With only more than 1,000 units sold per month, who is the black hand behind the ideal MEGA?

The end of the car world

2024-05-28 14:49Posted on the official account of Anhui Automobile Tianya

The sales of the ideal MEGA can be said to have surprised many people, after all, when this car first appeared, both Li Xiang himself and the ideal car thought that its monthly sales exceeded 5,000 was stable, but the fact slapped all the people who are optimistic about the ideal MEGA in the face, and the sales volume in April was only 1145 units.

Why did Ideal MEGA fail? Before the listing, I think the advantage of the ideal MEGA lies in the styling, and the risk also lies in the styling, and the tail styling is easy to be smeared by competing products, and consumers are brought into the rhythm. After all, in the history of Chinese automobiles, there is an example of Iveco.

As a little black man, I even jokingly deduced such a plot in the group chat before MEGA went public, and I said that if I were a competing car company, I would do it.   

But styling design is only the superficial reason for the failure of the ideal MEGA sales, what is the root cause? Who is behind the fiasco in its sales?

How to sell a car expensive? The answer is for business. We combed through the BBA product line and it was easy to come to such a conclusion. Taking Mercedes-Benz as an example, the products mainly for families include A, B, C, GLA, GLB, GLC, the most expensive is GLC, and the watershed for business is the E-class. The E-level has strong business attributes, and takes into account the family, left and right, supporting the scene during the day and picking up the children at night. Even a car like GLE is dignified, even if it is not said, in fact, it is still a car with the same left and right sources as the E-class, so that entrepreneurs can go out and have a face, and their families have a lining. And the S-class, the image of the entrepreneur's car has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

The biggest mistake of the ideal MEGA is that the "super product manager" Li Xiang himself failed to position the MEGA car.  

Ideal is committed to "creating a mobile home, creating a happy home", from Ideal ONE to L789, all doing this, so that the ideal car company also sat on the high-speed rail, and the sales and market value soared. In the weekly sales list, Weilai and Xiaopeng, which are engaged in pure electric vehicles next door, seem to be the other two that will go out of business tomorrow.

The pestle of the cheap big bowl of products is in the store, and the perceived value of the refrigerator and color TV sofa is clear and clear. Therefore, the ideal sales to sell the L series, only need to take out the sales list, and say: We are the only profitable of the three Wei Xiaoli, with hundreds of billions of cash on the account, and there is no risk of bankruptcy, so we can convince swing customers.

Li Xiang himself also said on Weibo that he had happiness troubles and couldn't look down on the sales of competing melons and jujubes.

People have inertia, and it is natural to carry on the successful experience of the past. Therefore, the ideal MPV, the ideal decision-making level, did not do a specific analysis of specific problems.

I watched the entire Ideal MEGA launch online. The whole press conference has been emphasizing that this is a high-end pure electric MPV built for the Chinese family, punching Alpha and kicking Mercedes-Benz V-class.

But Li Xiang overlooked the most important point: Alpha, V-class, and GL8 are essentially for business. You can't sell a car for a family for 500,000 – unless you're a Porsche. To say that the ideal MEGA is a car built for families, and then sold for 560,000 is the original sin. How rich do Chinese families have to be to pay 560,000 yuan to buy a comfortable MPV with a full seat.

It just so happened that two days ago I saw a piece of data:

I have been to the store three times to see the ideal MEGA, the first two MEGA generously let all users see, the last time is fenced in, high-intent customers can see. The ideal terminal also faced the problem of many cars and small stores, and found that the MEGA could not be sold, and it was quickly adjusted in the following months, and since then, the non-pure electric core market has not seen the MEGA show car.

I asked the sales once, how much do you buy this car for home or business? The answer is clear: commercial.   

To put it bluntly, the business owner thinks that the Alpha and V-class things are cliché and wants to buy one that doesn't follow the crowd.

To sum up, the failure of product positioning is the fundamental reason for the failure of Ideal MEGA.

At the beginning of this round, Li Xiang's super product manager personality began to collapse. As for some people saying that there is no rear-wheel steering, the technology is backward, and the interior design is not new, these are not the root causes of the failure of the ideal MEGA.

So, how does Ideal MEGA turn around?

Hard.

The law of the automotive industry is that the difficulty of a car in the early stage of the market is increasing exponentially if it does not become an instant hit and wants to become popular again.

Two days ago, someone took an ideal photo of the factory, and there was quite a lot of MEGA in stock.

Combined with the above personal conclusions, you can try to sell MEGA in the way of business marketing, learn more from the seniors of SGM's marketing department, and even learn from VOYANT, to see how they made GL8 and Dreamer so successful. Neither of these brands is a strong brand at the moment.

Next, let's predict the ideal follow-up 5 plots:     

First, there is a big problem with the styling of the all-electric M series, especially now that the MEGA has been defeated, the M series will continue to use this family design language, even if the tire size is larger. Chinese are all auspicious, and those non-positive imaginations can easily happen to the M series again. According to the current information, the M series has only been postponed to next year, and it has been delayed for about half a year, and it is too late to rebuild it visually.       

Second, the L series is traded for price. L6 maintained the sales market, and L789 sales continued to shrink. L6 is already a 4.9-meter car, and when this car was announced, KOLs were asked to benchmark the Porsche Cayenne, where do you put the L789? Sacrificing brand image for short-term sales is an antidote and poison.

Third, the life cycle of the L series may be longer than many people think, it is not that the M series stopped the L series when it came out, and it is not the money-burning rhythm of NIO that changes in three or four years. This is a choice that Xiangzi himself had to make after experiencing "high-end pure electric is difficult to do". After all, the volume of the L series is still large, and it can continue to reduce costs with the accumulation of sales, and there is also room for further price reduction.        

Fourth, the ideal "high-end" is becoming more and more difficult. is not only the price reduction poison mentioned above, but also "come out to mix, sooner or later you have to pay it back". Over the years, consumers have been educated on the concepts of urban NOA and active hanging, and how are the ideal technical reserves? Which one can be taken out and bring real user value?        

Fifth, before MEGA went public, Xiangzi said that he wanted to break the spell of pure electric high-end that is not easy to sell, so that suppliers can make it hard. I don't know which unlucky supplier listened. But after this time, the ideal supply chain will be more cautious and conservative about the ideal sales from now on.   

The last digression:

Before I went to visit the VOYAH store, my friends in the Chengdu direct store generously said that at the current time node, the fuel tank is an advantage, and pure electricity is a disadvantage.     

Li wants to admit that he sold well because of the fuel tank, and he is not ashamed, why don't he dare to face the reality?

Finally, let's talk about my personal feelings about the ideal MEGA:     

The biggest advantage: the shape, very avant-garde, very forward-looking, I like it very much, but I will never buy it. My current family car is a 5.1-meter SUV, which is already huge.

Biggest disadvantages: expensive; The avant-garde exterior is extremely detached from the conservative interior.

What do you think of the failure of Ideal MEGA, let's talk about it in the comment area.

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