撰写I was born with two golden spoons, Baidu and Geely, but I can’t sell a car well.
When it comes to cross-border car building, the most concerned thing is Xiaomi. But before Xiaomi, there was another brand that also built cars across borders, and that was Extreme Yue.
But unlike Xiaomi’s "starting from scratch", Ji Yue won at the starting line when he was born. Backed by Baidu and Geely, Jiyue is positioned as a high-end smart car robot brand under Geely Holding, and its first model is named Jiyue 01.
With its unique design concept and high-tech intelligent configuration, Extreme Yue 01 won the order of over 15,000 vehicles in one fell swoop within 24 hours of listing. However, the good times didn’t last long. In the past six months, the sales of Extreme Yue 01 totaled less than 2,000 vehicles, which was very bleak.
Recently, it has been reported that Extreme Yue Automobile is carrying out drastic internal reforms, and Yang Zhen, head of UD- user development department at the marketing end, and several directors and other executives have left.
It is also a cross-border car. Why does Xiaomi set a correct example for us, but it has become a counterexample?
Extreme Yue is not called extreme Yue.
In fact, the first extremely yue car was not called extremely yue, but its predecessor was Jidu car.
In 21 years, Baidu and Geely reached an intention to build a car together. Based on Geely’s latest research and development of the world’s leading pure electric architecture, the vast SEA intelligent evolution experience architecture, the two sides will cooperate closely in the related fields of smart car manufacturing to jointly build a smart car.
In 2022, Jidu ROBO-01, a subsidiary of Jidu Automobile, was unveiled at Guangzhou Auto Show, in which the limited edition of Jidu ROBO-01 lunar exploration was priced at 399,800 yuan, and the new car was positioned as a medium and large SUV.
In 2023, Jidu Automobile was absent from the Shanghai Auto Show due to production qualification problems, and then Jidu Automobile was put on hold. In August of the same year, Jidu Automobile changed its name to Extreme Yue Automobile and launched Extreme Yue 01.
Although Jidu re-dressed in disguise and successfully embarked on the road of building a car, the name change storm did lead to the suspension of the publicity of Jidu Automobile. The rapid dissipation of brand popularity, coupled with a serious lack of market influence, left a problem for itself when the car was born.
The pricing of fans?
Although there were some twists and turns in the process of building a car, I finally got on the table. As "the world’s first AI car robot", the first model of Extreme Vietnam, Extreme Vietnam 01, was officially launched, with a starting price of 249,900 yuan.
As one of the few models equipped with 8295 chips and dual Orin-X smart driving chips at that time, and also based on Geely’s vast architecture, does the pricing of Extreme Yue 01 seem reasonable? But at the price of 249,900 yuan, you can only buy a car without 800V, intelligent driving (need to buy separately), lithium iron phosphate battery and 550km battery life. In the eyes of most consumers, this is an uneconomical deal.
In addition, in the China market at that time, the smoke of price war was everywhere, and it was very common for car companies to sacrifice profits to maintain sales, and consumers were extremely sensitive to prices. Therefore, the price of Extreme Yue 01 did not give the market a surprise.
The feedback from the market forced Ji Yue to make a quick adjustment. One month after the new car went on the market, the official price of the model was lowered: the price of all models of the model was lowered by 30,000 yuan, and the optional package of ternary lithium battery with long battery life (100kWh) was lowered by 10,000 yuan simultaneously.
But in the face of discounts, consumers are more cautious. According to the sales data, in January 2004, the sales volume of Extreme Yue 01 was 218 vehicles, which was nearly half lower than the 421 vehicles in the first month of listing.
It can be seen that the strategy of price reduction in the whole department has not brought considerable changes to the sales volume of Extreme Yue 01, but has aggravated the downturn in sales volume. And the road to building a car seems to be getting more and more confused.
No Xiaomi will market?
In March of this year, Extreme Yue held the AI DAY 2024 Technology Conference. When reflecting on the reasons for the sluggish sales, Xia Yiping, CEO of Extreme Yue Automobile, said: "As a new brand and a new category of products, when a user enters the extreme Yue store, the first question to think about is not that I want to buy a car, but what brand it is, which requires us to solve the problem."
Compared with Xiaomi, which is also a cross-border car maker, Extreme Vietnam is indeed inferior in marketing. For example, in the grasp of product strength, it is also against Tesla, which is somewhat naive.
At the launch conference of Xiaomi SU7, when we bid for Tesla, what Lei Jun mentioned most was that we made this function the best, or that this function was unique to us.
On the other hand, the extreme Vietnam side seems a little timid, and it is also equipped with a pure visual scheme. The extreme Vietnam has not highlighted its own advantages, and it is also quite satisfactory in publicity, and it has hit the nail on the head.
As for consumers, they always only recognize the first and don’t recognize the second. What reason do they have to choose an emerging brand with no advantage?
In addition, the pace of product update is somewhat unreasonable.
In the five months since the listing of Extreme Yue 01, OTA has been upgraded five times, which is equivalent to upgrading once a month. In this regard, the official statement is that consumers can drive new cars every month.
But as everyone knows, this kind of behavior is not a good thing in the eyes of consumers. Frequent car updates will make the market feel that your car needs to constantly repair loopholes, thus reducing the trust of users and the market.
Even if you are the first car with 8295 chip, even if you have a big model of ERNIE Bot to get on the bus, the failure in marketing is bound to add insult to injury to Jiyue’s road to building a car.
Write it at the end
Xia Yiping mentioned that at present, the internal sales volume of Extreme Vietnam Automobile is improving, but as far as the current market situation and its own sales feedback are concerned, it is unlikely that Extreme Vietnam 01 will win this turnaround.
Next, Extreme Yue can only bet on the new model Extreme Yue 07.
In this extremely involuted market, it is extremely necessary to find its own position, give full play to its greatest advantages, and more importantly, do a good job in marketing. The next challenge will only be more severe.