丨Huxiu Auto Group
Author丨Xiao Man
Header Picture丨Visual China
"Why is Jiyue 01 not selling well?"
In the post-meeting exchange of Jiyue ai day, when the author directly threw out this When asked about a sensitive issue, Jiyue staff showed embarrassment, but CEO Xia Yiping was calm and said frankly that "Jiyue made some mistakes."
is backed by Baidu and Geely . The former provides technology and the latter helps production. However, Jiyue, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, turned out to be a squib in his first shot at the market.
Since its launch in October 2023, Jiyue 01 sales have always hovered in three digits - 594, 774, 218, and 167 units sold respectively (sales data is from November 2023 to January 2024) .
Jiyue, what did you do wrong?
Xia Yiping: Jiyue made a mistake
"We thought that building a car was a process from 1 to 10, but in the end we found that it was still a process from 0 to 1." Xia Yiping applied a sentence from Li Xiang's "Reflection Letter to All Employees" The words explained Ji Yue's mistake.
Li Xiang’s original words are, “We mistakenly regarded the ideal mega stage from 0 to 1 (commercial verification period) as the stage from 1 to 10 (rapid development period). Ideal mega and high-voltage pure electricity must After going through a stage from 0 to 1 similar to that of the Ideal One and the extended-range electric vehicle, it is impossible to have the operating potential from 1 to 10 as soon as the Ideal L series is launched. But the problem is that the reason why Ideal Auto will be "mega" from . "1 to 10" operation is due to the success of the Ideal One and Ideal L series. As the first model, Jiyue 01, how can it go from 1 to 10?
The "1" that Xia Yiping refers to is actually the predecessor of Jiyue, "Jidu Automobile".
Jidu Auto is a car brand jointly established by Baidu and Geely in January 2021. At that time, both parties officially announced that Jidu would enter the automotive industry as a vehicle manufacturer. Baidu holds 55% of the shares and is responsible for the overall end-to-end service; Geely holds 45% and mainly cooperates in hardware aspects. In the two years since the establishment of the
brand, Jidu has carried out team building, research and development and other work, and released its first concept car robo-01 in June 2022. In October of the same year, Jidu robo-01 went on a lunar exploration A limited edition was launched (priced at 399,800 yuan). Since then, this product has appeared in major auto shows one after another. When
continued to build up its presence in the early days of Jidu, in August 2023, Jidu Automobile announced that it would be renamed "Jiyue Automobile", and "Jidu robo-01" accordingly became "Jiyue 01".
"From April 2023 to September 2023, we did not publicize it to the outside world for nearly half a year. It has only been seven months since users became aware of Jiyue, and it has only been four months since Jiyue 01 was launched." Xia Yiping said.
In his opinion, the sudden name change and the periodic gap in brand promotion have caused Jiyue Auto's brand recognition in the market to be low, but this fact was not realized internally before. It wasn't until Xia Yiping went to the store to investigate and found that the first question asked by users entering the store was not about the car, but "what brand is this?" that he realized the seriousness of the problem.
According to Xia Yiping, Jiyue Automobile began a major overhaul of the entire marketing and sales team in January this year, and he personally led the team to initiate changes in marketing and sales.
In addition to organizational changes, Xia Yiping believes that sales methods need to be adjusted accordingly. “In the past, many stores used simple and crude preferential policies to attract users and sold the wrong things.” Xia Yiping said, “Jiyue 01 should sell experience rather than hardware. . "
Therefore, after focusing on sales, one of the sales requirements is "users do not need to buy a car, but users must have awareness of the brand when they leave", and they will position users and increase live broadcast promotion. Smart selling points to attract the tech crowd.
Xia Yiping said that the transformation period of the sales team will continue for another month or two, but internal sales are gradually improving.
Intelligent driving may not be a trump card, it may also be a hindrance to
Jiyue 01. Poor sales are not entirely due to sales. The biggest dilemma of Jiyue 01 is that there is a certain mismatch between its positioning and market demand.
Xia Yiping once discussed with Robin Li "What is the core competency of the ultimate car competition in the future?". In the end, the two parties reached a consensus that although the chassis control, three electricity and supply chain manufacturing of the car are still important, they are not the determining factors in the future. The key to victory or defeat.
