It's hard to live a new car.

The ideal of "saving capital spending" can hardly resist the decline caused by production stoppage and off-season, and it becomes "increasing income without increasing profit". Although Q2's overall revenue exceeded expectations, it was hard to hide that ideal revenue fell for two consecutive quarters, and the loss expanded and the gross profit slightly decreased.

Secondly, the balance has become a difficult problem, and the two models have started to "scramble for traffic". On the one hand, the order of L9 broke 30000; on the other hand, the once popular ideal one opened a discount of 7000 yuan, and the expected sales volume in a single month fell below 10000 units.

While talking, Li Xiang is still a competent product manager. He will pay attention to who sells better in BYD stores, pure electric or plug-in hybrid. They are also angry about the frequent "pulling and stepping" of friends recently: "they don't understand clearly and say that the extension is backward. I think it is difficult for these enterprises to sell their products well."

After L9, the new car L8 will come out faster. How does the ideal move from a single small explosion to a multi vehicle balance? Price rise, supply chain, weakening demand... All kinds of problems are troubling the car industry. How should we meet the ideal of "excellent students" in it?

"Ideal" Countermeasures in off season

Looking at the Q2 financial report, the ideal revenue is higher than the market expectation, and the loss has expanded.

The ideal Q2 revenue was 8.73 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 73.3% compared with 5.04 billion yuan in the same period of last year. However, the month on month decline was 8.7% lower than that of Q1, and the revenue fell for two consecutive quarters. The main reason for the decline was the decrease in delivery.

From 35200 in Q4 of 2021 to 31700 in Q1 of 2022, it dropped to 28600. For the delivery volume, the ideal expression is that the delivery volume is affected by the supply shortage caused by repeated epidemics.

The gross profit rate of Q2 automobile was 21.2%, which was 22.4% in the last quarter and 18.7% last year. Ideal said that the year-on-year increase in the gross profit rate of vehicles was mainly due to the increase in the delivery volume of 2021 ideal one, which promoted the increase in the average sales price.

However, compared with the 22.6% of Q1, there is a certain decrease. It can be seen that the cost increase is still eroding the gross profit of new cars.

There were significant changes in profit and loss. The ideal Q2 net loss expanded to 641 million yuan, an increase of 172.2% over the same period last year.

In terms of marketing expenses, the expenditure of 1.325 billion in Q2 also reached a record high. This may be closely related to the release of L9. However, on the whole, the ideal marketing expenses in the last four quarters have increased by about 100 million each quarter, which is a steady increase.

In terms of R & D, ideal automobile still maintains a large investment. The R & D expenditure in the second quarter was 1.53 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 134.4% and a month on month increase of 11.5%.

In the past 10 quarters, the ideal R & D expenses have continued to rise. Q2 has exceeded 1.5 billion, and the proportion of total revenue has reached a historical high of 17.5%. This is closely related to the four new cars planned to be released in 2022-2023, and also indicates that new product launches are becoming more and more frequent.

As of June 30, 2022, the total amount of ideal auto cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, term deposits and short-term investments is 53.65 billion yuan. The basic orientation of free cash flow is good, and the company's overall development is healthy.

The market has long predicted the decline in the second quarter. When the epidemic broke out in many places in April, the ideal of the production base in Changzhou, Jiangsu was greatly affected.

At that time, the central area of the Yangtze River Delta was in the vortex. Moreover, more than 80% of the parts suppliers of ideal cars are distributed in the Yangtze River Delta, and a large part of them are located in Shanghai and Kunshan, Jiangsu. Some suppliers even shut down completely, which has a great impact on production and manufacturing.

Secondly, automobile sales itself can be divided into low season and high season. Generally speaking, the sales peak season is from the end of each calendar year to January of the following year, while the second and third quarters are off-season. The ideal is the same. The sales peak in the past two years was from November of that year to January of the next year.

With regard to the recent ideal performance, Everbright Securities believes that with the gradual recovery of new orders of one and the boost of the launch of L9 new cars, the demand side is still expected to continue to improve. In the first half of the year, the price increase of ideal one is expected to hedge the increase of battery costs. However, as the retained orders before the price increase are still to be delivered and the batteries in stock are gradually exhausted, the gross profit of Q2 is under pressure.

Looking forward to the third quarter, the ideal expected delivery volume is 27000-29000, and the guidance data is conservative, still below 30000. In addition, if the delivery of the new L9 in September is estimated to exceed 10000, the delivery of the ideal one in August should be less than 10000.

L9 can "kill" and one is tired?

"To be honest, the new model has squeezed the heat of the old model." At the performance meeting, ideal officially acknowledged this fact.

Now, when you order an ideal one, you only need to wait 2-3 weeks to collect the car, which is much shorter than the delivery time of popular models in the new energy market.

Zhang Xiang, President of the new energy automobile technology research institute of Jiangxi new energy technology vocational college, said, "in July, the ideal sales volume reached the lowest level in the last three months. The main reason is that ideal one has been listed for several years, and now consumers are also aesthetic tired."

