Image source @ Visual China
Text | The Tao always makes sense
Saying that he wants to control the female car market is Euler's renegade.
In February, the black cat and white cat of great wall Euler, which once had a hot little red book, announced that they would no longer accept new car orders, although these two models once helped the brand to share the same color as Wuling Hongguang in the field of new energy. Official data shows that the Euler brand will sell about 135,000 vehicles in 2021, an increase of 140% year-on-year, of which the annual sales of good cats are about 50,900 units, and the annual sales of black cats are about 66,300 vehicles.
As for why Euler chose to "cut off his arm" when the fight for new energy vehicles is fierce? For now, most of the reasons are aimed at the "good cat", and the drama of the old model giving way to the new model is not uncommon in the technology circle. After the emergence of the Euler good cat model, the sales advantage of Euler black cat and white cat is indeed gradually declining.
Specifically, in 2021, the cumulative sales volume of Euler Automobile is 135,000 vehicles, of which the cumulative sales of Euler Good Cat is 50,000 vehicles, and the annual sales of Euler Black Cat and White Cat are about 80,000 units. In January this year, it achieved total sales of 13,000 vehicles, of which Euler Good Cat sold 9,020 vehicles, and its sales accounted for 68% of total sales.
But is Euler 'killing' the black cat and the white cat really just to pave the way for the new model? The truth is probably not so simple.
The road of "appearance is king" is getting more and more crooked
To tell the truth, Euler played the "Princess Card" in one hand.
From various data sources, the emotional resonance between brands and female car owners has always existed. According to the official data released by Great Wall Motors, more than 70% of the owners of Euler are female customers, and there are more than 50,000 Euler notes on the Little Red Book.
Almost all of Euler's models can accurately hit the "girlish heart" that female owners have nowhere to put, whether it is the previous three explosive models, or the later lightning cats and punk cats, no doubt spend a lot of thought on the model and color matching. Euler is so flattering to female users, from the perspective of the entire car consumption environment, it is not without reason.
Once the car was an eternal topic of male consumption, but the turning point happened to occur in these years. In 2020, CCTV Finance released the "China Good Life Survey" shows that in 2020, women's car purchase consumption reached 22.28%, more than men's 22.00%, which is the first time in nearly a decade that women's car consumption exceeded men's.
Coincidentally, the 2020 Female Car User Insight Report shows that female car users grew by 64% from February to October 2020, especially in first-tier cities. "Car Internet Users National Day Travel" shows that the users who pre-order electric vehicles during the National Day period are more women, and the age is concentrated in 31-50 years old. Under the premise that the automobile market is almost bottlenecked, female consumers seem to give a glimmer of hope to the new forces of car manufacturing.
Compared with male consumers, women's requirements for cars are far less stringent, and the appearance value is naturally placed in the first place, which also leads to a problem: those car brands that bother to please female users will inevitably fall into the misunderstanding of putting the cart before the horse, and Euler's "chip door" in November last year is a very classic example.
Euler once paid a great price because of the Rashomon-style chip doubts, and it is reported that the stock of Great Wall Motors, the parent company of Euler Motors, has plummeted as a result. Taking December 10 as an example, the closing prices of Great Wall Motor's A shares and H shares on that day were 56.75 yuan per share and 30.1 Hong Kong dollars per share, respectively, down to 11.45% and 17.98% respectively from November 22, which means that Great Wall Motors' market value has evaporated by tens of billions in less than a month.
But this is not the first heel Euler has planted in the women's market. It is true that power generation for love is an important part of the driving force for women to buy a car, and Oba's chip "collapse" has largely broken this balance of people and cars, and the data shows that in the whole year of 2021, the number of complaints about Euler's good cat reached 2283.
Specifically, the "Car Quality Network" released the December 2021 complaint ranking list, Euler Good Cat "sales fraud and publicity do not match", with a total of 839 complaints occupy the top position in the complaint list; similarly, the black cat complaint platform appeared more than 400 related complaints. There is no doubt that the serious backlash of public opinion boiling over users has caused an uncontrollable negative impact on Euler and even the entire female car brand.
Quality problems are the first "straw" that crushes women to the car, Chery small ants are frequently complained by car owners on the car quality complaint platform, and the core of the tram such as power, brake failure, charging failure has become the hardest hit area of quality, it is undeniable that the fan mentality of female users was originally the core advantage of Eulers building cars, but now it has evolved into a "fig leaf".
Female car owners who are addicted to the sense of atmosphere
"2020 Automotive Information Industry Insights" shows that in 2020, the proportion of female users of automotive information apps has reached 21.9%, and on the official apps of Weilai and Tesla, women account for even more than 40%, especially in the field of new energy vehicles, not only Euler, Hongguang MINI, Nezha V, Chery Small Ants... Both are quite popular with female car owners.
And these cars seem to have nothing to do with technology, and the macaron-colored shape runs on a mobile "dresser" that comes alive on the road. At present, the vast majority of micro-electric vehicle brands will not easily give up women's happiness, and a series of marketing activities are all rubbing the topic of women in the new era.
