[car home Information] The ideal L9 has finally arrived. Li wants to mention in the Weibo that announced the next schedule of L9 that the delivery will start in August and the delivery volume will exceed 10,000 in September. As soon as this statement came out, four seats were shocked. A large SUV was over 10,000 in the second month of delivery. Did you count it or close your eyes? Who is going to sell a hybrid car made by a new force close to 500 thousand? Can Li Xiang’s ideal come true?
In the promo of Ideal L9, the scenes and elements are spectacular scenery, comfortable life, family members holding hands and smiling faces of children, which add up to the happy life of rich families. This tonality is the selling point of this ideal flagship SUV for home intelligence: creating a mobile home and creating a happy home.
The ideal is to have experience in building a family car. Li ONE originally positioned the dad car, which solved some pain points of the family car. Persevered in exploring and answering the ideal of "What kind of car does a family in China need", it conveyed its perception of the demand for family cars to the market.
The launch of Ideal L9 is a manifestation of Li Xiang’s entrepreneurial concept of "maintaining the advantages established from the 0-1 verification period". The product definition and iterative ability derived from Li ONE’s success may be the confidence for him to enter the blue ocean market of family cars with the second production car of 500,000 yuan.
The sword goes sideways: Ideal L9 "Nothing"?
The ideal L9 positioning large SUV, priced at 459,800 yuan, does not provide optional equipment, and it is still a car and a price, which is really "Li Xiang". (|) still adopts the extended-range hybrid system and is equipped with a 1.5T four-cylinder engine, which will bring higher thermal efficiency and lower fuel consumption compared with the criticized 1.2T three-cylinder engine in Li ONE. Equipped with a 44.5kWh battery pack, the comprehensive cruising range of CLTC is 1315km, and the pure battery life is 215km.
If Li ONE, which sells for more than 300,000 yuan, can sell like hot cakes, and it has robbed the market of Highlander, Touran and other models, whose market is it going to rob for the ideal L9, whose price has jumped to 450,000-500,000 yuan? Who are the competing products? In fact, it is difficult for you to find a "perfect" competing product for it in the existing product sequence.
From the body level, its competing products should be large SUV； such as BMW X7 and Mercedes-Benz GLS; Functionally, its competing products are more like Saina SIENNA, Tengshi D9 and Lantu Dreamer, and even Weilai ES7/ES8；; From the pricing point of view, it just cut into the hinterland of luxury medium-sized SUV market, such as BMW X3, Mercedes-Benz GLC and Audi Q5L.
Undoubtedly, price is still the first sensitive factor in consumer choice, so from the perspective of pricing, the ideal L9 can’t touch the price range of mainstream products of large SUVs, but directly targets the medium and large SUVs of Weilai, BBA and some medium and large MPV products, including both fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles.
In this way,"Get a higher-level car at the same price" and "Get a car at the same level at a lower price" may be the dislocation competition strategy of the ideal L9., and the corresponding consumption space and growth momentum is the ideal market prospect of L9.
Next, I have to talk about product strength. What’s unique about Ideal L9?
Dad PLUS: a unique product selling point, a comfortable mobile home
In terms of body size, the ideal L9 is the largest SUV on the domestic market, as long as the Mercedes-Benz GLS and 55mm longer than the BMW X7. Although the width and height are not as good as them, the acceleration of 0-100km/h is better, and the seat layout of the whole system is 2+2+2, which makes the interior space more spacious and comfortable, which is also the core selling point of the ideal family car.
With regard to its power configuration and interior, I won’t say much here, but say two most distinctive places: as a PLUS-size daddy car, the ideal L9′ s riding space, comfort and the core selling point of technology and entertainment in the car.
The ideal seat of L9 is made of Nappa leather, the second and third rows are independent seats, and all six seats support electric adjustment and seat heating. The seats in the first two rows also support chair ventilation and ten-point massage, and the heating coils of these four seats cover the seat flanks. The second row of seats on the right side is equipped with four-way electric leg rest, small table board and dual-purpose refrigerator for refrigeration and heating, which is not only a milk warmer for children, but also provides iced happy water for families, and it is absolutely perfect.
In terms of entertainment space, the second row is equipped with retractable rear cabin entertainment screen, central control screen, co-driver entertainment screen and rear cabin entertainment screen, all of which use three 15.7-inch OLED screens, all of which can be directly connected with the Switch through the Type-C interface, so that passengers can have a better audio-visual and entertainment experience when riding, and can realize five-screen interaction, providing more entertainment solutions for family long-distance travel.
On the whole, Ideal L9 can be said to be an evolutionary version of Li ONE, with the same product logic, technical route and category. It only provides consumers with a bigger, smarter and higher-equipped daddy car on the basis of existing consumer cognition. It can even be said that Ideal has built an "MPV in an SUV coat", so can it be eaten by both sides?
What is the capacity of the target market? How is the growth?
Although it is a large SUV, the ideal L9 obviously does not have the ability to compete with the main products of the current large SUV. Although the price is cheaper, the brand power is not enough. The large SUV market is a niche market in terms of product supply and consumption scale, with an annual sales volume of only 40,000 vehicles. In addition, limited by economic strength, the growth rate in the past two years is lower than that of the overall automobile market. More importantly, this level of market must be a comprehensive contest of hard power and soft power of product power+brand power.
