On July 30, Ideal Auto announced the sales list of new forces for the previous week as usual. Not surprisingly, Ideal with weekly sales of 12,800 vehicles ranked first again. This is the 14th consecutive week that it has ranked first among new brands in the Chinese market.
Starting around 2023, Li Auto will start updating its sales list every week. At that time, Li Auto, which had come out of the slump with its Ideal L7, L8, and L9, quickly opened up the market with its positioning as a space-focused and practical dad car. Its sales volume soared, far exceeding expectations. At the end of the year, it also gave its employees enviable "big car packages" Red envelope". Through public marketing through weekly rankings, Li Auto has also attracted more consumers to follow and place orders due to the herd effect.
But as everyone knows, the involution of the weekly list has actually caused dissatisfaction among many peers. Recently, NIO chairman Li Bin and co-founder and president Qin Lihong jointly expressed their hope to remove NIO from a certain list. After the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China first raised its objection to "involving vicious competition" on July 30, Nio Ma Lin, Geely Yang Xueliang, Xiaopeng Motors He Xiaopeng, etc. also successively spoke out in public, hoping to stop the release of the weekly list.
Ideal Weekly Ranking is No. 1 again
Executives such as Weilai, Geely, and Xiaopeng have called for a halt.
Eugenics never hesitates to show off their achievements. Li Auto, which sells better and better, has basically maintained the tradition of announcing the sales volume of the previous week every Tuesday since 2023. On July 30, Li Auto announced its sales from July 22 to July 28. It ranked first with weekly sales of 12,800 vehicles, and has ranked first among new brands in the Chinese market for 14 consecutive weeks.
However, Li Auto’s high-profile “weekly sales” behavior has been controversial in the industry for a long time. At NIO’s Innovation and Technology Day on July 27, NIO’s founder and chairman Li Bin expressed his opinion, “Can we not publish weekly rankings?” Li Bin said that if NIO achieves first place, it will never do so. Post weekly list. He pointed out that financial reporting is done on a quarterly basis, and monthly reporting is already very cruel.
Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of NIO, said bluntly, "Why should another company use our brand to publish weekly rankings? Can I (NIO) be deducted?"
And when Li Auto released its latest weekly sales On the day of the list, a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee pointed out the need to "strengthen industry self-discipline and prevent 'involution' vicious competition." This argument brought the car industry's resistance to "weekly sales" to a climax.
Ma Lin, NIO’s assistant vice president of brand and communication, immediately @李思would urge him to “stop it.” Ma Lin's views resonated with Yang Xueliang, senior vice president of Geely Holding. The latter forwarded Ma Lin's Weibo and commented, "I am also opposed to the weekly list."
Xpeng Motors' AI intelligent driving technology conference held that night also "keep up with current events." Founder He Xiaopeng pointed out on the spot that when American venture capital companies were investing heavily in large models, chips and other fields, they were thinking about how to make end-to-end autonomous driving assistance technology better and how to do it better than human driving. , but after returning to China, I found that there was a quarrel online, and everyone was working on the "weekly sales list". He Xiaopeng shouted, "What are our technology companies doing?" Yang Xueliang was dismissed for the second time, briefly commenting on this, "I agree with He Xiaopeng." 20,000 vehicles, with strong upward momentum. It is worth mentioning that Yang Xueliang also previously released the weekly sales list of "pure electric models above 200,000" and "pure electric models above 250,000" with jikrypton001 as the top one. At that time, it also received a lot of controversy. Some netizens They commented that "there are so many attributive words", and some netizens who have recently "archaeologically" turned around and questioned, "You don't object when you are the first?"
After many car company executives tacitly "targeted" Li Auto, on the evening of July 31, Li Xiang, CEO of Li Xiang, posted a picture of the fable of "covering one's ears and stealing the bell" on WeChat, which was considered to be a response to the controversy. respond. Why was the weekly sales list of
Ideal Hair ripped off?
Executives of many car companies said that "the data is not true"
In the eyes of industry practitioners, there are currently many unreasonablenesses in Li Auto's weekly sales list.
first questions the source of the ideal weekly list data. As early as 2023, Huang Honglin, an executive of Xpeng Motors, pointed out that the information about Xpeng in Li Auto’s sales list for a certain week was untrue.
At the NIO Innovation and Technology Day on July 27, Qin Lihong also said that the numbers on a certain weekly list have never been approved by NIO, and it is not serious to point out this data. He said that no more than 10 people internally knew Weilai’s weekly sales data, while Li Bin added that “only four or five people knew it.”
In response to the doubts of friends, Li Xiang once explained that the data source is the insurance volume of terminal retail sales of the China Automobile Association, not the sales volume and delivery volume.
On the other hand, the Ideal Weekly List’s selection of brands on the list has also been accused of being unscientific. Ma Lin said on July 30 that and and ideal are currently the best sellers in the extended range field, but and and are best sellers in the pure electric field. Products of different price points, different categories, Putting products with or without fuel tanks into one list cannot reflect the objective situation of the market. "When making a list, it must be reasonable and comparable to each other."
In addition to being dissatisfied with the ideal statistical method, industry insiders also have some criticisms of the "weekly sales" behavior itself. Ma Lin said that every month, each company will announce the audited delivery volume. This monthly number can basically reflect the operating conditions of the car company at that time, which is more effective for users to understand the market conditions and help consumer decisions. "But the weekly list will interfere with the normal operations of the company."
Some industry observers said that frequent release of sales data may cause a serious Matthew effect, which is not conducive to the sustainable development of car companies with poor sales in the short term. If If a company's funds are cut off or even goes bankrupt, the biggest victims can only be car owners and company employees.
It is worth mentioning that although most of the industry is resisting Li Auto's "volume weekly sales", it does not reject the "volume culture". Ma Lin said that the weekly rankings are somewhat indicative of low-level involution. The current mission of Chinese car companies is to achieve technological breakthroughs through research and development. He Xiaopeng mentioned that the United States is already "rolling" end-to-end.
Weibo user "Hard Brother", who is said to be an executive of Li Auto, said that the end-to-end competition between Li Auto and Wenjie has begun long ago, calling out He Xiaopeng, "'High-quality' end-to-end, roll it up." ?"
Written by: Nandu Bay Financial News reporter Chen Jingan
