Many people may not be familiar with Lingbao Motors, but its founder, Lu Shouguang, is also the boss of the largest electric tricycle company “Jinpeng Vehicle Industry” in China.
In 2004, Lu Shouguang founded Jinpeng Vehicle Industry, and in 2008, the company became the sales champion in the industry. Since then, it has continued to dominate the sales charts for many years and has become the world’s largest electric tricycle production company. In 2012, Lu entered the field of mini electric vehicles, and in 2018, he established Lingbao Motors. In 2019, Lingbao Motors obtained dual qualifications for new energy passenger and commercial vehicles, and the first new Lingbao BOX was put into mass production in 2020.
It can be seen that Lu Shouguang is constantly upgrading products and transforming the company, and Lingbao Motors will focus on the field of small electric vehicles, focusing on the Chinese urban market. Currently, the planned two platforms will cover the mainstream market from 30,000 to A00-A0 levels.
Why choose this market? In addition to leveraging the advantages of enterprise background, it is also because there is a serious differentiation of high and low ends in the new energy vehicle market. Especially with the rapid rise of Hongguang MINI EV last year, the entire market for small electric vehicles has been ignited, and the A00-A0 level market not only has a larger foundation but also has great potential for future growth.
Lingbao Auto has completed its production base with an annual production capacity of 150,000 vehicles, which possesses a complete vehicle production and manufacturing capability as well as a complete styling, trial production, testing, and design and development capability. The automation level of its four workshops has reached more than 60%.
Judging from Lingbao Auto’s overall rhythm, it is expected to plan 8 models on the ES and EX platforms in the next 2 years, and the styling design is bold and avant-garde.
In addition to production capacity and products, the team is even more important. Lingbao Auto has also introduced personnel with many years of experience in the automobile industry in marketing, research and development, production, quality, and supply chain to become the core backbone. The CMO, Fu Hao, who appeared at this event, was previously the chief marketing officer of SAIC-GM-Wuling New Baojun, and the CTO, Zhao Chun, has 19 years of research and development experience in Chery, Ford, Zotye, and other enterprises.
How about the cars?
First of all, it should be emphasized that Lingbao BOX and COCO are both licensable models and enjoy tax exemption.
If compared with Wuling Hongguang Mini EV, it can be summarized as: larger size, longer endurance, cheaper price, and 5-door 4-seater. For ordinary people, it is easy to calculate the cost-effectiveness of spending less money but gaining 2 more seats.
In addition to these selling points, Lingbao COCO’s naming is also very interesting, with different versions named: Shangguan Wan’er, Li Qingzhao, Cai Wenji, and Wang Zhaojun, all of whom are elegant and talented women.
Among them, Lingbao BOX also has a high-end version with a range of 351 km, supporting fast and slow charging, and only costs 46,800 yuan. This is the only model among those with the same endurance whose price has fallen below 50,000 yuan.
Both models use lithium iron phosphate batteries and come with either 8 years or 120,000 km warranty.
At the scene, I chatted with a dealer from Foshan, who had already acted as an agent for Leapmotor, Hecar, and Tianmei Auto, and now chose Lingbao. According to him, he values the cooperation between Lingbao and Alibaba. If the cooperation is successful, he believes that selling 100-200 cars a month is not a problem.
Targeting sales of 600,000 cars annually in five yearsAfter the A00 market was ignited by Wuling Hongguang Mini EV, it immediately attracted a lot of attention. The companies that have experience in producing micro electric vehicles, such as Lingbao Automobile, which are more familiar with this market, have continued to dig deeper in the market, and have unique advantages.
According to Fu Hao, the number of Lingbao’s newly developed dealers in the past few months has exceeded 300, and their goal this year is to develop 1,000 dealers and sell 50,000 vehicles. By 2025, their goal is to achieve an annual sales volume of 600,000 vehicles.
Alibaba supports the challenge of the strong
During this event, Lingbao Automobile announced a comprehensive cooperation with Alibaba Cloud in the fields of in-vehicle systems, global marketing, smart factories, and data intelligence parks. This is also the first crossover cooperation between a small electric vehicle company and Alibaba.
Cooperating with Alibaba may add a few more advantages for Lingbao to compete with other micro electric vehicle companies.
In the field of micro electric vehicles, various companies are rising. On the same day, Redding also released a new car with a price of 29,800 yuan, which highly overlaps with Lingbao in terms of model and price. A while ago, Changan Benben launched E-star with a price also ranging from 29,800 to 39,800 yuan.
In the 343rd batch of new car announcements recently released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, 11 out of 32 passenger car models belonged to micro cars, accounting for one-third of the total. This has never happened before.
Lingbao Automobile has taken the benchmark for the lowest price of the entire industry, but the micro electric vehicle market has begun to enter a stage of fierce competition among many players. The upcoming competition will be extremely brutal.
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.