Four days ago, Jihu automobile and Huawei released the new hi version of alpha s, which has two configurations: advanced version and advanced version, with a starting price of 397900 yuan. The car was released at the Shanghai International Auto Show in April 2021. It was originally to be delivered from the fourth quarter of 2021, but it has been delayed. Therefore, this press conference is more like a show of "technology" of Huawei and Jihu show - intelligent core components such as computing platform, vehicle machine and intelligent driving assistance system, as well as motors and electronic controls in the three electric system come from Huawei.
Before the press conference, Jihu was noticed because Cui Jian had an online concert. On the evening of April 15, Cui Jian's first online concert was broadcast live on the video number, which is also the first time that the video Number tried to broadcast the title of the concert, and it was Jihu who named this concert.
Official data showed that the concert was watched by 46 million people online, with 5 million heat and 119 million likes. Extreme fox pays a lot, but it is also considered to be a "successful marketing", which seems to be a win-win cooperation.
Huawei is behind the "technology show" and Cui Jian is behind the "marketing show", which has also raised doubts about Jihu - good at marketing and insufficient technology research and development. Judging from the financial report of BAIC Blue Valley, it seems to be true.
Cui Jian brought attention but no orders
On the evening of April 15, the video number of Cui Jian's concert was swiped on social media, which also pushed the brand exposure of Jihu to a new peak. Wechat index shows that on the evening of April 15, the wechat index of "extreme Fox" exceeded 7.804 million, which is the second highest data in history.
"But it didn't bring many orders. Although the flow of people in the store has become more and more, they came to see the car in admiration of the name. After a round of screening in the setting link, there are fewer transactions in the end." One of Beijing's extreme fox space (also a direct store of extreme Fox) said frankly that it did not generate as many orders as expected. However, he did not specify the "expected" order quantity.
The day after Cui Jian's concert, the wechat index of "extreme Fox" fell sharply. By April 18, the index had fallen below average. Wechat index shows that the average value of "extreme Fox" index is nearly 900000.
This statement has been confirmed by the sales offices of other polar fox spaces. This also means that the concert sponsored by Cui Jian has attracted tens of millions of attention, but the order conversion is relatively limited.
Jihu explained to the next generation Automobile Research Institute that the title sponsorship of Cui Jian's online concert is a concrete embodiment and action of Jihu's interpretation of the concept of "breaking the boundary" and its continuous efforts to innovate the marketing strategy. Brand marketing is a process of paying attention to the cost and gradually releasing the effect. Its pulling effect on sales lags behind, and plays a more important role in the long-term development of the brand.
Having tasted the sweetness, Jihu made it clear that in the future, it plans to continue to strengthen cross-border cooperation and deeply cultivate marketing IP building, and continue to build brand marketing activities with a unique mark of Jihu through IP innovation, form innovation, content innovation and technological innovation. This also means that the marketing investment of Jihu will not be low in the future.
With the huge investment in marketing, Jihu has been regarded as a "marketing only" car enterprise by the outside world in the past two or three years. In fact, BAIC blue valley behind Jihu is still a car enterprise whose marketing is more important than technology research and development.
The 2021 annual report disclosed by BAIC Blue Valley shows that in 2021, Jihu sold 26100 vehicles, a slight increase of 0.82% year-on-year. The loss attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 5.244 billion yuan. Its sales expenses were about 1.672 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 65.83%. For the increase in sales expenses, BAIC bluevale explained in its annual report that it was mainly due to the increase in advertising, exhibition and operation expenses compared with the previous period.
In 2021, BAIC bluevale's sales expenses exceeded its R & D expenses. According to the financial report, in 2021, BAIC bluevale's R & D investment increased by 24.14% year-on-year, reaching 1.208 billion yuan. Both R & D investment and growth are less than the sales expenses.
Paying too much attention to marketing and topic concerns has also brought controversy to Jihu. In July 2021, a car column named "understanding the car test field" conducted a collision test between BYD Han EV and extreme fox alpha s. The result was that BYD Han EV caught fire 48 hours after the test. The host revealed in the program that the firefighters determined that the spontaneous combustion was caused by the failure of the battery electrical circuit, and finally the vehicle was completely damaged.
This result caused an uproar, especially BYD strongly questioned the accuracy and authenticity of this result. It was once believed that Jihu sponsored the test. However, this statement was denied by Jihu and the program.
One of the reasons for questioning is that Beijing Hesheng huijihu space (also a direct store of Jihu) and other stores have played clips of test videos to show customers the safety and reliability of Jihu vehicles. "We played it for a while, but then it was stopped." The salesperson of a polar fox space told the next generation car research institute.
His statement was confirmed by his colleagues in the same store and other store sales colleagues. Next generation Automotive Research Institute also verified with some other employees in the stores near Jihu space and found that it was true.
"Jihu wants to understand. Now he finds that selling cars can't be the same as before. There should be a degree of topic. With a degree of topic, for a new brand, it means that more people know." A person who had been in charge of delivery in Jihu told the next generation automotive research institute that when he was in Jihu, Jihu did not sell well.
