Blue Whale Reporter Zhao Yu
On March 21st, Li Xiang, CEO of Ideal Automobile, released an internal letter reflecting on the series of doubts that Ideal MEGA has recently faced. He bluntly stated that the company's mistake in controlling the pace of the ideal MEGA market and excessive focus on sales were the main reasons for the questioning of this model.
Li Xiang wrote in an internal letter that the Ideal MEGA and High Voltage Pure Electric must go through a phase from 0 to 1 similar to the Ideal ONE and Extended Range Electric, otherwise they cannot have the same business potential from 1 to 10 as the Ideal L series, which is a misjudgment of the company's pure electric strategic rhythm. At the same time, the chaotic pace of the Ideal MEGA has greatly reduced the time and energy for the sales team to serve L-series users. "The main model, the Ideal L8, even has no space for store placement."
Ideal car internal information
On March 1st, the first pure electric MPV model under Ideal Automobile, Ideal MEGA, was launched simultaneously with the 2024 Ideal L series model. At that time, when reporters visited Ideal Auto stores, they found that due to limited store space, many stores found it difficult to accommodate all of the brand's models for sale at the same time. Some exhibition cars of certain models are parked in the underground parking lot of supermarkets.
Behind the rapid pace of new product launch is a high level of attention to sales. Under the trend of intensified industry competition, the "price war" is transmitted from the enterprise end to the market end, and consumers are in a strong wait-and-see mood. In order to defend their position, car companies have actively or passively joined the wave of roll prices, roll services, and roll configurations.
Among them, price is the most intuitive breakthrough point for consumers to feel industry competition, and it is also the main factor for the outside world to judge whether a product can achieve hot sales.
Earlier this year, Ideal Automobile announced that it would challenge its sales target of 800000 vehicles within the year, which is close to BMW Group's 2023 delivery volume in China. Based on this, this year, Ideal Automobile has formed a product matrix consisting of four extended range and four pure electric models, including the newly launched Ideal MEGA and the Ideal L6 planned to be launched in the market within the year. It can be seen that Ideal Automobile attaches great importance to the new model market.
"We focus too much on sales and competition from top to bottom, allowing desires to surpass value, significantly reducing the user value and business efficiency that we were originally best at. The pursuit of desires has turned us into people we dislike." Li Xiang reflected that in the future, Ideal Automobile will reduce sales expectations and desires, return to healthy growth, and improve user value and business efficiency.
According to him, after adjusting its product strategy, Ideal Automobile will abandon its comprehensive sales strategy and focus on cities with strong high-end pure electric consumption capabilities. It will concentrate on large-scale retail centers in top cities for product experience and test drives, and accelerate the construction of supercharging stations in these cities. "After effectively completing the stage from 0 to 1, promote to more cities and a larger user group."