What's wrong with me being a rich man?

Chapter 671 A Promising Future (5k)

The car was put on the first day, the criticism was received on the second day, and the reflection was done on the third day.

When the results are good, everything is fine, but now the GS7's performance is far below expectations, and the company's internal pressure is coming soon.

Xiao Yong attended a meeting on the morning of the 13th. As soon as he entered the meeting room, he felt the heavy atmosphere and soon saw the various bosses.

He is the deputy general manager of Trumpchi. Today, those present include Guo Baichuan from GAC Toyota's marketing department, Li Hui, deputy general manager of GAC Toyota, and Wu Song, the superior of Trumpchi's general manager and the head of GAC's own brand.

Seeing this scene, Xiao Yong secretly groaned inwardly. Turning to look at his other colleagues, he saw that their expressions were not good either.

"Mr. Li, we still need you to come and give the GS7 a pep talk this time." Wu Song smiled at Li Hui, setting the tone for the meeting. Problems are necessary for diagnosis, and since the GS7 itself hadn't done well, it naturally needed guidance.

Carbon Silicon Kyushu and Highlander are competitors, and Li Hui is in charge of the Highlander business. He has also dealt with Carbon Silicon and has been thinking about the competition, so he is the most suitable candidate.

In fact, when the range-extended electric vehicle was put forward to compete with silicon carbide for project approval, Li Hui came over to give his opinion, but... his opinion was basically not adopted.

After listening to Mr. Wu's words, he humbly said a couple of things, but still talked about the GS7: "It is too early to draw a definitive conclusion. The GS7 may well be able to make a comeback based on its reputation."

Xiao Yong, Yu Jun, and the others knew that these words were meant to give them face and a way out.

Li Hui continued, "However, I think GS7 wants to compete with Kyushu. To be honest, Kyushu's quality is very high. If GS7 wants to gain more market recognition, it has to think about getting closer to Kyushu's size and materials."

He saw the GS7 in person last year and felt there were many problems: the interior space was not big enough and the materials used were not high-quality enough. Now, looking at the pricing, he feels rather awkward.

Just because a car from Kyushu can sell for 30 doesn't mean you can make one here and sell it for 20. The market isn't so straightforward.

Xiao Yong glanced at his colleague. This point was initially only a minor point of contention, but it was quickly resolved by cost factors. The shared dimensions of the GS7 and GS8 could help this car have a stronger price competitiveness.

Now seems like the time to use this advantage; as the saying goes, there are no unsellable cars, only unsellable prices...

"Jiuzhou is very successful, there's no doubt about that. I feel that within our industry..." Li Hui became even more direct at this point, "including our company's view of Lingang's carbon silicon and Yu Xing, there's a sense of superiority based on self-perception. Who is he? He's never built cars before, he's not a related professional, and so on. The problem is, if someone like him can build Jiuzhou, what kind of person would be able to achieve this?"

"We must first acknowledge and recognize other people's achievements, and take into account the advantages and disadvantages of new energy vehicles versus fuel vehicles in our thinking, so that we can be more pragmatic when developing products."

"I think given the current situation of the GS7, it would be better to launch a five-seater model by the end of the year. Considering its length and space, five seats are actually more suitable. It just so happens that the Carbon Silicon model will also be launching a five-seater model at the end of the year, so they can promote it together. As for the six-seater model..."

While Li Hui was still pondering, Yu Jun, the general manager of GAC Motor, spoke up.

Yu Jun said, "Actually, the main problem with the GS7 right now is its pricing."

Li Hui's words caught in his throat. He had meant that the GS7 had problems with its design and development, but Yu Jun, who was in charge, attributed the current situation to the price, which was a significant difference in opinion.

Lowering car prices might stimulate sales, but the long-term market outlook is probably not optimistic. However, if Yu Jun were to lower prices to increase sales, the overall evaluation might be better.

Regardless of the circumstances, increased sales would be a satisfactory outcome.

Although it was General Manager Wu who sent him over, General Manager Yu is directly in charge of the project. This is GAC Passenger Vehicle's business, not GAC Toyota's, so it would be too offensive to criticize it.

A few thoughts flashed through Li Hui's mind, and he nodded: "Indeed, pricing is an important factor. 20 is a threshold. Geely's Borui, Qoros 5, and Haval H7 are basically all priced around 20. Our GS8 and Roewe RX5 are all aiming to break through 20."

"Breaking through 20 units is about breaking the ceiling for domestic brands, and that's no easy feat."

Cars like Geely's Boyue, Chery's Tiggo 7, and Trumpchi GS4, priced around 15 yuan, are directly competing with joint venture brands like the Lavida and Corolla. They represent a significant expansion of the price range for domestic brands in recent years. The Borui and H7 have further pushed this trend below 20 yuan.

However, when it comes to models priced above 20 yuan, there are still no truly representative models in China that can achieve high sales volume.

