Blindly high price, high he makes people understand

After thirty years of ups and downs, Ding Lei, who is about to step into the "sixty and ear smooth", can he lead Gaohe Automobile to the peak?

After the recent debut of the HiPhi Z GT model, this problem lingered in the mind of the cylinder brother. Unlike the founders of other new car companies, Ding Lei, the founder of Gaohe Automobile, born in 1963, can be regarded as an "old car". Looking at all the founders of new car companies, almost all of them are post-75s or post-80s - Li Bin (born in 1974), He Xiaopeng (born in 1977), Li Xiang (born in 1981).

However, with a strong resume, almost no new force car company or the founder of the new force car company dares to despise Ding Lei, after all, for such a "predecessor" with 30 years of experience in the automotive industry (former vice president of SAIC Group, general manager of Shanghai General Motors Co., Ltd., party secretary and general manager of Shanghai Zhangjiang (Group) Co., Ltd., deputy mayor of Shanghai Pudong New Area), it is worth anyone's respect.

Do "technology" and "luxury" rely on "stacking"?

Two years ago, on the eve of the launch of the Gaohe HiPhi X, Gaohe Automobile declared war on Tesla through a giant billboard on Times Square in New York, "Hi Tesla! You said it's good for the world if someone made a better EV. That's why we're here”。

Looking at the entire automotive industry, or all the new force car companies, dare to declare war on Tesla in such a tone, Gaohe Automobile is still the first. Just a few days later, with the listing of Gaohe HiPhi X with a price range of 570,000-800,000 yuan, Gaohe Automobile once again attracted the attention of the whole industry, and we began to re-examine the brand and products, and discussed the question of "what is the price of Chinese cars to sell".

It is undeniable that Gaohe HiPhi X is of great significance to the overall new energy vehicle market. With China's new energy vehicle market being held back by BYD, Weilai Automobile, SAIC-GM-Wuling and other leading car companies, the market as a whole began to diverge day by day, either stopping at the height of "Wei Xiaoli" or being dragged into the "mud" of the low-end route by Wuling Hongguang MINI EV. In this context, the emergence of Gaohe HiPhi X is undoubtedly laying the foundation for independent brands to break the rule of "foreign powers" in the high-end market.

With such a high price of Gaohe HiPhi X, we are more interested in the product performance of our products. From the design of the product alone, the shape of The HiPhi X is indeed very unique, as the official positioning of the "evolutionable supercar SUV", equipped with NT spread doors, exaggerated seven-door design, all of which have attracted the attention of fans. When it came to the second High He HiPhi Z, the vehicle design not only maintained the "sense of technology" it should have, but also added the appearance design of the mecha storm.

Whether it is mecha style or seven-door design, the products designed by Huaren Express will always give people a bright feeling. However, in the view of brother tank, these fancy designs appear to be somewhat "pale and weak" in the price range of 570,000-800,000 yuan, and even give people a feeling of "technology for the sake of technology", and the understanding of "technology" and "luxury" is not deep enough. Of course, this may also be the reason why luxury brands such as BMW and Audi can always flourish in the automobile market, because after a hundred years of precipitation, these brands' understanding of "luxury" has long reached a point that is difficult for many new car companies to reach.

If the design of HiPhi X still has some "original" components in it, then in terms of configuration, it can almost be summarized as "stacking". According to the information officially released by Huaren Express, Gaohe HiPhi X is not only equipped with high-strength steel and aluminum body, intelligent air suspension, four-piston brake caliper, high-efficiency energy feedback energy-saving system, 5G+V2X communication network, etc., but also adopts the dual redundancy design of the five core components of the vehicle composed of perception redundancy and brake redundancy. From the perspective of product configuration alone, Gaohe HiPhi X is piled up with sincerity even if it is "stacked".

In fact, according to relevant information, the front and rear motors of Gaohe HiPhi X are provided by Bosch, the battery is a ternary lithium battery of the Ningde era, the audio part is used in the sound system of the domestic brand, and the chassis part is provided by other suppliers. Through the patchwork of assembled hardware configurations, everyone has to start questioning the "technology" and "luxury" labels of HiPhi X and the original technical strength of the brand.

After stripping away the cocoon, we can find that under the seemingly gorgeous appearance of Gaohe HiPhi X, the only one who can label itself is the FF91 "shell" left by Boss Jia. To borrow a summary from Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, it is not in line with the high-end demand of young gold collars of electric vehicles.

Is Ding Lei really "stepping on the point"?

For any new car company, time means money, and only by occupying more market share in a shorter period of time can we gain the hope of survival. In contrast, if you spend too much time to occupy the niche market, fundamentally, this strategy will only make car companies more passive.

