Text: Rogie
As the Chinese car company that is best at acquiring foreign brands, Geely Group is most well-known for Volvo and Lotus, but Geely's earliest target overseas brand is the British London Taxi Company, which acquired a 20% stake as early as 2006, and completed a comprehensive merger and acquisition in 2013, and changed its name to London Electric Vehicle Company (LEVC) in 2017.
Now, nearly 20 years later, Geely's acquisition of Volvo and Lotus has been fully reflected, but in the domestic market, the LEVC brand has never had a sense of existence. Until two days ago, the L380, known as the land Airbus, was officially launched, and Geely also entered a new market segment through the brand Yizhen.
Why did Geely build a super-large electric MPV?
When seeing the L380 car, ordinary consumers generally have two thoughts: first, this car is really big; Second, I definitely won't buy it.
In terms of volume, the L380 is indeed large enough, with a length of more than 5 meters3, and a width and height of nearly two meters, far exceeding the upper limit of the average family car. However, the key to making people think "definitely won't buy" is not the size, after all, the ideal MEGA for home use, the wheelbase and body are longer than the L380.
What really makes people daunted is the business attributes of the L380 that can be seen at a glance, this MPV with a straight roof and a square rear is unabashedly large, and it does not belong to the daily family scene at first glance. However, this is only the first impression, and whether it is suitable for home use or not needs to be further understood.
Comparable size to the ideal MEGA; The price of 379,900 to 479,900 has a lot of overlap with Xpeng X9. However, they are obviously not the main competitors of L380, and LEVC Global CEO Nan Shengliang's sentence at the press conference "As a Mercedes-Benz life car, the king of space L380 sets sail around the world", it has been very straightforward to point out the competitor - Mercedes-Benz V-class.
To be honest, I have never ridden a Mercedes-Benz V-Class so far, and I have no friends who are Mercedes-Benz V-Class owners, so I am relatively unfamiliar with the use scenarios of this car and the product itself. So like a lot of people, I wonder why Geely is launching a relatively niche business-focused MPV right now.
Based on this question, I checked the amount of Mercedes-Benz V-class, in addition to the V-class, Fujian Mercedes-Benz has a relatively low price Vito, and the positioning is similar to that of the V-class, so I counted them together. In May this year, the number of Mercedes-Benz V-class and Vito cars was 1,843, which is a proper unpopular car by the standards of ordinary family cars. However, I checked the sales of previous years, and the situation is more interesting.
In the four years from 2020 to 2023, the number of Mercedes-Benz V-class and Vito will be 26,900, 30,800, 27,100 and 27,600 respectively.
This illustrates two points, one is that the market volume of super-large business MPVs is not large, but the specific customer group is very stable; Second, Mercedes-Benz has absolute dominance in this market segment, and there is basically no opponent to share the cake.
And this means that in this highly competitive market segment, once a new player with strong product power emerges, it could disrupt the existing landscape of this market. If the Yizhen brand can successfully win this market segment, it can play an influential role based on the positioning of super-large business MPV, and then with the help of Geely Group's deep comprehensive strength, it can further expand other business and even household products.
As for whether this strategic idea can succeed, it depends on whether the first product of L380 can be a hit.
Focus on business, but not limited to business
When the size comes to the 5.3 meter level, space is the last thing to consider, and the key is what kind of tricks this car can make with this extremely generous space.
Different from ordinary six-seater and seven-seater SUVs, the L380 has a dizzying number of seat layouts, in addition to the most basic 2+2+2 six-seat layout, there are also eight-seater, four-seater, and even three-seat versions.
First of all, look at the main six-seat version, thanks to the advantages of SOA pure electric architecture, L380's second row and third row seats, based on the pure flat platform in the cockpit, realize the ultra-long common rail, the rear two rows of seats can be adjusted according to the number of occupants, the position of the front and rear seats can be adjusted very flexibly, and the effect that can be achieved is that in the second row to obtain the maximum second-row space of Buick GL8, the third row still has enough space for adults to lie on their backs.
In short, the current medium-sized and large-scale MPVs, including the popular ideal MEGA, have a comprehensive space in the second and third rows, which are not as good as the L380. If headroom is also taken into account, the advantages of the L380 are even more obvious.
However, it is worth mentioning that L380 is not like the extreme krypton 009, the pursuit of the ultimate comfort of the second row, L380 does not use the so-called aviation seats with wide armrests, and the overall width of the seat is also relatively restrained, but the advantage is to leave a very spacious central aisle, from this point it can also be seen that even in terms of business attributes, L380's positioning is different from many business MPVs that focus on the comfort of the second row.
