Who will be the next ＂extreme leap＂？

Two monks have no water to drink.

Author | Liu Liang

Edit | Interesting Commercial Vehicle Group

Not surprisingly, the car was on the verge of "bankruptcy".

Halfway through the broadcast of Extreme Yue anchor, I was shocked to hear that the company was going to be gone. After the CEO Xia Yiping appeared in the company, he was chased by employees and suppliers, and even someone took away the microwave oven in the office. The owner of Extreme Yue liked to mention "out-of-print models" …………………………………………………………………………….

As the product of the joint efforts of Baidu and Geely, Extreme Yue Automobile has always given people a feeling that "dad doesn’t love mom" in recent years; After Baidu finished the story of "car robot", it rarely went public as a platform, while Geely was busy supporting "pro-sons".

The sales volume of Extreme Yue, which was gradually forgotten by people, gradually became bleak. Xia Yiping even shed tears on the scene of the new car conference and did not get too much empathy from consumers.

Behind the extreme defeat is the right to speak after "Internet manufacturers and car companies join hands" and the question of how to tell the story of trams in today’s increasingly "picky" consumers.

01. "Live" crash

This year’s "Double 12" may be the most difficult day in Xia Yiping’s career.

After the "dissolution in situ", the chaos became a pot of porridge. On December 12, Xia Yiping was completely surrounded by employees and suppliers as soon as he appeared in the company, and even employees who were afraid that Xia Yiping was running away called the police on the spot.

In the face of this "big scene", Xia Yiping was quite calm. He even hugged an emotional employee on the spot and said that he "came to solve the problem and would not run away". For the sudden announcement of the "crash", Xia Yiping explained that it happened too suddenly, and denied the rumors that the company’s corruption led to the withdrawal of shareholders; It also said that its social security was not paid, which caused a boo at the scene.

A netizen who claimed to be an employee of Jiyue posted a video of employee rights protection in Xiaohongshu. It was already three o’clock in the middle of the night. She said that the result of the negotiation is to pay the social security and provident fund in November first, but other things have not been decided yet, and negotiations may continue on the 13th to 17th.

In the video, employees are blocked at the door of the conference room, and slogan on the wall, "In the history of smart cars in China, you must have the name of every extreme person", is particularly ironic.

On December 13th, some media reported that Chaoyue Automobile agreed with employees’ reasonable demands and had made a communication plan with Baidu and Geely Working Group. At the same time, Xia Yiping emphasized to employees that he is still actively seeking financing and will not run away. The company has not shut down or closed down, and the warranty and software services of the whole vehicle will not be interrupted.

According to "Sina Technology" report, regarding the current predicament of Extreme Vietnam, an insider of Extreme Vietnam broke the news that the fuse of the incident was that the shareholders behind it no longer provided support, resulting in the company running out of money.

Some media reported that in the first half of this year, Extreme Vietnam negotiated a financing of 3 billion yuan with Baidu. According to the new media "Power Plant" report, at the end of 2023, Chaoyue has reported to Baidu that the estimated loss this year is about 7 billion yuan, which shows that Baidu actually predicted the loss of Chaoyue in advance; By September this year, this investment has entered a very detailed clause confirmation. Baidu promised to invest 3 billion yuan in Extreme Vietnam, but asked Extreme Vietnam to return it to Baidu in the name of purchasing intelligent solutions (intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit and large model) in the next three years.

Based on this speculation, perhaps Xia Yiping and Ji Yue both felt that the money was certain. Unexpectedly, Baidu’s sudden change of heart caused Ji Yue to be caught off guard, which led to the current "flash collapse" situation.

Employees are busy defending their rights, and car owners are also confused.

On the social media platform, a car owner who picked up the car in December last year said that he saw some car owners feedback that the weather query was no longer available. The first thing he did after work was to ask SIMO "What’s the weather outside now?" As a result, SIMO really didn’t answer him as usual; Some netizens revealed that they had just picked up the car and ridiculed themselves to buy an "out-of-print car" in Xiaohongshu.

Although everyone’s attention is now focused on the extreme Vietnam incident, Baidu and Geely should answer the questions of the extreme Vietnam car owners: Can the car software be used normally in the future? If not, does the intelligent system arrange replacement? Will the future hardware maintenance of the car be attributed to Geely’s after-sales service? Can I cancel my reservation if I don’t pick up the car?

02.1+1＜2

The extreme "flash crash" is a sudden news for the company, but it doesn’t seem unexpected to people who pay attention to the industry.

Baidu announced that the time to build a car was 2021, when the tram was the most powerful. Together with the cooperation with Geely, it attracted special attention for a while. However, on the tram track, it seems that "the combination of the two strong teams" cannot achieve "1+1 > 2".

In response to that sentence, "two monks have no water to drink."

"A strong car company wants its suppliers to be strong but not well-known," said Xiaoyu (a pseudonym), a car practitioner. "The reason is also very simple. This is a question of the right to speak."