At the performance meeting, the ideal management also acknowledged the fact that new cars "grab traffic". At the beginning of August, ideal announced that since L9 was launched on June 21, the accumulated orders have exceeded 50000, of which the number of non refundable orders has exceeded 30000.

In order to stimulate sales, ideal one began to promote sales. Some users said that there was 7000 discount for buying cars in Beijing, 18000 points for buying existing cars, and 20000 discount for Shanghai Jiading District.

After the launch of the new product, the attention of the ideal one has dropped significantly, resulting in a decrease in the order volume. The management explained that:. Before the user test drives the L9, the order mode of one has not changed.

But in terms of strategy, the official said that the company had made overall consideration before putting the L9 exhibition car in the retail store. When potential users enter the store, they originally wanted to test drive the ideal one, but when they see L9 online or after arriving at the store, they may be converted into L9 users.

Ideal high-level also frankly said: "we have also been coordinating with the sales team to give one more attention and keep users enthusiastic about new and old products."

Multi vehicle brings new topics

As for the next new product, Li Xiang decided at the performance meeting and named it L8. He said that L8 would be released and delivered faster than previous products and earlier than the previously set time. The L9 has been launched and delivered very quickly, and it takes about two months.

According to market news, the ideal car L8 with code X02 and the ideal car L9 with code X01 are built on the same platform and can be regarded as a reduced version of the ideal car L9.

According to the currently exposed information, L8 and L9 share many parts, including but not limited to interior layout, sensors and three electrical systems. Li Xiang said bluntly: "I think after L8 is launched, we have absolute confidence that it is the most advanced in terms of product strength when compared with these new models recently launched."

Recently, another group of spy photos of the ideal X03 were exposed. In combination with the product layout of internal codes X01 (ideal L9), X02 (ideal L8) and X03 (ideal L7 or L5) disclosed by ideal, X03 may be positioned as the replacement product of ideal one in the future.

X03 will still be a new energy model with added program, or the second model of X extended range platform. From the perspective of model positioning, the future X02 and X03 will be the main products of ideal cars.

Li Xiang pointed out that in the next five years, the extension program is still the best solution for SUV, and the ideal thing to do is to continuously improve the efficiency of the extension program.

He took BYD's car Han and SUV Tang as an example. He said that the prices of the two models were similar, but the sales of Han's pure electric model was higher than that of the super hybrid version, while the sales of Tang's super hybrid model was better. "Because consumers spend more than 200000 or 300000 to buy an SUV, they have a clear expectation, that is, they want to drive out to play."

Li Xiang also expressed his views on the "route dispute" that has been heated in the car circle recently. "Extended range will definitely be the best solution for SUV, which is definitely better than those brands boast."

He cited Chang'an as an example. "Changan has PHEV technology, but deep blue still chose to launch extended range models. The logic behind this is that PHEV is fuel and extended range is electric. This must be understood."

Some analysts believe that according to the product thinking of Li Xiang's "benchmarking apple", L9, L8 and L7 are basically equivalent to iPhone Pro max, iPhone pro and iPhone. Take 100000 yuan as the interval, covering the market of 200000-500000 yuan.

This means that L9 is a high-end model, and L8 and L7 are the main models after the replacement. According to the analysis of some investment banks, the passenger flow and order volume doubled in July due to the release of L9. At the same time, in July, the flow of some single stores dropped by 20% - 30%. The bank pointed out that it may be because consumers are expecting new models, so there is a wait-and-see phenomenon.

On the one hand, the ideal also needs to resist more competitive products. With the increase of additional program electric vehicles on the market in the future, the sales volume of ideal vehicles will be affected more or less. When users have more choices, the ideal sales volume may be diverted.

Facing the future, the end result is still "pure electricity". The data from the China Federation of riders also proves the importance of pure electric products in the new energy market. Since July 2021, Bev pure electric vehicles have steadily occupied more than 75% of the market share in the new energy market.

As for the positioning of pure electric products to be released in 2023, Li Xiang revealed at the performance meeting that the focus is on long-distance driving and fast charging. He said that 80% of the ideal users have the environment to install charging piles at home, and 100% of the users have stable charging conditions.

He said that the ideal core layout is to ensure that users are located in dense economic zones, such as the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, then Sichuan Chongqing, Beijing Tianjin Hebei, and the economic belt including Wuhan and then Zhengzhou. So that the user can travel very conveniently in such an area.

In terms of fast charging, the ideal pure electric model experimental vehicle can be charged for 10 minutes to meet the range of 400 kilometers, which will have more space than the model with additional programs.

Li Xiang did not disclose more about the pricing and product form. Ideal CFO Li Tie said that pure electric products would increase revenue and gross profit, and still focus on serving household users.

From the speed of new car release, we can see that ideal is carrying out a large number of product layouts. In terms of range extension, two new models have been put on the agenda, and pure electric models will also be released next year.

With the scale of the product line, the expenditure is inevitable. The car sea tactics will certainly reduce profits. But for brand competitiveness, the advantages still outweigh the disadvantages. At the same time, the high investment enterprise strategy of multi line parallel will also amplify the advantages of ideal in cost control.

Some analysts said: "when the capital market is at a low ebb, the advantages brought by good cost control and hematopoietic capacity will be greater and greater."