At 15:00, the press conference started on time, and more than 10,000 people had poured into the live broadcast room of the ideal car video number during the warm-up stage.
But it is hard to predict that in addition to the pre-announced new car L8, Li Xiang will also present the second blockbuster model-L7 at this conference.
The ideal L8 and L7 cars directly cover the price range of 339,800-399,800 yuan, and the whole series comes standard with the high-speed NOA function and more than 100 flagship configurations. The L4 technology developed by Li Auto’s full stack will also be used in the update iteration of subsequent models in 2025.
The heavy new models of the two models made Li Xiang feel very proud, and his golden sentences appeared frequently. It seems that the suppression of a new car that has not been released for three years is all at this conference, and it is vented in one fell swoop.
“Who said that a new force in car building can’t build a car”, “Pro is the top match among competing products, Max is already in the sky”, “There is no such car in this world”.
L8 and L7 double king fried, the ideal is worthy of the “king of the king of rolls”
In fact, a few days before the press conference, Xinzhijia received an invitation to preview the ideal L8 in advance.
The body size of the Ideal L8 is slightly larger than that of the Ideal ONE. The front-row screen configuration is similar to that of the L9. It is equipped with a 13.35-inch HUD and mini-LED safety driving interactive screen, as well as two 15.7-inch LCD screens. Compared with the previous four-screen configuration of the Ideal ONE, it is more high-end and atmospheric.
(The left is the ideal L8, the right is the ideal ONE)
(The left is the ideal L8, the right is the ideal ONE)
The well-received gesture fusion interaction function on the Ideal L9 is also engraved on the Ideal L8. Just say “ideal classmate, open the window”, and the L8 will automatically open the window where the passenger is.
In terms of driving experience, most of the owners of the Ideal ONE are dissatisfied with only two points, the three-cylinder engine and the chassis configuration.
The Ideal L8 has been upgraded in these two aspects, with a 1.5T four-cylinder range extender, CLTC comprehensive endurance of more than 1315 kilometers, and WLTC comprehensive endurance of more than 1000 kilometers. The chassis adopts the structure of the front double wishbone and the rear five-link, and comes standard with the magic carpet air suspension.
Xinzhijia has experienced the ideal L8 and the ideal ONE successively. The driving experience of the L8 is very smooth, and the body vibration of the ideal ONE is more obvious than that of the L8.
As for the price, it is also expected that the L8 has launched two versions, the Pro version is 359,800 yuan, and the Max version is 399,800 yuan. Delivery will start in November.
After announcing the pricing of the L8, Li Xiang also gave an extremely heavy one more thing – the ideal L7.
Like the L8, the L7 has also launched two versions. The L7 Pro has a unified national retail price of 339,800 yuan, and the ideal L7 Max is 379,800 yuan. Both models are 20,000 yuan lower than the same version of the L8.
The L7 is equivalent to the five-seat version of the L8. It is almost identical in configuration to the L8. It comes standard with a four-wheel drive electric system with extended range, and comes standard with a magic carpet suspension. Even the screen settings in the car are exactly the same.
It is worth mentioning that the rear seats of the L7 can be completely folded down to form a large double bed with a length of 2.4m and a width of 1.5m.
Like the L8, the L7 has been pre-ordered since the end of the conference, and the specific delivery time is the end of February 2023.
The L8 and L7 come standard with more than 100 configurations, including a fully electrically adjustable steering wheel, 256-color ambient lighting, three-zone fresh air conditioning, silent electric suction doors, double-layer soundproof glass, and more.
Only in terms of intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit, there are obvious differences between the Pro and Max versions.
The Pro versions of the two cars will be equipped with Ideal Intelligent Driving AD Pro and Intelligent Space SS Pro, while the Max versions will be equipped with AD Max and SS Max. It is worth mentioning that the Ideal AD Pro is also the first intelligent driving system equipped with the Horizon Journey 5 chip.
In addition to the introduction of the new car, Li Xiang also spent a full 25 minutes introducing Lixiang Car’s past achievements and future plans.
During the three-year period, Li Auto’s technology R&D investment has reached tens of billions, and no one has been absent from the laboratory to the product landing.
