L9 is expected to become a popular model, will Li Xiang become "Jobs in the car industry"?

"The best family SUV within 5 million yuan", "Even if it is compared with Cullinan, we are not afraid", on the evening of June 21, Li Xiang, the founder of Ideal Motors, frequently made bold statements when introducing the L9 product power.Take the million-dollar Mercedes-Benz GLS, BMW X7, and even Cullinan as competing products. The ideal L9 that has just been launched has the meaning of being exaggerated and exaggerated.

Image credit: Ideal Cars

In a similar way, Huawei Terminal BG CEO Yu Chengdong also said that he once said harshly, "Wenjie M7 will completely surpass the million-dollar luxury cars such as Toyota Alpha and Lexus LM".Because of this, He Xiaopeng, the founder of Xiaopeng Motors sitting in the audience, bluntly said that he wanted to throw shoes at him.

What's interesting is that the new products are also targeting millions, but He Xiaopeng did not throw shoes at Li Xiang, but secretly praised the ideal car on the social platform, he said, "In the fierce competition, the global market, the In the fast-moving goods industry and the 2C non-protection field, which good product can obtain advantages or barriers in the medium or long term by accurate positioning?" There is no doubt that He Xiaopeng is alluding to the ideal car.

One was thrown shoes, one was touted.He Xiaopeng's attitude may be interpreted as high-fives and congratulations from brothers and sisters of the same new forces, or it may be interpreted as the ideal "has two brushes".

Understand the family user group

Exactly what Xiaopeng mentioned about "precise positioning", Li Auto has always been creating products around the positioning of family cars, Li Li is the ONE, and the L9 that has just been launched is also the main family user group, and it has become the most distinctive Li Auto. specialty.

"Everyone always says that the ideal car's user group for family positioning is too narrow, and I think it lacks basic theories and logical judgments. We have studied this matter for a long time, and I don't believe that anyone can do market research more than me when it comes to automobiles. The research I did when I was at home." In the interview the next day of the press conference, Li Xiang once again responded to the question about the positioning of the family car.

According to Li Xiang, as high as 89% of the purchasers above 200,000 yuan are home users.In other words, the ideal family car has actually targeted 89% of the car-buying group, and the next thing to do is to "eat in one range and one range".

The price of the Ideal ONE is 349,800 yuan, and the price of the L9 is 459,800 yuan. In the Chinese market, these two price models are called high-end models, but Li Xiang believes that the high-end and family-oriented products are created. Products are different.

"If you talk about high-end to the market every day, no one will pay attention to you, and even the team doesn't know how to make products, and they randomly build a sense of presence on the product, thinking that this is high-end. But when you talk about family positioning, the team will put every Every penny and every penny of technology is built around the needs of the family, I think this is different, it is a matter of positioning." Li Xiang said.

On the L9, many configurations are designed based on family needs, such as a small table in front of the right seat in the second row, a hot and cold box behind the central control, and six seats are equipped with electric adjustment and seat heating and many more.

Another detail is that the child in the ideal L9 promo is larger than the one in the ideal ONE promo.Li Xiang believes that many ideal ONE owners and children of many user groups will gradually grow up. Even if their children have already entered junior high school and high school, they still want to drive a car and go out as a family. Ideal L9 is to give A great upgrade option for those crowds and for those who drive more mid-to-large SUVs.

The price of the Ideal L9 is about 110,000 more expensive than that of the Ideal ONE, but on the night of the press conference, the L9 was scheduled to explode, and even caused the ideal server to crash for a time.Li Xiang did not disclose the specific number of orders in the interview, but he firmly stated that the orders for the L9 must be very good, and the sales volume will steadily exceed the ideal ONE, although the price is more than 100,000 more expensive.

A tribute to Apple's choice

At a fall media conference two years ago, Li Xiang once said, "I admire Tesla very much, but I will not make products in Tesla's way. My favorite is Apple, and I will follow my ideal. How did Jobs make products." At that time, few people knew how Li wanted to make products according to Jobs' ideas.

At the communication meeting two years later, Li Xiang mentioned Apple again, "Anyone who makes products will study Apple and hope to make products the same as Apple, but I rarely see a company that puts Apple in the end. What to do is really researched.”

Li Xiang believes that Apple's core concept is "Let everyone go up and buy a product experience and product details that were only available at the luxury level or high level in the past. There are so many innovations in technology and experience that users are willing to accept it, and Ideal will insist on doing it in this way.”

