Can Xia Yiping, who wants to be an internet celebrity, help Ji Yue out of his predicament?
2024-08-20
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Ideals are full, but reality is skinny.
I still remember that last OctoberExtreme 01When it was launched, Jiyue CEO Xia Yiping said that the company would achieve monthly sales of over 10,000 vehicles in 2024.In the first half of 2024, the average monthly sales of Jiyue Automobile was 450 vehicles.Nowadays, under the judging criteria that monthly sales of 10,000 for new car manufacturers is the life and death line, monthly sales of 15,000 is the poverty line, and monthly sales of 20,000 is the well-off line, Jiyue's sales are so small that they can be ignored and it can't even make it into the rankings.In fact, the sales volume was just a little lower. But what Xia Yiping said at that time was not just empty talk.Jiyue Auto is the former Jidu Auto, which was jointly funded and established by Baidu and Geely’s respective affiliated companies in early 2021.After several adjustments, it was officially renamed Jiyue in August 2023, but the shareholders did not change. Instead, Geely, which is better at making cars, accounted for the majority of the equity structure, increasing from the previous 45% to the current 65%.More importantly, Jiyue adopts Geely's famous SEA vast architecture in terms of architecture, and is supported by Baidu Apollo in terms of intelligent assisted driving.As a second-generation car owner, this condition is definitely better thanBAIC Arcfox, Dongfeng Lantu. However, it seems that it is difficult to define Jiyue, which was founded almost four years ago, as a success.
Although Ji Yue itself is not very famous, it cannot withstand the strong financial support of its sponsors. Therefore, once Ji Yue got into trouble, its problems were exposed one by one.Some people say that the more extreme you go, the more negative the impact will be.When Jidu Auto announced its name change to Jiyue Auto, "Jidu ROBO-01" also became "Jiyue 01". Before the name change, Jidu attracted a lot of market attention with the concept of automotive robots.However, after a series of actions, Jiyue failed to inherit Jidu's previous accumulation and appeared in front of the public like a blank sheet of paper.In addition, under the premise that the Jiyue brand is not well-known, Jiyue 01 directly entered the 250,000 yuan medium and large SUV market as soon as it was launched, directly facingModel Y、NIO ES6, Xiaopeng G9, and of course the market pressure from its sister model Zeekr 001.In this way, it will be difficult for Jiyue 01 to gain market attention.Of course, there are also product issues.ExtremelyTeslaAfter the second mass productionPure Vision Intelligent Driving SolutionManufacturers.Jiyue 01 adopts a "pure vision" solution based on hardware such as high-definition cameras, millimeter-wave radars and ultrasonic radars. It comes standard with the "ROBO Drive" intelligent driving system, and can subscribe to the ROBO Drive Max advanced intelligent driving system for free for 12 months.Ji Yue’s stuff sounds impressive, but it overlooks two key points.First, Tesla is Tesla, and Jiyue is Jiyue, and the brand appeal of the two is very different.In 2023, the penetration rate of Tesla FSD (Full-Self Driving) in the Asia-Pacific region is only 0.4%. Most people who buy Teslas are not buying them for the autonomous driving solution. Therefore, they will not buy them for the pure visual intelligent driving solution of the Jiyue 01.Second, I don’t want what you have, and you don’t have what I want.Note that the launch time of the Jiyue 01 is October 2023. In other words, after the new car completes the production capacity ramp-up, the real batch delivery time should come to 2024.What are new energy manufacturers doing in 2024?For cars priced above 200,000 yuan, 800V is absolutely standard, and laser radar is the hard currency. But the Jiyue 01 has none of these.For all the reasons mentioned above, plus the fact that Jiyue currently does not have a large-scale operating channel, it seems that Jiyue 01 does have very sufficient reasons not to increase in volume.However, from October last year to date, in these nearly 10 months, Jiyue has actually taken a series of self-rescue actions.Didn’t we say that its brand is not good and it shouldn’t have grabbed a share in the fiercely competitive 250,000 yuan SUV market as soon as it debuted?At the end of November last year, the price of the entire series of Jiyue 01, which had just been on the market for only one month, dropped by 30,000 yuan, and the long-range ternary lithium battery option package (100kWh) was simultaneously reduced by 10,000 yuan.Didn’t we say that its service channels are weak?On April 3, Jiyue announced that it had officially reached a charging network interconnection cooperation with NIO. Jiyue will gradually connect to the 3,747 charging stations and 21,800 charging piles that NIO Energy has built in 312 cities across the country.On April 9, Jiyue announced that it hasLynk & CoThe two companies have reached a strategic cooperation with the automotive external service brand "Lingji Lianfu". The two parties will work together to create a new after-sales service system that is more efficient, more convenient and more secure.Didn’t we say it doesn’t come with 800V as standard?Since the beginning of this year, Jiyue has been warming up for the launch of its second model, Jiyue 07, emphasizing that the new car is developed based on Geely's vast architecture and will provide two voltage platforms: 400V and 800V. This proves that Jiyue has the ability to keep up with the latest technology.However, what is the point of all this? The Jiyue 01 still has no improvement, which shows that Jiyue may have deeper problems that have not been dug out.