In terms of electrification, Li Auto has not only developed a 1.5T range extender and a five-in-one electric drive, but also specially demonstrated the silicon carbide power chip used for the 800V high-voltage platform at this conference.
In terms of intelligence, the multi-modal fusion perception technology adopted by LI AI is progressing smoothly in multiple scenarios such as AI dialogue, reminder, and early warning. The pre-BEV fusion architecture algorithm greatly improves the security redundancy capability. Li Xiang also threw out a heavy goal-to achieve L4-level autonomous driving on most highways and closed roads by 2025.
On the supply chain side, the three self-built factories of Ideal have achieved an annual production capacity of 500,000 sets of range extenders, 600,000 sets of five-in-one electric drives and 2.4 million SiC power modules.
The intelligent manufacturing capability of Lixiang Auto Factory is also amazing. According to Li Xiang himself, its Changzhou factory already has 1,200 welding robots, and the automation rate of welding workshop connections has reached 95%. Automated installation.
When speaking under the spotlight of the press conference, Li Xiang’s pride and joy were beyond words, but the ideal car has not been going well in recent months.
User rights protection, executives cash out, the ideal “house leaks every night rain”
Back in June, the Ideal L9 was officially released, the new car was applauded, and the car booking page of the APP was instantly paralyzed, showing the degree of popularity.
The positioning and price of the ideal L9 are one level higher than the ideal ONE, with a unified price of 459,800 yuan; correspondingly, the L9’s four-cylinder range extender comes standard with air suspension, air conditioners, refrigerators, and color TVs. It is an all-round transcendence for Ideal ONE.
For this reason, ideal internal employees all said bluntly, “L9 and ONE seem to be products on two product lines, and they don’t fit well in the same showroom.”
Those who want to buy the ideal ONE, have seen the L9 in the store, and they are all concerned – obviously the L9 is a better choice, but the price is beyond the budget.
The L9 was officially delivered to users in August. It was also this month that Li Auto’s sales fell by more than 50% year-on-year, to only 4,571 units, slightly higher than the 4,167 units in April when the epidemic was the worst.
In that month’s sales list of new energy vehicle manufacturers, Lili Auto quietly dropped out of the top 15.
The sales cliff is just an appetizer, and the ideal eventful autumn has just begun.
On August 15, Li Xiang pushed L8 on Weibo, “Don’t buy ONE when L8 is at this stage.”
Then the situation fermented, netizens broke the news: in order to make way for the ideal ONE replacement product L8, the ideal car will stop the production of the ideal ONE in October, and the ideal ONE will be sold at a price reduction of 20,000 yuan.
Such behavior made all the owners of Ideal ONE extremely angry, shouting “the leeks were cut”. Netizens “Don’t take my chicken legs” initiated a collective complaint on the Black Cat Complaint Platform, complaining that the ideal car has problems such as deception, concealment of consumers and false propaganda. 1852 people have participated so far, but the processing rate is 0.
For the many demands of the owners of Ideal ONE, Li Auto only agreed to continue maintenance after production was discontinued, and ideals such as refunding the price difference, changing a new car, extending the warranty, etc., did not dare to open their mouths easily.
If you agree to the demands of these few people, where are the other 200,000 ideal ONE owners?
Blessings are unparalleled, misfortunes do not come singly, and there are other turmoils that give Li Xiang the same headache.
On September 2 and 6, Shen Yanan, executive director and president of Ideal Auto, successively sold 1 million Hong Kong shares of Ideal Auto, cashing out about 91.13 million yuan, which was interpreted by the outside world as a signal of “executives cashing out and running away”. In fact, if you look closely, Shen Yanan’s shareholding ratio has dropped from 1.74% to 1.68%, and the proportion of shares that have been reduced is only 0.06%.
On September 16, the official Weibo account of the Legal Department of Ideal Motors was launched, and the first Weibo account issued an indictment announcement.
Ideal Auto Legal said that the content and replies of the post “the brand asks to lower the quality standard” published by the supplier “Anhui Wan’an” Peng Moumou were all false information, and the above behaviors caused damage to the Li Auto brand image. In this regard, Ideal Auto has initiated judicial procedures to defend its rights.
The decline in deliveries, the turmoil in rights protection, the reduction of holdings by executives, and the rumors of degrading quality, the ideal car “leakage happens overnight rain”. Its Hong Kong stock price fell immediately, once falling to HK$88.7 per share.
