Sharon Wenfei: The mecha style is more than just a design style| auto sankei

When the competition in the new energy vehicle market has entered the second half, why can a late-entry car brand be remembered? The strategy given by Wen Fei, CEO of Sharon Zhixing, is to differentiate the brand positioning.

At the previous Guangzhou Auto Show, the new brand salon under the Great Wall quickly came out of the circle with the positioning of "mecha technology brand" and a very stylish mecha dragon. Differentiated brand positioning will quickly push the popularity of the salon.

But like all new brands that don't go the usual way, Salon has also attracted some questions after it has gone out of the circle:

Compared to hardcore labels such as intelligence and performance, Salon's mecha style is more like a design label, and such a label seems to be easier to imitate; focusing on a niche market with 10% market capacity, how many sales can eventually be sold...

In response to these questions, on January 5, wenfei responded one by one in the roundtable discussion session of the Zhixin 2022 New Energy Vehicle Trend Forum hosted by eCar.

At the same time that Sharon went out of the circle with the mecha wind, not long ago, the 2022 Changan UNI-T also chose to reload and list in the mecha style. Gaohe's second mass production model, Gaohe HipHi Z, also promotes "digital mecha". Even BMW's latest XM concept car has adopted a mecha-style design.

But for this kind of "following the trend", Wen Fei believes that this is not a bad thing.

"If we look back at the history of industrial development, we will find that the mecha trend is not only now. Around 2000, it was once popular. "Even not only in the automotive field, there has been a mecha trend in PC products.

In Wen Fei's view, the emergence of every mecha trend is the inevitable result of the development of science and technology. "The mech shape is geometrical, full of technology and imagination for the future." The reason why the current mecha trend in the automotive industry is the inevitable result of the superposition of the energy revolution and the intelligent revolution.

Under this line of thinking, Salon did not only focus on styling design. In the words of Wen Fei, "The shape is just an identity label of the salon, why do we do mecha technology products, the fundamental concept is to give high performance and high intelligence to the user." ”

Taking the mech dragon as an example, in terms of mechanical performance, the data shows that the maximum power of this model can reach 400 kW, the peak torque is 750 Nm, and the acceleration of 100 meters is only 3.7 S. With a 115kWh Dayu battery pack, the maximum cruising range under CLTC conditions is 802km.

In terms of intelligence, the Mech Dragon is the world's first model equipped with four lidars. At the same time, it is equipped with 7 8 million ultra-high-definition cameras, 4 surround view cameras, 5 millimeter wave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars, 1 independent high-precision positioning unit, etc., and a set of ultra-intelligent perception systems are composed of 38 intelligent sensing elements.

When the salon brand was officially released, Wenfei used two "0" and three "circles" to summarize the target users of the salon - 80/90, as well as geek circles, investment circles, and cultural circles. Obviously, this is a relatively niche market.

But in this relatively niche market, The Salon's goal is not lacking in "ambition" - "global sales of 200,000 vehicles in 2025", to "achieve profitability as soon as possible, the fastest to break 100,000 sales, the fastest to break 1 billion revenue".

However, in Wen Fei's view, these two goals are not contradictory, and his confidence comes from the following aspects:

First, the total sales volume of the new energy vehicle market has exceeded 2.4 million units in 2021, and by 2022, this figure is expected to reach 4.5 million to 5 million units.

Secondly, the consumer groups of geek circles, investment circles and cultural circles positioned by the salon have stronger purchasing power, and are also facing the demand for consumption upgrades to purchase a high-end electric vehicle.

At the same time, in Wen Fei's view, although the mecha style is relatively niche, the pan-cultural level around this core circle is very extensible. The second dimension, electronic music culture, extreme sports, national comics, etc., are inextricably linked to the mecha wind.

"It's enough to cut into a market segment with the ultimate attitude and find like-minded users with similar values." According to Salon's plan, there may not be a few like-minded users with them.

During the Guangzhou Auto Show, the Mech Dragon opened pre-sales at the same time as its debut. Although the pre-price was as high as 488,000, the first 101 vehicles were snapped up within 3 hours.

With the arrival of 2022, the Mech Dragon will also be officially launched. Can it really capture the needs of this segment? The answer is coming soon.