Mercedes-Benz GLS and BMW X7 dominate this market. According to the data of the past two years, the peak monthly sales volume of Mercedes-Benz GLS can exceed 3,000, with an average monthly sales volume of about 1,600. The monthly sales of BMW X7 peaked at just over 2,000 vehicles, mostly below 1,000 vehicles. If we look at the price again, the starting price of these two cars exceeds 1 million yuan, and the audience is quite limited.
"The best large SUV』 sold by Mercedes-Benz GLS in China"
And when an SUV sells for less than 500 thousand, the opportunity comes-
The price of 459,800 yuan has to be said that Li Xiang is very witty, because 500,000 yuan is the price watershed of domestic automobile consumption-upward, the annual consumption is only one million vehicles, and several "famous brands" have been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people; Downward, there are a large number of users who "bite their teeth", so 300,000-500,000 yuan is a very growing automobile consumption space in recent years.
The consumption of 400,000-500,000 yuan SUVs in 2021 is about 900,000 vehicles, among which BBA’s three medium-sized SUVs account for 49%. If the price is widened to more than 500,000, it will be close to 1.2 million, and the average monthly sales of bicycles of BBA’s three medium-sized SUVs will be more than 10,000-doesn’t this seem to be the market that ideal L9 wants? !
Therefore, the ideal L9 will inherit the word-of-mouth moat built by Li ONE in the medium and large SUV market, cut into the large SUV track, upgrade the practical attributes of the family in the cockpit intelligence and interactive experience, cater to the consumption upgrading needs of middle-class families, and compete with BBA in size, but the price drops to the low-end products of BBA, so as to strive for the growth dividend of the SUV market of 400,000-500,000 yuan.
Where does the confidence come from? Who are the potential users?
Emboldened, with the product logic and consumption positioning analyzed above, the growth bonus of relevant consumption range and the strategy of dislocation competition. To sum up, one is unique product logic and positioning, the other is intelligent electrification technology bonus, the third is consumption upgrade bonus, and the fourth is dislocation competition. In addition, there is production capacity to test this new car-making force.
The brand-new 1.5T four-cylinder range extender on Ideal L9 is produced by Sichuan Ideal Xinchen Technology Company. The capacity of related projects in the first phase is planned to be 200,000 units, of which the estimated capacity is 80,000 units in 2022. At least this year, these 1.5T four-cylinder range extenders are all used by Ideal L9.
In terms of vehicle production, the ideal L9 is produced in Changzhou base, with the current production capacity of 100,000 vehicles/year, including Li ONE. The second phase of expansion is under way, and the annual production capacity will increase to 200,000 vehicles after completion. In 2021, Li ONE delivered 91,000 vehicles, which basically exhausted the production capacity of Changzhou base.
However, the launch of the Ideal L9 may backfire on Li ONE’s delivery capacity, and the follow-up delivery situation in Li ONE is also worthy of attention. Before the completion of the second phase expansion of Changzhou Factory, the Ideal only has an annual production capacity of 100,000 vehicles for joint use by Li ONE and L9.
In addition, LI’s Beijing Hyundai No.1 Factory is also undergoing renovation and expansion. After renovation, it is planned to have an annual production capacity of 100,000 vehicles, but it is only used to produce pure electric vehicles, and it is planned to be put into production at the end of 2023. In January this year, the land for the new factory in Chongqing, LI was signed, and the Chongqing base will be completed in 2025. However, the specific construction progress and capacity planning of the base are unknown.
In terms of potential users, one is to buy a user who is obsessed with a large SUV with less money, and such users will be lost from BBA’s medium-sized SUV market; One kind is users who prefer to use MPV at home and have to take care of their daily commuting. After all, they drive an MPV to work and an SUV to work, and the latter has no sense of disobedience. Such users are part of the potential customers of Tengshi D9 and dreamers, even those of Saina SIENNA. In addition, it is also possible that some users in Li ONE will move on.
In short, this SUV with MPV function is really possible to eat both ends.
On June 21st, the listing of Ideal L9 has been scheduled, and the honeymoon period of new products will bring a large number of early adopters to the ideal. It is not impossible to start delivery in August and achieve over 10,000 in September, which is a cumulative amount after all..However, considering the current production capacity in LI and the delivery from Li ONE, 4,000 to 5,000 vehicles should be a more pragmatic monthly sales volume, which is also a very good sales volume.
After all, Chinese is willing to spend 450,000-500,000 yuan to buy a car, either choosing a luxury brand or abandoning the brand to buy more configurations. The biggest advantage of Ideal L9 is its price advantage and almost full configuration. Whether to choose BBA brand or L9 configuration is up to everyone. The only question is whether there is 500,000.
Editor’s summary:
The large SUV market is dominated by imported cars. At present, only three China brand cars are on sale in the world. The sales of Hongqi E-HS9, Beijing BJ90 and Ideal L9, the million-class Beijing BJ90 and Hongqi E-HS9 with a price of 500,000-800,000 yuan are two or three figures, which is not enough to make a storm. Li ONE once worked as a mainstream foreign brand and luxury brand in the medium and large SUV market. If the ideal L9 can stand in the market of "product+brand" comprehensive contest of large SUV, the ideal brand power will also increase a lot. Then, what scale do you think the ideal monthly sales volume of L9 will be after stabilization? Welcome to vote and leave your expectation. (Text/car home Wang Jingbo)
