A few days ago, Li Auto announced the weekly sales list of the new forces as usual, but this time, it "hit the muzzle", which triggered another verbal criticism.
Previously, the list of ideal cars has not caused controversy, but coincidentally, on the day of this release, it was the second half of the economic work deployment conference, at which it was specifically mentioned to strengthen industry self-discipline and prevent "involution" vicious competition; It is necessary to strengthen the mechanism of survival of the fittest in the market and smooth the exit channels of backward and inefficient production capacity. Although the specific industry is not named, the "involution" competition of the rim is seen by discerning people, which is highly consistent with this description.
The ideal list became the "target of everyone", stirring up a ripple in the car circle. Weilai, Xiaopeng, Geely and other auto executives have successively "bombarded" Li Auto, and the once "close" new car-making force "Wei Xiaoli" is now rarely "torn apart" head-on.
A number of car company executives shouted for a halt
According to the data released by Li Auto, it is not surprising that Ideal ranked first with weekly sales of 12,800 units. And this is the 14th consecutive week that it has won the first place in the sales volume of new power brands in the Chinese market.
After the Ideal MEGA incident, the sales of Ideal Auto, which had declined for a while, unexpectedly "resurrected with full blood". In July, Li Auto rose from the weekly champion to the monthly leader, with 51,000 deliveries, a record high in monthly deliveries.
It was followed by HarmonyOS Zhixing, with a total of 44,090 new vehicles delivered. In addition, Aion's global sales volume was 35,000 units, and the delivery volume of Leapmotor and NIO exceeded 20,000 units.
This dazzling list naturally makes Li Auto complacent. However, other car companies that are lagging behind in the rankings have quit, and it is the "old iron" of Li Xiang, the founder of Li Auto, who took the lead in "anti-water".
On July 27, at the NIO Innovation and Technology Day, Li Bin, founder and chairman of NIO, said, "Can you not publish a weekly list? He bluntly said that even if NIO achieves the first place, it will not release the weekly list.
"Can we take our brand out of the weekly sales list?" On the same day, Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of Weilai, also called Li Auto.
On July 30, Yang Xueliang, senior vice president of Geely Holding Group, reposted a post on social platforms about the comments on the weekly list, and also expressed his views clearly: "I am also against the weekly list. ”
What's even more surprising is that He Xiaopeng, the founder of Xiaopeng Motors, who has always been recognized as an "honest man" in the circle, also stood up to speak out. At the Xpeng Motors AI intelligent driving technology conference on the evening of July 30, he said that United States companies are more focused on the improvement of end-to-end autonomous driving assistance technology, while Chinese technology companies are still paying attention to the weekly sales list, "this is not the state of technology competition."
"Wei Xiaoli" has always been regarded as a role model for new forces, and the three founders will also come to a party from time to time and take photos in the same frame, becoming a model of harmony in the car circle. Now, the disagreement on the weekly list has made trouble in the field of public opinion, and I can only sigh the plastic brotherhood from the old iron to the dog's blood.
Tian Ji horse racing style "first"
In fact, the boycott of the weekly list mainly lies in the transparency of information.
On the one hand, the "comparative caliber" has attracted controversy. Once the "hegemon" of the new force, Weilai Automobile is calling for battle in turn this time, and the public relations director Ma Lin has also posted a number of Weibo posts in succession, shouting to ask Li Xiang to "stop", he believes that putting products at different prices, different categories, and those with or without fuel tanks into a list cannot reflect the objective situation of the market. "The list must be reasonable and comparable to each other." The implication is that the range extender is "with a fuel tank", which obviously cannot be compared with a pure electric car.
Even though many car companies are issuing articles against the ideal weekly list, how many car companies can really seek truth from facts in communication?
For example, Geely also has its own "unclean" times. In the last week of June this year, Geely's strong publicity mentioned that the delivery volume of ZEEKR 001 exceeded 10,000 for three consecutive months, and successfully surpassed traditional luxury competitors such as Mercedes-Benz E and BMW 5 in the sales list of luxury medium and large sedans in the Chinese market, not only ranking first in sales of more than 250,000 pure electric models, but also firmly grasping the sales crown of more than 200,000 in China's pure electric car market.
In just one sentence, there are enough qualifiers, "luxury large and medium-sized" against Mercedes-Benz E, BMW 5, a "Tianji Horse Race".
"More than 300,000 yuan market", "More than 300,000 yuan pure electric market", "Medium and large six-seat pure electric SUV...... No wonder there's a joke in the industry that as long as you have enough definite articles, you can be "first" in a sense.
Aside from the specific technical route, in fact, the highest sales of new energy vehicles have to be BYD, with sales of 340,000 units in July. In addition, data released by the Passenger Association also showed that Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory delivered 74,117 vehicles in July, a year-on-year increase of 15%. But none of these brands are on the list.
On the other hand, the authenticity of the source of the data. As early as 2023, Huang Honglin, an executive of Xpeng Motors, pointed out that the information on Li Auto's weekly sales list is not true. Qin Lihong also said that the number of the weekly sales list has never been recognized by NIO.
In fact, it is easy to give people a handle on the release of sales data by a peer, rather than a third party, not to mention that Xpeng Motors and NIO have bluntly said that the data is not true.
What is the value of the weekly list?
I'd rather the people of the world bear me, and Hugh will let me bear the people of the world. In the face of menacing interrogation from peers, Li Xiang, the former "Weibo King", naturally will not be silent. Although he did not publicly respond on Weibo, on July 31, he reposted a story picture of "covering his ears and stealing the bell" with a "shhhh
Of course, Li Auto will continue to announce the weekly list, but as mentioned above, the weekly list puts the range extender and pure electric together, but avoids BYD's plug-in hybrid, why not a kind of "covering your ears and stealing the bell"?
Li Auto dares or is willing to release the weekly list, which is naturally more confident in its own sales, but it also gives consumers a strong psychological hint: if you choose the number one in sales, you will not go wrong with your eyes closed.
The weekly list may have a certain reference significance for policy and industry research, but from the perspective of enterprise development, it has no practical significance. For companies with better sales, the frequency of sales release four times a month just increases the exposure.
Previously, the three major new car-making forces were once on the verge of survival and needed more marketing methods to attract attention. Now that time has passed, the camp of new car-making forces is relatively stable, and the release of the weekly list has made car companies pay too much attention to sales, which is somewhat out of place in an increasingly "volume" atmosphere.
On August 1, Gu Huinan, general manager of GAC Aion, expressed his opinion that the "volume" of China's automobile market is well known, and in this context, the "volume" list is only "pediatric", and there are too many dimensions worthy of "volume", such as the value of "volume".
Publishing data without the consent of car companies is not only easy to cause dissatisfaction among car companies, but also not conducive to the construction of a reasonable automotive ecosystem. To borrow a sentence from the TV series "In the Name of the People": "If it is not conducive to unity, never say it." ”
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It is necessary to strengthen industry self-discipline and prevent "involution" vicious competition, which has sounded the alarm for the automobile ecology. How to avoid the naked "involution" of sales and promote the healthy development of the industry at a higher level is a common issue faced by new energy vehicle companies. In fact, many joint venture brands have withdrawn from the "price for volume" in the "involution", the "price war" is slowing down, and the major car companies should also seize the rare respite opportunity in time to recuperate and accumulate strength.