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When most automotive media talk about the fierce competition in the Chinese auto market, they always say:

As market competition becomes increasingly fierce, new cars are becoming more and more cost-effective, and ordinary consumers will always benefit.

There is nothing wrong with this logic, but when applied to today's Chinese auto market, the meaning has changed.

Here's what happened. Last night, Zeekr held a press conference and released the 2025 Zeekr 001 and 007.

According to the practice of the automobile industry, it is normal for a car company to launch a slightly modified model named as the model of the next year in the second half of the year. Generally, some new configurations will be added, or the price will be slightly reduced to make the model more cost-effective and maintain the life cycle of a single model. Before the modified model is launched, the current model will also be appropriately reduced in price to clear inventory and promote sales.

In the past, car companies were very good at grasping this rhythm. Faced with such actions by car companies, old car owners would often comfort themselves by saying "buy early and enjoy early, buy late and enjoy discounts."

But Zeekr has indeed offended some old car owners.

Image from Zeekr official

In short, the 2024 Zeekr was released in March this year, and six months later, the 2025 Zeekr was launched. Although the price has not changed, it has added better intelligent driving functions, and the old car owners cannot upgrade the hardware. The owners of the Zeekr 007 will probably be more uncomfortable. In April this year, the Zeekr 007 began to be delivered. Last night, the 2025 Zeekr 007 was launched, with a better battery, standard intelligent driving hardware, and a price reduction.

Image from Zeekr official

If I were the car owner, I would feel bad too.

So who is wrong in this matter? Actually, no one is wrong.

From a commercial rationality perspective, when Zeekr wants to launch a new car has nothing to do with old car owners. This is just like when Tesla suddenly cut prices and car owners collectively defended their rights. From a legal perspective, car companies really have no responsibility to slow down the pace of launching new products in order to take care of old car owners.

But logically, it is reasonable for car owners to want to protect their rights. After all, no one wants the new car they buy to become an old model after a while. Even though in terms of experience, when they buy a car, it already represents their recognition of the existing experience of the car, but if the new model is quickly launched into the market, car owners will face not only the lack of experience, but also a more realistic problem, which is that the price of old cars in the second-hand market will drop due to the launch of new models, and the value retention rate of the car in their hands will become lower, which is also a direct property loss.

Zeekr obviously chose this update rhythm not without considering the attitudes of old car owners, but the reason for doing so is very simple: if it does not release new models, sales will be ruined in the current market environment, and the survival of the company may be in jeopardy.

Currently, Zeekr has a total of 4 models:

Pure electric station wagon, Zeekr 001

Pure electric sedan, Zeekr 007

Pure electric compact SUV, Zeekr X

Pure electric MPV, Zeekr 009

Limited by the consumer preferences of the Chinese market, although Zeekr X and Zeekr 009 have strong product strength in their respective sub-categories, they still cannot provide Zeekr with good profits.

Image from Zeekr official

The two models that can truly “sell in large volumes” and bring more profits to Zeekr are actually the Zeekr 001 and Zeekr 007.

Everyone knows that you cannot put all your eggs in one basket. For car companies, with only two main models, the risk is actually quite high.

If we look at the mature large automobile companies, we will find that a complete product line is very important if they want to survive well.

Take BMW and Mercedes-Benz, which are more familiar to consumers, for example. These two car companies, 3 Series/C Class, 5 Series/E Class, X3/GLC, are responsible for "volume sales". Even if the market environment changes, each car can basically guarantee a monthly sales volume of over 10,000 or at least several thousand. High-end models such as 7 Series/S Class, X5/GLE, although the sales volume is not particularly high, but because of the extremely high profits and strong brand premium, they can also contribute considerable cash flow to the car companies.

At the same time, because in the past, the research and development cycle of automobiles was relatively fixed, a new car would add some minor configurations every year to become a new year model, and would be updated more after 3 years to become a mid-term facelift. Every 7 years, a major facelift with adjustments to the design and technical configuration would be made. This was the rhythm, and the research and development capabilities of each car company were relatively average. In fact, everyone's products of the same type were basically the same, and there would be no absolute monopoly products. Consumers would make their purchases based on their own brand and specific product preferences.

Because car companies have a rich enough product lineup, they have strong risk hedging capabilities. If the sales of one car decline, it doesn’t matter. They can hold on for a while and find ways to sell more other models to make up for the profits.

However, most new energy vehicle companies do not have such a complete product line and healthy profit sources. Even a strong company like Tesla can only use the most direct price cut to boost sales when the sales of Model 3 and Model Y in the Chinese market decline.

Changing the perspective to domestic car companies, what can they do when faced with a fiercely competitive market environment and the sales of their main models cannot be stabilized at a high level?

The only options are to lower the price or launch new models.

You may have realized by now that this is a dead end.

From the consumer's perspective, car companies are constantly launching new cars, so you can either wait and see, hoping for the victory of the "wait and see party", or choose the most cost-effective new car on the market. You can even ignore the brand for the sake of cost-effectiveness.

From the perspective of car companies, if consumers keep waiting, the market will shrink and all car companies will be out of business. Consumers will choose new cars from other car companies, which means that their old cars must have product shortcomings. In this case, they can only speed up research and development and quickly launch new cars with stronger product strength to get as much market share as possible. Otherwise, sales will fail, the company will be finished, and it will be even more irresponsible to car owners.

In the past, there were not many truly competitive car companies or models in a certain segment of the market, and an average consumer would not have too many potential purchase options when he wanted to buy a car. But now, there are too many options in the same price range, especially the most mainstream price range of 100,000 to 300,000 yuan for Chinese car consumers. On the whole, my country's auto sales have not increased because of the increased competitiveness of domestic auto companies. Instead, it is because auto consumption, as an important bulk consumption that reflects a country's economic situation, has been in a period of fluctuation in the past two years, with slow growth and even some decline.

For the car companies, it will be uncomfortable if they compete, and it will be even more uncomfortable if they don’t.

Let’s not talk about the “correct but useless nonsense” that suggests Chinese automakers go overseas. On the one hand, the world economy is not doing well, and the Chinese market is already pretty good. On the other hand, the automobile industry is geopolitically oriented. If you want to sell cars overseas, you can’t avoid high taxes or huge investments in building factories overseas. Given the current profit situation of Chinese automakers, it’s quite difficult. Not to mention the malicious restrictions imposed on Chinese automakers by traditional auto powers in order to protect their own automakers.

Obviously, what has ruined the overall Chinese automotive environment is definitely not the internal competition among car companies, but the overall environment itself.

For ordinary consumers, the market situation is like this, so we just need to keep a normal mind. Without the fierce competition in the Chinese auto market, we don't have so many car models to choose from. Cars in the 100,000 to 300,000 yuan range don't have such a high cost-effectiveness as they do now.

For car companies, survival is important, but they should try their best to take care of the psychology of old car owners. After all, everyone knows that volume is not the end. The ultimate goal is to build a good brand image, create a complete product line, and become a mature car company with stable profits. Whether it is old car owners or new car owners, they are all parents who provide food and clothing.