The question is, why were "NIO, Xiaopeng and Li Auto" able to stand out from hundreds of new car manufacturers?Of course, there are many comprehensive reasons, such as the strong intervention of capital, and the strengthening of brand characteristics through products and services.But there is one thing that cannot be ignored, and it is the commonality of the three companies. That is, the personal IP of the founders has played a very important role in the era of Internet economy. Among them, Li Xiang, the CEO of Ideal, is the most important.This key point was actually discovered and imitated by Xia Yiping, CEO of Jiyue.When Jiyue 01 was initially called Jidu ROBO-01 and was still in the research and development stage, Xia Yiping compared it with Xiaomi.At the Beijing Auto Show in April this year, Jiyue even set up its booth opposite Xiaomi SU7. Later, Xia Yiping also posted a video on his personal social platform saying that Jiyue is faster than Xiaomi in making cars.After the launch of the Jiyue 01, Xia Yiping shifted his focus and made it clear that when we defined this product in 2021, we wanted to compete with Tesla. The Jiyue 01 is intended to compete with the Tesla Model Y.Then, Xia Yiping found that Model Y was really out of his reach, and Xiaomi SU7 became a hit, so he turned his guns around and aimed at Xiaomi again.During the period when Xiaomi SU7 sales were rising, Xia Yiping released several videos saying that vehicle design should stick to originality, and criticized competitors for "paying tribute to classics" and "imitating"Porsche” behavior.It is conceivable that Xia Yiping’s remarks will definitely anger Mi fans.On August 6, Xia Yiping released a video saying that recently some competitors have used online trolls to discredit the Jiyue brand and him. But it seems that Xia Yiping does not reject this kind of interaction. He responded to the dense negative comments in the comment area one by one with a "stable mood".In fact, Xia Yiping has both point shooting and scatter shooting.At the end of June this year, Xia Yiping suddenly attacked Jia Yueting through his personal social media, saying that "FF91 without intelligent driving will be thrown into the trash can of the times."In fact, we know that in terms of independent car manufacturing alone, Jia Yueting must be better than Xia Yiping.Jia Yueting completed independent research and development in the United States, opened up all business links, and mass-produced products worth more than 2 million RMB. What would happen to Xia Yiping if he lost the support of Geely and Baidu?Combining all the above examples, it is not difficult to find that Xia Yiping is trying to increase the topic volume of his personal IP on the Internet by touching porcelain and taking advantage of traffic. He is trying to follow the example of Li Xiang, Li Bin, and HeXiaopengThe road I have traveled.Xia Yiping's more frequent statements in recent times are largely aimed at promoting the launch of the new car Jiyue 07.Recently, at the Jiyue 07 aesthetics appreciation meeting, Xia Yiping said that Jiyue spent 300 million yuan in engineering costs to move the A-pillar of the Jiyue 07 model back 6.5 centimeters in pursuit of ultimate beauty.These words have the style of a "success guru"'s speech, and they sound like they can call the wind and rain. However, this is selling products, not selling ideas.In fact, it is precisely this point that worries netizens the most. After all, the wool comes from the sheep. Should these costs be shared by consumers? This may not be the result that users want. You, Xia Yiping, think that the A-pillar is moved back a few centimeters, which is the ultimate beauty. Users think that beauty is another matter, but can safety be guaranteed?Therefore, combining freeloading and talking nonsense was the key means for Xia Yiping to attract traffic for his personal IP and help launch new cars during this period.What is the guiding ideology behind Xia Yiping's operation?When reflecting on the reasons for the sluggish sales, Xia Yiping said: As a new brand and a new category of product, when a user enters a Jiyue store, the first question he thinks about is not "I want to buy a car", but "what brand is this?" This requires us to solve the problem.Yes, all of Xia Yiping's seemingly bizarre behaviors and remarks that lack factual basis are actually intended to quickly increase the spread of the Jiyue brand.
Can Xia Yiping save Ji Yue from the danger by doing this?First, the era of new forces in car manufacturing has ended. The path that Li Xiang and Li Bin have taken is unique to the times and cannot be replicated. You have to know that the popular Lei Jun and Yu Chengdong did not succeed in attracting traffic because of a few words they said, but because they were already popular before, and their words attracted people's attention. The logic has been reversed.Second, Li Xiang, Li Bin, and He Xiaopeng all started their own successful Internet companies before entering the car manufacturing industry. They switched tracks by building cars.Xia Yiping's resume includes such dazzling elements as head of Fiat Chrysler's Asia Pacific Intelligent Vehicle Connectivity Business Unit and co-founder and chief technology officer of Mobike.But in the final analysis, none of them are independent business founders. To be frank, there is a difference between those who have truly been bosses and those who have not.Before this, Shen Hui and Xia Yiping of WM Motor had similar experiences, and WM Motor had already collapsed.NezhaZhang Yong of has had a similar experience, and Nezha is now getting worse and worse.Zero RunZhu Mingjiang, who was born in 1967, is considered an older entrepreneur in this circle. But Zhu Mingjiang has the experience of starting Dahua Technology from scratch with 5,000 yuan, and Leapmotor is getting better and better.Third, Jiyue was originally positioned as a high-end smart car robot brand. That is, intelligent driving is the brand label.But it is already 2024, and intelligent driving functions have been "popularized among all people", becoming standard equipment for almost all car models. Even Xiaopeng's intelligent driving label is gradually weakening. Under the current policy and regulatory framework, it is difficult for Jiyue's intelligent driving capabilities to demonstrate its "superior" capabilities.The 2023 China New Car Purchase Intention Study (NVI) released by JDPower shows that although the intelligent experience of automobiles has increased in recent years, its influence on users' car purchases only accounts for 14%.From this perspective, it may be difficult for Ji Yue to turn things around, even if Xia Yiping tries his best to attract traffic.