The GS7 is now highly anticipated because Carbon Silicon Kyushu has broken through the ceiling of domestic brands through new energy vehicles, and even directly raised the price to another level. It can sell for 30 yuan, and it can still sell more than 1 units a month. Its company has also gone public...

Breakthroughs in gasoline-powered vehicles are difficult, but the emergence of Kyushu was groundbreaking.

Li Hui believes that, including the GS7, people attribute Jiuzhou's success too much to its "new energy" attributes, while ignoring its product development. Before silicon carbide, there were other car manufacturers that made new energy vehicles, but the results were not very good.

Of course, this is a rather harsh statement. Right now, it's not a problem with the GS7, but rather that everyone is indeed facing difficulties in the 20-yuan price range.

The exchange between the two bigwigs eased, but while Li Hui was willing to smooth things over, others were not.

“When the GS7 was being developed, I said, just take the Kyushu system directly. You guys keep bringing up costs, market familiarity, and looking down on carbon silicon. Now you've painstakingly produced this thing, and three days' worth of orders are less than what they get in one morning.”

"Who doesn't know that making 20 yuan is difficult? New energy is undoubtedly an opportunity, but is an opportunity something that anyone can seize?"

"Even if the price of the GS7 is reduced, how many units can it sell? The problem is simply that the car itself is not good."

Cai Wenzhou, the vice president of the research institute, spoke out in criticism without holding back.

Yu Jun's face darkened slightly, but before he could speak, his deputy general manager, Zhan Songguang, retorted, "Isn't cost important? What do you mean by looking down on silicon carbide? Lao Cai, don't get emotional. We made the GS7 with the GS8 in mind. Using the same parts reduces the pressure on both sides. President Li also said that there is a lot of pressure for anything over 20. The GS8 is on a mission this time."

The GS8 is aiming to compete in the 20+ price range.

Cai Wenzhou scoffed, "If you can't do a good job with the GS7, don't try to piggyback on the GS8's success. You want to make new energy vehicles but don't have the guts to build them. All you do is talk about six seats, family-oriented features, and range-extended ranges, which you learned from carbon and silicon technology. Do you think that's enough to make it work? You think you can just put a screen in the car and expect people to buy it?"

Zhan Songguang was furious. He was a loyal follower of Yu Jun from GAC Honda, and he couldn't let the meeting continue like this. He had to argue his case.

Cai Wenzhou is a technologist with a fiery temper and a tendency to be contradictory; he would be even less likely to back down in this situation.

The two sides engaged in a heated exchange, drawing in others to join the fray, filling the conference room with a palpable tension.

Xiao Yong huddled in his chair, unwilling to make his presence felt. He was in charge of promotion and sales, but since the product had only been on the market for a short time, the blame had been shifted to R&D and the boss.

"Alright." Wu Song, who was chairing the meeting, stopped the farce and suddenly called on Xiao Yong, who hadn't said much, "Xiao Yong, what do you think the sales of the GS7 will be like this year? What's the feedback from offline channels?"

Xiao Yong pursed his lips, feeling the different gazes shooting at him like sharp arrows. He hesitated for a moment, then decided to talk about what he had discussed with President Yu first: "New energy is definitely something we need to do. The market for carbon silicon at Jiuzhou is quite stable this year. Moreover, the second plant in Lingang is said to be ready to start soon. With Jiuzhou's performance, it is the leader among independent brands."

He gave a definition before talking about sales: "If a top-selling model like this can sell more than 10,000 units a month, it proves that new energy vehicles are a viable business. We originally thought that we could achieve half of that, and getting 5000 units a month would be a very good number. But based on the feedback in the past few days, we may have to lower our expectations a bit. Even so, it would be good if we could make the GS7 the second-best domestic brand."

"Most importantly, the shortcomings of Silicon Carbon Group have given us an opportunity to catch up. If we stabilize our sales this year, we can consider targeting Silicon Carbon Group's weaknesses when we launch five more units next year."

Xiao Yong didn't keep them in suspense and finished speaking in one breath: "Silicon Carbon will continue to produce lithium iron phosphate, but Tesla overseas uses ternary lithium, and CATL, which supplies silicon carbon, also wants to produce ternary lithium. I don't know why silicon carbon does this, but are Tesla and CATL wrong?"

"This is an opportunity for GS7 in the new energy vehicle market. As long as we can hold our ground this time, we can catch up quickly later."

The battery issue was noticed by GAC when it was assessing the new energy market. The reason why the GS7 uses lithium iron phosphate is that there are currently no mature ternary lithium suppliers in China. As for the choice between CATL and Wanxiang, that was still a cost consideration.

But next year will be different. Next year, the GS7 can use more mature products from CATL.

While everyone else was still focused on past decisions, Xiao Yong, who was in charge of sales, had already set his sights on the future.