For example, at the beginning of 2022, Euler Good Cat launched a female documentary short film "Hello! Big Girl"; Wuling refers to female users as "Wuling Maiden", and from time to time holds "Wuling Maiden Fashion Makeup Party", which is jointly named with Perfect Diary. Hanfu, Guofeng, Second Dimension, Idol... These elements that were originally incompatible with the car have frequently become the guests of the car company's publicity period under the boom of female car owners.
In July last year, ChinaJoy opened, according to the incomplete statistics of the Future Automobile Daily, there were up to 6 car companies participating in this two-dimensional comic exhibition, and Euler, who has always been high-profile, even built a "cat star dimensional city" in ChinaJoy, with pink as the main color. These car companies, led by Euler, seem to be constantly conveying a concept to female car owners, in which car consumption is greatly discounted and replaced by the fun of "raising a car".
On the Little Red Book, the female owner's car maintenance thinking can be seen everywhere, such as Euler's cat concept is obviously deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, buying a car is not buying a car, but "raising a cat", the shell, interior and trunk are the joy of the DIY party, just like dressing up Barbie dolls as a child, becoming its own faction on social platforms.
Do female car owners really need a "sense of atmosphere"? The survey shows that the number of women in the automotive aftermarket consumption has increased significantly in 2019, and they often pay special attention to automotive interior supplies. According to statistics, in some developed countries in Europe and the United States, the sales profit of automobiles only accounts for about 20% of the profits of the entire automobile industry, the profits from the supply of parts account for 20%, and nearly 60% of the profits come from the automobile service industry.
Open the major e-commerce brands, enter the keyword "Hongguang MINIEV", stickers and accessories are simply dazzling. Although ordinary people can't understand it, in the consumer consciousness of many women, there is no difference between the essence of filming the car and buying clothes, and even the weight of the accessories is much greater than the car itself.
The proportion of female users of Mercedes-Benz CLA reached 70.9%, just because a 64-color atmosphere lamp once became a female car purchase "white moonlight"; in February last year, Ideal ONE launched a wireless car microphone, which was robbed madly, the first batch was 500, 20 minutes were robbed, the second batch was 1800, 19 minutes were robbed.
In the consciousness of female car owners, the experience attribute of the car has long been strongly consumed by its own tool attributes.
Can't escape the shadow of "old man music"
Compared with other countries, the proportion of domestic micro-electric vehicles is not high. Taking Japan as an example, as early as 2014, the proportion of the Japanese mini car market exceeded 40%, and the domestic proportion was only 15%, from the perspective of market demand, there is still a lot of room for development of micro-electric vehicles in the mainland, which is also the key reason why many car companies are reluctant to give up.
After all, according to the latest data from the Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in the first half of 2021, the cumulative sales volume of the mainland pure electric mini car market reached 351,000 units, an increase of 599% year-on-year. However, there is a point worth questioning, Euler Wuling and other car companies to micro-electric vehicles as a breakthrough, storming the female market, but does this field really belong to female consumers?
Frankly speaking, micro-electric vehicles running on the road are always inseparable from the shadow of "old man music", and when it comes to old man music, the giant of which does not belong to any car company. First of all, it should be clear that in third- and fourth-tier cities and rural areas, LaoTou Le has become the main way to popularize new energy vehicles.
According to the data, since 2013, LaoTou Le has maintained rapid growth, and in 2018, an industrial scale with an annual output of 1 million vehicles was formed. According to data from the Shandong Automobile Industry Association, the number of old men in Shandong Province alone exceeded 3 million in 2018. The middle-aged and elderly group that has been ignored by car companies just supports half of the sky of the mini tram.
Does the automotive market have nothing to do with the elderly? Let's start with an interesting set of data. In China, most of the owners of passenger cars are between the ages of 25-34 and 35-44 years old, and the number of thousand people is 300 and 400 respectively, which is a high level. However, the number of people over 45 years old is still at a low level, and the number of thousand people is less than 100, especially for those over 55 years old, the number of thousand people is less than 10.
In other words, compared with the female consumer group, the development opportunities of the middle-aged and elderly groups in the automobile market can not be underestimated. More notably, from the data released by the Ministry of Public Security, although the young and middle-aged groups under the age of 50 are still the main driving force, accounting for about 85%, the proportion of the elderly drivers over the age of 50 is increasing year by year.
The data shows that the proportion of drivers over the age of 50 in 2019 increased by 1.2 percentage points compared with 2018, reaching 15.3%, and the proportion of motor vehicle drivers over the age of 60 rose from 2.7% in 2018 to 3% in 2019. By 2020, in the first half of the year alone, the proportion of motor vehicle drivers over the age of 60 has reached 3.23%.
According to incomplete statistics, there are at least 100 low-speed electric vehicle manufacturers in China, with a production capacity of more than 2 million vehicles, and there are about 200 electric vehicle factories in the whole of Shandong, accounting for 2/3 of the number of electric vehicle brands in the country, and the total investment in small electric vehicle projects registered in the province exceeds 11.628 billion yuan.
Large car companies such as Euler racked their brains to please female car owners, but in the entire mini-tram market, perhaps mastering the "old man's music" is the key.