From the ideal ONE to the L9, both models have only one version and only one price. Some optional functionson luxurycars have become standard on the ideal model. There are not many optional designs.The same level of fuel vehicles are compressed.In this way, the ideal product logic is similar to that of Apple.

However, compared to mobile phones, as a bulk consumer product, cars have to pay attention to cost considerations. Some high-profile vehicles will undoubtedly increase the cost of the whole vehicle.However, the ideal does not increase the price by means of heap configuration, but hopes to reduce the cost by increasing the scale.

For example, Li Xiang said that the 7.3.4 speakers on the L9 are rarely installed in the Chinese market, which means that the R&D cost shared by each set of speakers may be tens of thousands of yuan, but if it becomes the standard configuration of each car, one year If you sell 150,000 L9s, the cost shared by each car may only be one or two hundred yuan.

There are some advantages of standard configuration. In addition to allowing users to experience higher configuration, it also helps to improve the value preservation rate of resale used cars. In addition, the standard configuration strategy greatly improves the ideal follow-up research and development work.According to Lang Xianpeng, Vice President of Intelligent Driving at Ideal Motors, at present, Lixiang has 3.06 billion kilometers of driving mileage. Due to the standard assisted driving function, Lixiang currently has more than 290 million kilometers of assisted driving mileage, including the total mileage of effective learning scenarios. 190 million kilometers.The amount of such data currently ranks second in the industry, after Tesla.Based on data samples, R&D personnel can automatically label and classify samples to achieve structured data storage, greatly improving R&D efficiency.

In fact, ideal intelligent driving research and development is not fast in the industry. After the IPO in 2020, ideal only has a lot of money to invest in intelligent driving research and development. In less than two years, ideal AD Max is on the car, thanks to the standard strategy data accumulation below.

However, the goal of realizing urban autonomous driving is still far away. Lang Xianpeng said that if we want to fully realize urban-level autonomous driving, the most basic amount of data is 10 billion kilometers. Obviously, the ideal still has a long way to go.

An underrated Chinese brand?

Recently, the light of L9 has overshadowed the ideal ONE, but in fact, the ideal ONE is the one that helped the ideal to conquer the country.Whether it is the technical route of the program extension or the positioning of the family group, the Ideal ONE has been repeatedly questioned since its birth, and even the suppliers did not expect that the Ideal ONE would become a hit.

"We were embarrassed when we were doing Ideal ONE. We told our suppliers very early that we could sell 10,000 vehicles a month, but some suppliers gave us an actualoutputof 3,000 vehicles, and some even 1,000 vehicles. It will only increase production capacity after it is completed." Li Xiang said that the ideal target sales volume in the future is even greater, especially after the launch of new cars in the next year and the year after, it will be a sales space beyond everyone's imagination in the past, but he admitted that there are of suppliers are still in disbelief and have made a lot of discounts on the supply.

"Because in the past, it was really difficult for everyone to imagine that medium and large SUVs could sell 15,000 units a month, and the delivery could not be achieved because the supply of spare parts was insufficient." Li Xiang said that in order to solve this problem, the core components still have to be in their own hands. inside.

It is understood that Ideal has established joint ventures with a number of component manufacturers. For example, the range extender is ideal for R&D and production, and Li Xinchen is responsible for the R&D and production; the battery cell is the production line of the joint venture between Li Li and CATL; Li Li and Huichuan are in Changzhou. The joint venture company is responsible for R&D and production of electric motors and five-in-one powertrains.In Li Xiang's view, the advantages of joint ventures are that the technology is controllable, the supply is guaranteed, and at the same time, some cost advantages can be obtained.

Some people believe that as a Chinese brand, Li Auto has achieved a new height in the field of luxury cars. Its model price is not the highest among Chinese brands, but it is better than the rapid increase in market size.

Nonetheless, the challenges for the ideal car for some time to come are still not small.Li Xiang had previously predicted that in 2025, more than 8 million smart electric vehicles will be sold in China, and Lixiang Auto's goal is to obtain a market share of more than 20% of China's smart electric vehicles in 2025, that is, 1.6 million vehicles.It should be known that the ideal delivery volume in 2021 is about 90,000 vehicles, and the delivery volume from January to May this year is 47,000 vehicles, which is far from the target.In 2023, Ideal will also launch three new models, two of which will be pure electric models.If the rhetoric is released, it remains to be seen whether the pure electric + extended range can strike with both fists.