As for the eight-seater version, it is basically two seats at the rear of the six-seater version, and the last two seats will greatly reduce space and comfort. The size of the L380 can only accommodate the fourth row of seats, and it cannot make all four rows of seats enjoy the same comfort.
If it is a company-level trip, the rear three rows of seats will basically be allocated according to the job level, and the interesting thing is the home scene, and the 8-seat version also has great potential for high-income families with two or three children. The four seats in the middle two rows can be equipped with child seats, and if the elders travel at the same time, the fourth row can be reserved for the nanny to sit.
This kind of scene is certainly not the mainstream in China, but the overall size of a family with three children and a nanny may be larger than ordinary people think, I don't know how this kind of family usually travels, but now there is L380, then this car is currently one of the very few options that can meet their needs.
As for the four-seater version, unlike the two ultra-luxury independent seats I imagined, the rear row of the L380 four-seater version is a joint double seat, with a giant screen large color TV, which is really equivalent to moving the living room into the car. However, this kind of joint chair is obviously reserved for people who are very close to each other.
Finally, there is the three-seater version of "stay tuned", the huge cockpit is left with a zero-gravity sofa that can rotate 360°, and the scenarios and types of customers it is suitable for are even more unimaginable to us ordinary people.
Seeing this, I believe that many people, like me, find it difficult to substitute themselves into the attributes of the L380 car, after all, this is not a product for ordinary consumers. But according to the design logic of this car, for the customer group it is targeting, the L380 may be the best choice at the moment. If you can do that, you're half the battle.
The starting price is 379,900,
Is L380 expensive?
When the previous warm-up, the price of the L380 car was estimated to be around 500,000, compared to the official price of 379,900 now, which is a lot lower, but judging from the barrage and comments at the online press conference, there are still many people who feel that this price is a bit too confident.
There are two reasons, one is that the LEVC brand has a very low reputation in China, and after learning a certain background, it is also used to directly linking it with the Geely brand, lacking an objective price anchor; The second is that I don't know enough about the specific product power of L380, thinking that it is just an MPV with a large size.
So before making a judgment, we still have to look at what features L380 has in addition to its huge size.
Let's start with a few key takeaways:
1. The battery capacity of L380 starts at 100kWh, 116kWh for the two-wheel drive Pro version, and 140kWh for all four-wheel drive. The capacity is very large, but the size and weight are also very large, so the pure electric range of CLTC working conditions is 570 to 805 kilometers, which is currently considered the mainstream level;
2. The 6-seat version of L380 only has two-wheel drive and four-wheel drive versions, of which the front-wheel drive version has 272 horsepower and the eight-seat version has only four-wheel drive;
3. Starting from the 439,900 two-wheel drive Pro version, it is equipped with air suspension, and the four-wheel drive version is equipped with magic carpet intelligent suspension as standard.
4. The car machine adopts the Flyme Auto Meizu car machine specially developed for the LEVC brand, and is equipped with 2 Longying No. 1 car machine chips as standard, which is equivalent to two 8155 chips. However, in terms of intelligent driving, it has only achieved the L2+ level, has no lidar, and does not have the ability to drive intelligently in high-speed and urban areas;
5. There is no high-voltage platform above 800V, and the fast charging is adapted to 400V specifications;
6. The comfort configuration of the second and third rows is extremely rich, heating and ventilation are standard in the second and third rows, and the rear two rows support electric seat adjustment, and the third row can be electrically reclined. Starting from the two-wheel drive Pro version, the second-row independent seats add leg rests, massage and lumbar support adjustments.
In the third row, the L380 is still a separate seat with armrests and leg rests, which can achieve a similar lying position as the second row. At this time, if you look at the ideal MEGA of similar size, the third row looks much more plain.
The above is the core information of the L380 car, as a pure electric MPV with a starting point of nearly 400,000, it has not achieved the forefront of the current industry in terms of intelligent driving, high-voltage platform, power performance, etc., especially compared with new forces such as ideal and Xiaopeng, and has not achieved the ultimate in comfort configurations such as zero-gravity seats.
Staring at these aspects, you will feel that L380 is a bit insincere as a car with a price of four or five hundred thousand, but looking at the entire MPV market, we basically can't find an alternative with such a comprehensive ride space, storage space, and basic comfort configuration. Compared with the Mercedes-Benz V-class, which is relatively close to positioning, L380's shortcomings in intelligent driving and power are far ahead.
In fact, for the customer group targeted by L380, the cost performance we are used to discussing is not important, super power, advanced intelligent driving system, in fact, it is not important, for its target customers, the essence of L380 is actually a tool car, a car that can make yourself and your family comfortable, safe and secure.
For this positioning, L380 may be the best performing one at present.