Even from 2021, the sales volume of Jihu is hardly satisfactory. 26100 cars are sold a year, with an average of 2175 cars per month, which is less than the sales of Xiaopeng automobile and Weilai in half a month.
"Next generation Automotive Research Institute" sought confirmation from Jihu. The other party responded that Jihu officials were unaware of the test and would not take the initiative to request similar tests. Playing the test video clip in the store, Jihu did not respond positively. A person familiar with the program also said that this program has not been commercialized and does not accept sponsorship.
Technology aura brought by Huawei
Extreme fox alpha s hi version was first released at the Shanghai International Auto Show in April 2021. At that time, Jihu claimed that this car could be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2021, but finally broke the appointment.
According to a person familiar with the matter, this may be because Yu Chengdong is in charge of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution bu. When this car was first released, it was the current Bu COO of Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution. Wang Jun was a very Fox platform. He was the president at that time. Wang Jun's job change took place in September 2021, just before the delivery of Jihu alpha s hi version.
A very fox space sales revealed some details of the changes, "the car machine of alpha s hi version released for the first time is actually relatively rough, and the new hi version has been greatly improved." He also showed some comparison pictures of car machines to the next generation car institute.
"This order conversion is even better than that after Cui Jian's concert. As far as I know, more than 7000 blind users even choose to pick up the car after waiting for a year. If they order the car now, it is expected to be delivered by June 30, which requires a certain cycle." He said.
For the new alpha s hi version of Jihu, an old owner of Jihu said frankly that it was "too expensive". Compared with the basic version released a year ago but never delivered, the new alpha s hi advanced version has a price increase of more than 10000 yuan and a starting price of nearly 400000 yuan.
The biggest selling point of this car is the intelligent driving assistance system based on Huawei's intelligent driving solution and the mdc810 intelligent driving computing platform supporting 400 tops computing power. Another major upgrade is to support 800V ultra-high voltage fast charging - but this speed can only be achieved in Jihu's own charging station. As of March 7, Jihu has built charging stations covering 32 cities in China.
The reason why the owner bought Jihu was that he needed a pure electric SUV, but at that time, there were not many pure electric SUVs in the price range of 200000 to 300000. Moreover, his friends working in BAIC tried their best to recommend Jihu to him. Of course, as a new energy brand born from traditional automobile enterprises, Jihu's quality control has been recognized by him.
"But I won't buy a new car from Jihu. Maybe I can try another brand. This car is too expensive, and the cost of changing the brand is not different from the cost of replacement." He is temporarily unable to pay more extra costs for upgrading limited intelligent assisted driving and more restricted ultra-high pressure fast charging.
The lack of cost-effective competitiveness may be a major challenge for Jihu and Huawei in their cooperation. The bigger challenge may be that the success of bilateral cooperation depends more on Huawei.
The success of the new alpha s hi version largely depends on the stability of Huawei's solution. This is also a great embarrassment. It has insufficient self-research ability and relies heavily on Huawei's technology - the world's first mass production vehicle equipped with hi Huawei's full stack intelligent vehicle solution, the world's first mass production vehicle supporting high-level intelligent driving on urban roads, and the world's first high-end pure electric mass production car equipped with Huawei's intelligent cockpit - Hongmeng car OS.
In terms of highlights, the new alpha s hi version is almost inseparable from the word "Huawei". At the press conference on May 7, Yu Chengdong revealed the possible hidden dangers of this dependence. He claimed that "Huawei's auto drive system is the strongest auto drive system in the world today, and none of them.". However, he also admitted that only the hardware architecture is "None", and the software needs to be polished and iterated - there will be imperfections in the software of the high-level automatic driving assistance system (for example, it is not enough in AI scene training).
Jihu's dependence on Huawei's technology is in sharp contrast to SAIC's "resistance" to Huawei - "SAIC can't accept cooperating with a third-party company such as Huawei to drive automatically. In this way, it becomes the soul and SAIC becomes the body." Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC, has just described the relationship between Huawei and Jihu. Not only that, the electric control and motor in the three electricity system of the new alpha s hi version are also from Huawei.
This dependence seems to the outside world more like Jihu selling more cars by taking advantage of Huawei's brand influence. In the year since the alpha s hi version was released twice, due to the delivery delay, several media have heard the news of the breakdown of the cooperation between Jihu and Huawei.
Jihu told the next generation automotive research institute that the cooperation process between the two sides was smooth. In the R & D process of the new alpha s hi version, engineers of both sides cooperated for more than 1200 days, and the generalization test mileage exceeded one million kilometers. "The generalization test of a high-level intelligent vehicle is a complex project, which needs to verify the function, performance, safety and stability of products and systems."
An insider who declined to be named said that Jihu hopes to turn over the sales volume with this new alpha s hi version, and has high hopes. After all, for Jihu, which also has high hopes, the annual sales volume of 26100 vehicles is really out of reach.
However, for Huawei, which brings the halo of Jihu technology, there are still many choices - Thalis and avita, which has enjoyed unlimited scenery in the capital market recently.