In his opinion, the key to the future success of car companies lies in intelligence. Xia Yiping even said bluntly, "Autonomous driving capabilities almost play a life-and-death role for car companies."
From this, it is not difficult to understand that Jiyue has labeled its own products as "car robots" from the beginning, and has since promoted them to the outside world. Shang also always emphasizes the intelligent capabilities of products as a core selling point.
In fact, with the support of Baidu's AI capabilities, Jiyue Automobile's intelligence is not conservative, and the iteration speed is also very fast. For example, when defining Jiyue 01, it was decided to use the vehicle-level operating system SOA for the entire vehicle, and integrate it with the electronic and electrical EEA into an intelligent architecture JET to achieve full domain, end/cloud integration; in terms of intelligent driving route selection, It is the first to remove lidar and is the first mass-produced car in China to adopt a purely visual smart driving solution.
has been on the market for nearly 5 months, and Jiyue 01 has been pushed to ota 5 times. The latest one occurred on AI Day on March 25. The v1.4.0 version pushed this time upgraded 200+ features, including upgrading OCC (occupancy network technology) visualization effects, simo and Wen Xin Yiyan large models Two-way fusion, etc.
It is worth mentioning that Baidu has devoted all its energy to Jiyue’s intelligent empowerment. At present, Jiyue 01 has deeply integrated the technical capabilities of Wenxinyiyan, Apollo, Baidu Maps, Xiaodu and other technologies. In this AI Day, Baidu’s three latest AI-native technologies in the fields of autonomous driving, LD maps, and human-computer interaction were also the first to be applied to JiYue 01.
But the question is, have Jiyue’s smart labels been recognized by consumers? Among consumers holding money to buy, how many of them regard intelligence as a core factor in purchasing?
The analysis agency J.D. Power conducted a study on China's new car purchase intentions (nvis) in 2023. The results showed that although the intelligent experience of cars has increased in recent years, its impact on users' car purchases only accounts for 14%, which is not yet Rigid need elements.
Furthermore, consumers’ trust and anxiety about intelligent driving still exist. An Tesla model owner once told the author that even if fsd can be used in China, she still feels that car smart driving is not as safe as driving by herself.
This is not an isolated case. Although there are more and more smart driving models in the automobile market, the penetration rate of smart driving is still very low. According to data from market agency Zosi Auto Research, the penetration rates of high-speed intelligent driving and urban intelligent driving still remain in single digits, at 6.7% and 4.8% respectively (statistics for the first three quarters of 2023).
Although car companies are involved in smart driving, for consumers, smart driving is more like a "dessert" existence rather than a staple food. Jiyue's dilemma is more like that of a person who just wants to eat fried shredded potatoes. You have to tell the person how delicious the beef stew with potatoes is, and it is obviously difficult to get the person to pay for it.
Of course, this is not entirely Jiyue's fault, but a problem with the market cycle. But if Jiyue wants to survive in the market, then this is a problem that Jiyue needs to solve.
Xia Yiping is not unaware of the problem. He mentioned in the communication, "Jiyue sells experience rather than hardware. Jiyue 01 cannot sell configurations." After all, the configurations that other car companies use as selling points, such as 800v and lidar, cannot be seen on Jiyue 01. In the crazy car market, new models with high configurations and lots of stuff are emerging one after another. If you can't pass the first level in the configuration selection, let alone the experience level.
In addition, compared with other car companies that have deployed smart driving, Ji Yue has abandoned the safety redundant option of lidar and is the first to adopt a purely visual solution. This is the uniqueness of Ji Yue, but will consumers be willing to pay attention to this? The first attempt to pay for smart driving routes in China still needs to be questioned; at least judging from the current sales situation, it is not too optimistic.
Of course, Jiyue still has a backhand.Xia Yiping revealed that Jiyue 07 will be unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show in April and will be released for delivery in the second half of the year. It will also undergo major upgrades in intelligence and user experience, but before that, Jiyue urgently needs to first Jiyue 01 brings out the sales dilemma.
After all, although smart driving is the key to winning the future, car companies must live in the present first.