It has to be said that Gaohe Automobile is definitely a magical presence in today's fast-paced automobile market, and it took four years to start delivering the first car unhurriedly, and the high price successfully shut out the mass consumers. Therefore, since the launch and delivery of Gaohe Automobile, its sales growth rate has increased rapidly, but the sluggish sales volume has followed its development. According to the official sales volume, the cumulative sales volume of Gaohe Automobile in 2021 was 4237 vehicles, of which the cumulative sales volume from July to December was 3724 vehicles, ranking first in the sales list of "more than 500,000 luxury brand electric vehicles" in the second half of 2021.

It is undeniable that perhaps in today's car market, there are indeed a group of high-consumption people who regard Ferrari, Aston Martin and other supercars as "grocery carts" and regard Hermès and Richard Miller as daily necessities. In their eyes, the HiPhi X is really just a toy car. However, how much does a consumer group like this account for in the whole?

Combined with the sales performance of more than 500,000 luxury brand electric vehicles in January 2022, Gaohe HiPhi X occupied the top spot for the first time with sales of 550 vehicles, Mercedes-Benz EQC ranked second with 459 vehicles, and Hongqi EHS-9 continued to rank third with 383 vehicles. The above three models surpass bmw iX (106 units), Mercedes-Benz EQS (75 units) and other models. The sales list also confirms that high-end pure electric vehicle products priced at more than 500,000 yuan will be a false proposition in the market where the terminal demand is already small.

In this context, Gaohe Automobile chose the niche range as a new entry point, which is doomed to make Gaohe HiPhi X difficult to sell, and the problem of capital losses caused by sluggish sales will always haunt Gaohe Automobile. However, Ding Lei did not care about the problem of funds. Ding Lei once said in public: "Huaren Express has original capital from the United States, as well as government investment, and there is no plan to start social private equity for the time being, and there will be no A, B, C, D rounds of investment." "With the support of the Yancheng city government and local leading enterprises, Huaren Express will not fall into a crisis in the short term."

Of course, we do not rule out that Huaren Express has already secretly carried out several financings, after all, under the influence of Executives such as Ding Lei, the influence of Huaren Express is self-evident. As for why Brother Cylinder will think that There will be financial pressure on Huaren Express, it is mainly in reference to the growth stage of Weilai Automobile and the question raised. At the beginning, with the support of Lei Jun, Liu Qiangdong and many other people and many investment institutions, it was still difficult for Weilai Automobile to hold high, and how could Huaren Express be alone?

This game of chess, played very big?

In the context of the debut of the Gaohe HiPhi Z GT, we see that Gaohe Automobile is still constantly supporting the brand's playful attributes, which also means that Gaohe Automobile will continue to hit the high-end market with "dual flagship" products. It should be noted that this also indirectly indicates that Gaohe Automobile will need a lot of financial support for a long time to maintain the operation of the brand and the research and development and promotion of products.

For example, as mentioned above, The Cylinder Brother mentioned that Gaohe HiPhi X is equipped with 562 data open sensors, which will be used as product embedded hardware, and the current utilization rate is not high. Although Gaohe Automobile has always been under the banner of leaving imagination for users, it is difficult to hide that the product still has a large room for upgrading and imperfection. This also confirms the "lack of original ability of Gaohe Automobile" mentioned by brother Cylinder in the above article.

Therefore, from the perspective of product research and development, Gaohe Automobile needs to invest more research and development funds and energy. However, assuming that Gaohe Automobile can greatly increase the utilization rate of sensors, it may be able to accelerate its "three wisdom strategies" - smart cars, intelligent transportation, and smart cities, thus attracting the attention of market consumers.

Will the dead-end auto market survive? Brother Tank thought it was difficult. According to Tesla's global sales data in 2021, from the perspective of product structure, Tesla Model 3 occupies the largest proportion, with global cumulative sales of nearly 510,000 vehicles, accounting for 54% of Tesla's total sales; Model Y sales of 400,000 vehicles, accounting for 43%; the remaining Tesla Model X and Tesla Model S together account for about 3% of Tesla's total global sales. Tesla's sales data directly shows that sticking to the high-end breakthrough route is not a long-term solution. In the absence of sales support, even if the story is told well, it will not help.

In this context, Brother Cylinder believes that the "double flagship" strategy may only be a temporary solution for Gaohe Automobile. When the "high-end" label of Gaohe Automobile has gained a foothold in the market, lower-end products may be launched in line with the trend. If brother Cylinder's conjecture is correct, then we can see Ding Lei's cleverness as an "old autobot" - calmness. Compared with NIO, Gaohe Automobile uses two high-end products (HiPhi Z and HiPhi X) as brand support, which is far more advantageous than a high-end product support (NIO ES8), and can even achieve the effect of "1+1>2".

summary

In the end, everything in the above article is more about the advantages that Gaohe Automobile can produce under the ideal development situation, but for a new force car company, fighting a "protracted war" in the absence of ammunition (funds) is not the best choice. Of course, we are still very much looking forward to what kind of height Ding Lei can lead Huaren Express to, as it says itself, "As a person who has experienced the development of China's automobile industry and was once the operator of a big automobile company, there has always been a sense of mission in my heart."

Article from: 12-cylinder car

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