"Who has the final say when the two powers join hands?" Xiaoyu believes that Baidu definitely wants to vigorously promote its intelligent driving ability, so it is a very cutting-edge intelligent concept from semi-holding the steering wheel, handleless doors and car robots, but Geely is not known for its intelligence. In the transformation of Geely’s entire tram, the construction of technical platform and hardware strength are their benchmarks; Consumers may think that a piece of software and a piece of hardware are not perfectly complementary, but they are not. A person who wants to promote the software and display the hardware will have the problem of marketing strategy.

In addition, Baidu wants to retreat behind the scenes because it can’t get the qualification to build a car, but Baidu wants to learn Huawei’s model to be a smart supplier of cars, so what Baidu wants is not to cross this "tree", but to drive the "whole forest" intelligently.

However, Geely on the other side has already had a "pro-son" in the interval of more than 200,000 yuan, and then the design and positioning of Extreme Yue are inconsistent with Geely’s overall product positioning, which leads to the fact that although Extreme Yue has two strong "dads", no one wants to bring this "son".

If the most successful case of internet companies and car companies joining hands, it is undoubtedly Huawei asking the world; Behind the world of inquiry is Huawei and Cyrus, a combination of a large factory and a small factory. Many people have never heard of Cyrus before the emergence of the world of inquiry, and even many people don’t know this car factory after the emergence of the world of inquiry.

The whole marketing of the world is completely centered on Huawei’s smart driving. The original main model is a larger SUV, and it is also because Huawei’s sales advantage can be used to open the ToB market and take the route of "tram red flag".

In fact, Huawei itself has also cooperated with other well-known car manufacturers, such as the Extreme Fox Alpha S H1 version jointly released with BAIC Extreme Fox, but the average monthly sales volume of the Extreme Fox Alpha S model in the past year was only a few hundred units.

In contrast, the dominance of a powerful manufacturer plus a "obedient" small factory is more influential than the combination of two manufacturers.

And the extreme "crash" can’t help but remind people of another powerful brand-Aouita; There are even "three monks" behind Aouita, Huawei, Chang ‘an and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited.

Similar "fuzzy positioning", similar "no sense of belonging" and similar "low sales" (according to the data of Yiche.com in October, the cumulative sales of Aouita 11 and Aouita 12 in 2024 were 6,839 and 16,070 respectively). ……

03. How to tell the story of the tram?

I don’t know if I expected the end of the extreme leap, but Geely had carried out the strategy of "internal integration" earlier.

On November 14th, around the release of the third quarterly report, Geely Automobile announced the merger of Krypton and Lectra. Together with the "strategic focus, strategic integration, strategic coordination, strategic stability and strategic talents" mentioned in the Taizhou Declaration, it can be seen that Geely has realized that the story of the tram era should be told accurately and vertically. Behind brand integration is also the unity of marketing strategy and discourse power.

Perhaps the more you sell cars, the more you didn’t tell the right story from the beginning. "Jiyue (Jidu) opened an experience store in Sanlitun. I went to see Jiyue 01 the first time. The first sentence I introduced to me when I went in for sales was’ We have six ways to open the door of this car’. After listening to it, I felt that something was not good." A car fan said.

However, not only Internet companies can’t tell the story of trams well, but also car companies don’t know how to tell stories. For example, Geely’s "pro-son" is extremely embarrassing. In the early years, it caused a lot of controversy because of disguised reduction and frequent changes in sales strategies. Some car owners even set up rights groups to protest.

"There will be this problem in the transformation of fuel car companies. Their success in the fuel car market makes them feel that trams are not started from scratch, but also with a little arrogance of big brands; However, the trend of younger tram consumers and intelligent trams leads to their buyers being more sensitive to information and liking new things, and such consumers will have more ways to speak out and defend their rights. After being defended several times, car companies will realize that the marketing strategy of trams needs to be more cautious, otherwise consumers really don’t pay the bill. " Xiaoyu said.

Even Tucki, who once took the top spot in the new power, suffered a sharp drop in revenue because of SKU confusion. Tram users are not easy to fool.

But there are also many successful cases of "storytelling" in the tram circle. For example, when everyone used the parameters of seat, wheelbase and body length to emphasize the advantages of body space, Li Xiang described the ideal L8 as a "standard three rooms and one living room", which directly turned the cold figure into a visual picture.

Another example is Xiaomi SU7, which was listed this year. When it was first listed, it was ridiculed by some people and was similar in appearance to Ferrari. Xiaomi SU7 directly went to the Ferrari owner to see the car on the spot; As a result, a large number of videos of "Ferrari owners buying millet SU7" and "Ferrari owners posting millet SU7 label" appeared on the Internet at one time, which solved the "collision embarrassment" with one stroke.

However, the difficulty faced by tram manufacturers now is that the story can’t be good for a while, and it must always be good.

Nowadays, most consumers will not follow suit simply because of the brand effect. Enterprises should be able to produce fine products and explosive products. In the increasingly competitive tram market, marketing and products are hard technologies.