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recently, the automotive industry has been releasing financial reports. unlike the growth of the industry's top companies, the veteran automaker gac has followed a downward curve.

in the first half of 2024, gac group achieved operating income of 45.808 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 25.62%; the net profit after deducting non-recurring gains and losses was -338 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 112.51%.

the group said that the performance change was mainly affected by the "price war" in the domestic automobile industry. the cruel thing is that there is no time to regret the past, and new challenges are coming.

in order to survive, he xiaopeng turned the table over and launched the xiaopeng mona m03 to increase sales in the low-end market, and gac aion was caught in the crossfire.

xiaopeng mona m03 received over 30,000 orders within 48 hours after its launch, which gave xiaopeng a sigh of relief. however, while some are happy, others are sad. aion is still struggling in the quagmire.low-end models are trapped in the cage of online car-hailing, while the only voice of haobo, which is striving for the high-end, is that it hurts zhou hongyi's hand.

now that xiaopeng is competing for its territory, aion is in an even more difficult situation.

the battle for the low end

the reason why it is called turning the table over is that the final starting price of xiaopeng mona m03 is 119,800 yuan, which directly refreshes the lower price limit of xiaopeng models, and is equipped with its expertise in intelligent driving technology.

the mid- and low-end models (119,800-129,800 yuan) have l2 intelligent driving capabilities, which can realize functions such as smart cruising and automatic parking; the max version (155,800 yuan) has high-level urban intelligent driving capabilities, not limited to cities and routes, and will be delivered later.

xiaopeng positioned the m03 as "the first smart pure electric hatchback coupe loved by young people", maximizing the price-performance ratio and intending to increase sales in the low-end market.

according to he xiaopeng, the development of xiaopeng mona m03 took four years and invested up to 4 billion yuan. it was fully developed against models with a price of more than 200,000 yuan, and achieved the best in its class in terms of exterior styling, interior, intelligent driving, and smart cabin.

the best-selling pure electric sedan in the a-class car market is byd qin. according to insiders, the low-end version of mona is developed to match byd qin ev, striving to achieve "higher quality at the same price and lower price at the same quality", while the high-end version hopes to enter the market of tesla model 3.

however, on the surface, the xiaopeng mona m03 is snatching food from byd, but the customer groups faced by the pure electric and hybrid routes are not very overlapping. moreover, with its strong cost-reduction capabilities and current leading sales, byd is not afraid of competition. the real victim is aion.

an important part of the low-end market is the online ride-hailing market.

when xiaopeng mona m03 was first unveiled, he xiaopeng "refuted the rumor" by saying that m03 did not have a special online car-hailing version, trying to distance himself from the online car-hailing label. however, on the whole,m03 is perfect for online ride-hailing.

△ xiaopeng mona m03 (above) and aion s max (below)

from the origin of the car, three years ago, the new car manufacturing trend was in full swing, and didi, the leading domestic online car-hailing company, also wanted to get a piece of the pie. the product of the "da vinci" car manufacturing plan was the predecessor of m03. when didi withdrew from the market in 2023, it sold its car manufacturing business to xiaopeng, which was lagging behind, in exchange for a 3.31% stake in xiaopeng motors. in other words, the basic design of m03 fully considered the needs of the b-end market.

from the specific configuration, in order to reduce costs and save space, a torsion beam suspension is used, which ultimately achieves a lower total price. the pure electric route further reduces the cost of using the vehicle. there are already potential customers in the forum asking about the warranty issues of operating vehicles.

although aion won the title of "new force sales champion" in 2023, a hidden worry that cannot be ignored is——the company is too dependent on the online ride-hailing marketin 2023, aion's sales in the online car-hailing market accounted for 45.8% of its own sales, with a market share of over 25%, higher than byd.

the weakness of over-reliance on the online car-hailing market also affected aion's ipo process. it originally planned to list on the science and technology innovation board in 2023 and become the "first new energy vehicle stock". its valuation once reached 100 billion yuan. with the change of the competitive environment, it has now turned to the hong kong stock market, but there is not much news on the specific progress.

gu huinan, general manager of aion, said: "aion is not short of money. the ipo is not to raise money. the core is to solve the problems of system and mechanism."

in any case, aion still faces many difficulties that need to be resolved.

ride-hailing prison

for aion, the current external situation is not a good one, and the internal situation is not a good one either.

in the early stages of the development of the new energy wave, b-end demand was relatively stable, and vigorously developing the online car-hailing market was a shortcut to getting a seat at the table.

when aion s was released a few years ago, it was less than 150,000 yuan to buy a pure electric sedan with large space, long battery life and a very avant-garde design, which attracted a lot of attention from consumers. however, in the face of subsequent market competition, aion put some aion s into the online car-hailing and taxi markets in order to increase sales.

aion has indeed tasted the sweetness. from 2020 to 2022, its sales were 55,900, 120,200 and 271,200 respectively. at its peak in 2023, its annual sales reached 480,000, a year-on-year increase of 77.02%. in the new energy sales rankings, it is second only to byd and tesla china.

the glory was like a flash of fireworks. this year, the company showed signs of fatigue and was once exposed to have taken a series of cost-cutting measures. although aion strongly denied the reduction in benefits, the declining data was irrefutable.

in august, aion's sales were 31,000 vehicles, down 29.44% year-on-year; the cumulative sales from january to august were 186,000 vehicles, down 7.74% year-on-year. in both dimensions, aion's sales have declined for seven consecutive months, and its sales target for 2024 is 700,000 vehicles. so far, it has only achieved 27% of the target, and the pressure in the second half of the year is not small.

aion is obviously lacking in stamina. the reason is:taking shortcuts is not a long-term solution, and we must eventually return to direct market competition.

