What is a luxury brand car? If it is a luxury brand with a long history, then Borgward, which was born in 1919, is also a luxury brand, but as we all know, Borgward has gone bankrupt after being acquired by China.
So whether the brand is luxurious or not, we can't just look at the history of this dimension. We also need to see whether technology has played a leading role in the development of the industry. It also depends on whether the material workmanship has a unique manufacturing process. It also depends on the brand concept and brand positioning, whether it has a unique taste.
Therefore, there are many factors that evaluate whether a brand is luxurious or not, and it is difficult to explain it clearly in one or two sentences.
Therefore, some media simply and rudely use price to distinguish whether it is a luxury brand. Selling expensive, it is definitely a luxury brand, selling cheaply, of course, it is not luxurious. This is the simplest and best understood as a user.
Therefore, in November 2020, some media announced the list of luxury brands and average transaction prices. On this list, Porsche has the highest average transaction price of 775,400 yuan. This is followed by Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz. WEILAI Automobile ranked fourth, with an average transaction price of 426,300 yuan. It is the highest among its own brands.
On this list, the brand with the lowest average transaction price is Hongqi. Only 211,000 yuan.
In fact, if this list still exists this year, then I think the ideal car will also join this list, because its average transaction price is more than 300,000. And now it sells about 10,000 units a month, and it is also very popular.
Of course, I think it is unfair to rely only on price to distinguish whether a brand is luxurious or not. For example, there are Polestar on the list, but the current sales of this brand are very low, and there are rumors on the Internet that this brand is 40% off, or even 50% off, so I think that at present, Polar Star is not a high-value luxury brand.
There is also Alpha Romeo, a brand that is also very niche in the Chinese market. And sales are not good.
Tesla has never said that it is a luxury brand, and even after domestic production, it chooses to take the initiative to reduce prices, which is not the practice of luxury brands at all. If it weren't for the increase in the price of battery raw materials, I expect the Model 3 to fall.
Therefore, the advent of the new energy era actually broke our original inherent cognition of luxury brands. Because new energy vehicles are new, the output cannot be compared with fuel vehicles. Therefore, there is no way to reduce costs through large-scale production, so the price is high. In addition, the recent rise in the price of pure electric vehicle battery raw materials, the price of pure electric vehicles is becoming more and more expensive.
New energy vehicles are definitely the trend of future automobile development, so we are now watching the new energy vehicle brands sell expensive, and they are slowly encroaching on the market share of traditional fuel vehicle luxury brands.
BYD, in the past, we would not feel that it was a luxury brand, but BYD has reached an average transaction price of 150,000 yuan due to the relatively large sales of new energy vehicles. The average transaction price of independent brands is very high. You should know that as a high-end brand under Geely Automobile, the average transaction price is about 160,000. BYD and Lynk & Co are already very close.
And the Red Flag brand? It is a luxury brand in the minds of the Chinese people, with sales exceeding 300,000 vehicles in 2021, an increase of 50% year-on-year. Very good results have been achieved. But among them, the truly high-end Hongqi H9 has only sold more than 40,000 units in the whole year. The new energy E-HS9 sold only 5400 units in the whole year. Therefore, whether it is a C-class car or a high-end new energy vehicle, the sales volume of Hongqi is general, and it mainly relies on the slightly lower price models such as H5 and HS5 to support the sales of the brand.
So, everyone thinks, is Hongqi a high-end brand?