with a wheelbase of 2900 mm, is smart returning to the mainstream or is it panicking?
2024-09-04
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on august 30, two days after its global debut in australia, the smart #5 jungle land first edition made its china debut at the chengdu auto show.
smart has a clear positioning for this car, which is to target the mainstream mid-size suv market.
yi han, ceo of smart china marketing company, said: "i can't make smart #5 too fancy. we won't make it a small and beautiful product. for me, it's a return to mainstream marketing while adhering to smart's brand genes and tone. this is the key to making this car a success."
the so-called "return" is to overthrow
from narrow city streets to the muddy suffolk park jungle in australia, to the western china expo center in chengdu, china. if smart #1 and #3 broke the original small and beautiful brand tone of smart, but still retained its quirky side, then smart #5 shattered the "urban close friend" personality created during the four-year brand renewal, trying to find a place in the hardcore wild lifestyle that it had never been involved in before.
smart elf #5 is positioned as a luxury five-seater suv, with a body length of 4705mm, a wheelbase of 2900mm, and an 85% "room ratio". at the same time, the new car is equipped with a 100kwh ternary lithium battery, an 800v pure electric high-voltage platform and 4c ultra-fast charging technology, which can charge 70% in 15 minutes, and a maximum cltc range of 740km.
seeing this familiar size (same platform as zeekr 7x) and mediocre parameters, one can't help but wonder, adding a smart logo and some mud decorations, can it satisfy the chinese car market's psychological demand for outdoor luxury?
there is no doubt that smart is eager to return to the more mainstream market. as yi han said, the market size of the mid-sized pure electric suv where the new smart elf #5 is located exceeds 6 million vehicles, and the market space is even larger.
but obviously, there are more and stronger opponents.
if you want to be powerful, why not choose the tank 300? if you want to be smart, why not directly choose the zeekr 7x on the same platform? if you want to be stylish, why not buy the mercedes-benz glb, which has a similar positioning but is more luxurious? in particular, the smart's usual exquisite and compact tone is really inconsistent with the jungle king's dress, which makes fans feel distracted and passers-by feel strange.
even yi han could not clearly describe the positioning of smart. he said: "smart is between geely and mercedes-benz and has its own inherent audience." what does "between geely and mercedes-benz" mean? it is difficult to understand its specific portrait from such ambiguous language.
among the comments making fun of the non-mainstream styling of smart #5, one weibo user had a good sense of humor: "isn't this styling still mainstream? at first glance it looks like a typical domestic brand hard-core suv, most of which look like this." it seems to be vindicating smart, but in fact it extinguishes its fantasy of trying to stand out in this red ocean market with its brand design.
brand renewal, embarrassing sales
if we look at the timeline, this is not the first time that smart has started over.
in 1994, nicolas hayek, ceo of the swiss swatch group, reached a cooperation with mercedes-benz with the dream of "making a compact car that can travel through the buildings of the metropolis". both companies have a high taste for artistic aesthetics. so, the two parties combined the first letters of their respective company names, s and m, and the word art, and smart was born.
at the 1997 frankfurt motor show, the first mass-produced car of the smart brand, the smart city coupe, was unveiled. its two-door, two-seater appearance immediately left people with the impression of being fashionable, individual and compact. the cooperation between the two giants has given smart its own genes of light luxury and art. due to its compact size, smart quickly became popular in europe, where streets are narrow, and later became a world-renowned exquisite commuter car.
in 2002, just four years after its official launch, smart broke the sales record, setting a global sales record of 150,000 units. in 2009, smart entered china, and the following year sales exceeded 4,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 119%. from 2009 to 2014, cumulative sales reached 55,000 units, making china the third largest market for smart in the world.
however, the demand in the chinese market has changed. the overall a00-class market has shrunk. local consumers have begun to prefer large cars, and smart sales have suffered a setback. in 2018, smart sold nearly 130,000 vehicles worldwide. by 2021, its global sales were only 38,500 vehicles, and the situation was critical.
then, smart launched a self-rescue. in early 2020, geely holding group and mercedes-benz announced that the two parties would establish a global joint venture for the smart brand, with each party holding 50% of the shares, mercedes-benz leading the design and geely leading the engineering development.
with the establishment of the joint venture, smart has undergone a comprehensive renewal including its brand, products and business model.
from the most important product point of view, the first model, smart #1, has a size of 4270 mm x 1822 mm x 1636 mm and a wheelbase of 2750 mm. it has been upgraded from a micro car to a compact suv while retaining its refinement. with the help of geely group's technological accumulation in the field of new energy, the smart brand has also made the transition from fuel to electric.
however, the revamped smart brand has not become a mainstream player.
public data shows that in 2023, the global sales of smart brand elf #1 and elf #3 will be 67,024 units, of which 42,292 units will be sold in the chinese market. in comparison, ideal auto sold 48,122 units in august this year. the annual sales of the two models are less than the sales of the leading new forces in one month. public data shows that in the first half of 2024, the average monthly retail sales of smart have fallen to around 2,000 units.
under the sweep of the price war, smart, which does not have pricing power, can only be forced to follow suit. smart global ceo tong xiangbei said, "we are not adjusting prices, but tailoring them according to user needs." smart #1 and #3 were reduced by 21,400-26,000 yuan and 36,000-56,000 yuan respectively in april this year. however, for smart, the price reduction did not bring a rebound in sales, but old users who had just purchased the car and encountered the price reduction really wanted to buy it.
looking back at the smart #5 launched this time, with a wheelbase of 2,900 mm, the size is large enough and the market is large enough. yi han hopes to achieve the goal of "doubling sales" through this.
but this also means that smart has once again deviated from the original intention of the brand and rushed into the red ocean market that does not fit its brand positioning. the muddy smart #5 is an attempt to actively target the mainstream market, which is more like a panic after the brand hit a wall in the small/compact suv market.
the paper reporter zhou chunlin
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