however, aion’s predicament seems to be difficult to reverse. on the one hand, the ceiling of the online car-hailing market has already appeared; on the other hand, its models themselves do not have strong competitiveness to seize the c-end market.

data from the "statistical report on the development of china's internet" shows that in 2023, the number of online ride-hailing users in my country will be 528 million, an increase of about 44.7%, but the number of online ride-hailing drivers will increase by 127.3% during the same period.

since the second half of last year, many places have issued warnings of capacity saturation, and the news of "online car-hailing market saturation" and "order decline" have been on the hot search many times. according to the data of the china passenger car association, a total of 848,000 new cars will be sold in the national online car-hailing market in 2023, of which new energy online car-hailing will increase by 23%, and the penetration rate has reached 90%.

aion's online car-hailing label has been deeply rooted in people's minds. in order to avoid being restricted by the upper limit of growth in the segmented market, aion has already taken measures to break free from the "online car-hailing cage", but unfortunately the results are minimal. for example, the aion s plus and aion s max models it launched for the aion s have not won the favor of the majority of c-end users.

in terms of marketing, aion is eager to show its technical strength, but it often seems to overdo it. for example, the graphene battery and other technologies it promotes are still a long way from being truly large-scale, which inevitably makes people feel that it is self-promotion.

in addition to technology, aion also does not have many chips in terms of factors that make a car model hot-selling, such as the support of brand power, the moat of high-end intelligent driving, and the ultimate cost-effectiveness.

on july 23, aion's second-generation aion v (tyrannosaurus rex) was launched, positioned as a "new hard-core smart driving suv" and aimed at the a-class pure electric market between 130,000 and 190,000 yuan. the sales target is to be among the top two in the market segment and strive to break free from the cage of the online car-hailing market.

in this market, there are many competitors, such as leapmotor and nezha, which are all accelerating their pace. it will take time to observe whether aion can stand out from the crowd.

the pain of new energy transformation

aion’s downturn reflects gac’s difficulties in transforming in the new energy era.

under the wave of new energy transformation, joint venture cars have been struggling in the chinese market in recent years, and competition from domestic brands has become increasingly fierce. gac group is also feeling the pressure.

financial report data shows that from january to june, the sales volume of gac honda, one of its joint venture brands, was 207,900 vehicles, down 28.28% year-on-year; gac toyota was 336,000 vehicles, down 25.80% year-on-year. the two brands did not fare much better than aion, so that gac's overall revenue and net profit both declined in the first half of this year.

gac group explained that it was mainly due to the impact of the "price war" in the domestic automobile industry and the increase in commercial and political investment. however, apart from external factors, it is also an indisputable fact that its own products are not competitive enough.

in order to get rid of the "online car-hailing label", in september 2022, gac aion launched the luxury pure electric brand haobo, trying to impact the mid-to-high-end new energy market. the pre-sale price of its first product, the pure electric supercar haobo ssr, reached 1.286 million yuan, and there will be pure electric sedan haobo gt and pure electric suv haobo ht in the future, which are priced at 200,000 yuan.

△ haobo ht source: haobo official website

however, haobo has always found it difficult to make waves in the market. its total sales in 2023 were only 8,087 vehicles, and its sales in the first half of this year were just over 6,000 vehicles, less than the sales of its competitors in one month.

moreover, to this day, the brand awareness of haobo is still very limited, and the two times it went viral were due to negative events. one was in june this year, when zhou qi, a player of the guangdong hongyuan team of the chinese men's basketball professional league, publicly stated that the sponsor haobo did not fulfill its promise to send a car, which ended with haobo issuing an announcement to fulfill its promise; the other was in july this year, when zhou hongyi, the founder of 360 group, tested the anti-pinch function of haobo ht gull-wing doors with his hands and accidentally got his fingers pinched by the car door, which aroused doubts about the technical capabilities of the haobo brand.

the reason is,aion was somewhat slow in judging market changes and missed the opportunity of plug-in hybrid, which ultimately led to a lack of product strength.

gac focuses on developing the pure electric route for aion, while the plug-in hybrid route, which has a faster growing market demand, is mainly tested on individual models of brands such as gac trumpchi.

as a high-end brand, haobo not only failed to keep up with the industry's cutting-edge technology, but also had to face the sudden attack of the industry's "price war". in order to complete the task of opening up the high-end market and enhancing aion's brand image, it needs to find a more effective way out.

gu huinan once revealed some subsequent plans. he said that the launch time of new cars under haobo last year was no more than half a year. with the subsequent independent operation of the brand, the completion and production of the factory, and the implementation of technologies such as the m25 super electric drive, haobo will enter a full-speed development stage. at the same time, aion will consider completing the extended-range and plug-in hybrid product lines, and specific models may be launched next year.

faced with the continuous offensive of plug-in hybrid models from rival companies, gac itself does not have strong enough plug-in hybrid products to fight back. according to current plans, gac's efforts will begin next year. it is still unknown what changes will occur in the market by then. in any case, gac needs to speed up its pace.

conclusion

at a meeting in june this year, zeng qinghong, chairman of gac group, criticized the price war, saying, "the purpose of an enterprise is to make a profit and contribute to the country. we should have a big picture and long-termism, rather than just chasing the short term."

but competition is always there, and no one can be immune. while the industry leaders are rapidly expanding their markets and promoting scale strategies, cutting-edge technologies are also rapidly iterating.

although gac started early in developing hybrid technology, it was slow to catch up due to its inaccurate judgment of the market situation. in order to further win the "ticket" in the era of new energy vehicles, gac not only needs to join the "price war" but also speed up the pace of technological iteration.

time waits for no one.