Product changes must be painful, and car companies “do not break or stand”
The exit of the “historic product” will inevitably bring some pain. This is also the stage that the ideal car is going through. Under the multiple crit, Li Xiang was suffocated and difficult for most of this September.
Until the 21st of this month, Xiaopeng G9, which has a direct competition with the ideal L8, was released, and its pricing strategy overturned.
This is an opportunity. Ideal car urgently needs a new car to stabilize users and boost sales. Especially a mid-to-large SUV with better performance, more transparent price and more clear configuration.
We all know the story after that.
Li Auto released the Li Li L8, which was originally planned to be launched and delivered in November, in advance, and started the appointment directly. The ideal L7, positioned as a medium-to-large SUV, was also officially unveiled and pre-orders started. It has just been four months since Ideal launched the L9.
In fact, it is a wise choice for the ideal car to cut through the mess at this stage.
Although the Ideal ONE has made great contributions to the ideal, its competitiveness has dropped a lot in the new energy competition where the equipment configuration is very convoluted.
Lantu FREE, Wenjie M7, Xiaopeng G9, Weilai ES7, every competing model is eyeing the ideal ONE market.
Taking the Lantu FREE, which also released the extended-range version, as an example, the four-cylinder engine, the front double wishbone rear multi-link chassis structure, the standard air suspension, and the standard Qualcomm Snapdragon 8155 chip. In terms of vehicle hardware, it surpasses the ideal ONE in almost all directions.
On the intelligent driving chip, although the 2021 Ideal ONE has been replaced with two Horizon Journey 3 chips, the total computing power is only 10TOPS, which is too thin in the era of extremely inward computing power.
At the time of product change, there are also many new forces who choose to please both sides, and both new and old users are not offended.
In June this year, before the release of the Ideal L9, the NIO ES7 was launched. The positioning of the ES7 overlapped with the original three models, ES8, ES6 and EC6. The three models are NIO’s internal veterans, which are equivalent to the ideal ONE. However, Weilai not only did not stop the production of a certain model, but also brought a plan to upgrade the system for old users.
Weilai’s plan requires paid upgrades, while Jikr is more radical. In July, Jikr announced that it would upgrade the 8155 chip for new and old users of Jikr 001 for free, and many old users who won shouted “conscience car company”.
If a new solution is still launched for 200,000 old users, the cost may be unacceptable for the ideal that has always been known for cost control.
Therefore, it is the best policy to launch L8, the replacement of Ideal ONE, to withdraw from the market and exchange pain for a clearer product line before Lixiang ONE completely loses its advantages.
Li Xiang once roughly divided the whole entrepreneurship into three stages: the 0-1 stage is the verification period, the 1-10 stage is the growth stage, and the 10-100 stage is the mature stage.
The Ideal ONE was born four years ago and has directly become a “phenomenal product” in the field of six-seat SUVs. It has contributed a total of 200,000 deliveries and successfully completed its mission from 0 to 1.
The appearance of L8 also indicates that the next road from 1 to 10 will be taken over by L9, L8, L7 and other series products.
L stands for the SUV series of the extended-range electric platform, and the size of the number represents the size level of the model. From the ideal L9 to L6, the price gradually decreases, and the size gradually shrinks, covering all SUV models.
write at the end
The ideal product matrix is gradually clear. If the popular gene of Ideal ONE can be continued, it will undoubtedly give full play to the advantages of large-scale production capacity.
However, within half a year, three new cars were bombed directly to the market, and the power, design, price and configuration of the three cars were not too different. How to fully open the market is also a question that needs to be answered.
The answer to this question can only be known after the end of February next year – by then, L9, L8, and L7 will all be delivered to users.
However, it is foreseeable that before the official delivery of L8 and L7, the ideal car is likely to be in an embarrassing stage where the old and the new are replaced.
Ideal ONE is obviously gradually withdrawing from the market. If the L9 cannot be sold in a short time, the delivery data in the next six months may not look good.
But those who do not plan for the world are not enough for a moment, and those who do not plan for the overall situation are not enough for one area.
Swap short-term pain for long-term stability. After this hurdle, the ideal car will truly enter a period of rapid growth from 1 to 10.
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