He didn't give specific sales expectations, but left some room for hope. After saying this, Xiao Yong noticed that General Manager Wu was still looking at him and sensed that he wasn't satisfied with the answer, so he added, "We've come into contact with quite a few customers interested in new energy in our offline stores, but they do have some questions about Wanxiang Group's batteries. Wanxiang's promotional efforts in China are not as strong as CATL's, and batteries are a core component of new energy, so this needs to be strengthened."

He identified a problem originating from the supplier.

Yu Jun nodded slightly, quite satisfied with Xiao Yong's explanation.

He took the bait and acknowledged some of the responsibility, saying, "We do lack experience in new energy vehicles. Whether it's last year's range-extended GA5 or this year's GS7, we need to learn from our experience and not just continue the same approach as with gasoline vehicles. But objectively speaking, the GS7 is an improvement over the GA5, especially considering the progress of ternary lithium batteries in the supply chain. The GS7 still has a promising future."

Wu Song pondered the words "promising future," then glanced at Li Hui, who was speaking less, and nodded, saying, "As long as you have a clear understanding, we don't need to try to become fat in one bite."

Li Hui kept his eyes down and didn't raise any objections when the boss was summarizing. Cai Wenzhou, who had been arguing the most, hesitated for a moment and then remained silent.

At this moment, the two seemed to have a tacit understanding: they both felt that Silicon Carbon Group would not have been unaware of the battery issue, and since Silicon Carbon and CATL were in a joint venture relationship, it was impossible for them to be unaware of CATL's research and development in ternary lithium batteries.

New energy may be an opportunity to find a new path, but market competition will be fierce.

Let's not talk about the future when nothing has really happened yet.

The meeting involved assigning blame, discussing issues, and looking towards the future, but Yu Jun took the lead, not wanting to give up on the GS7 so soon and wanting to use resources to keep it going.

However, good news doesn't travel far, but bad news travels fast.

There are various interests at play within the group, and this meeting directly exposed the true situation of the GS7's poor performance after its launch, which quickly caused a stir internally.

Some people ridiculed the GS7, saying it was a hastily launched copycat product that wasn't properly refined. Others believed that the current range-extended GS7 was not as good as the GS7 used to develop the GS8 derivative model.

Company matters are rarely kept secret, and the actual number of small and large orders also leaked out.

In just three days, the GS7 received over 3000 small pre-orders and only 260 large pre-orders.

It's worth noting that GAC Trumpchi has a total of 411 4S stores, which means that on average, only one customer placed a large order between two stores in the past three days.

When the GS7 was being promoted, it was to compete with the carbon silicon Kyushu, and the press releases also described it as a more cost-effective family six-seater SUV. However... we can't get the Kyushu 72-hour data now, but the 48-hour data from last year is still fresh in our minds.

Within two days, Kyushu received 7301 small orders and a whopping 1161 large orders. More importantly, it achieved better order volume and conversion rates despite having far fewer directly operated stores than GAC Motor.

After obtaining internal information from GAC Motor, industry media compiled this information and, at the end, noted an important point: the Kyushu is at least 10 yuan more expensive than the GS7.

No matter how you look at it, these two new energy products are not in the same league.

Yan Si, the CEO of Great Wall's WEY brand who had previously stepped forward, has remained silent, but netizens, with their good memories, have been posting data disclosed by the media in his Weibo comment section.

Yan Sigang initially replied with two comments, claiming that the market should be viewed from a long-term perspective, and once again mentioned the view that range-extended technology is outdated.

However, while Kyushu may not have many fans, and its supporters of new energy are still insufficient, the founder of the Silicon Carbon Group is a figure with widespread attention who has worked his way up from the internet.

Once the public opinion spread, Yan Si was completely overwhelmed and worried about the impact on the WEY brand, so he could only swallow his anger.

However, this has also made some netizens unhappy with such a one-sided public opinion.

Some people raised a question with puzzlement: "Didn't everyone think that new energy sources were bad? Why are you speaking up for carbon and silicon now?"

This question has received a mainstream answer.

"Range extension is like taking off your pants to fart, involving both the engine and refueling. So-called new energy vehicles still require going to gas stations. But I'm impressed that carbon silicon can steal market share from Highlander and BBA. You can criticize carbon silicon, but don't use something like the GS7 to criticize it!"

As it turns out, the highlight of this extended-range GS7 may have been its initial launch, when it competed with the silicon carbon version of Kyushu.

On May 17, an industry insider revealed that only 438 GS7 vehicles were registered in the past week.

Based on this single-week performance, it is likely that it will sell less than 2000 units in its first month on the market. For a new car, if it fails to generate sufficient sales momentum in the early stages, sales are likely to continue to shrink.

On this very day, Yu Xing, the head of the silicon carbon industry who hadn't appeared on Weibo for a long time, surprisingly posted a Weibo post that immediately became a trending topic on the platform.

—I submitted proposal number 3, please help me vote for it.

Many netizens clicked on the link and found that it was an online voting activity for the new energy vehicle license plate scheme released by the Traffic Management Bureau.

Option 1 uses a gradient green as the license plate background color, Option 2 uses a combination of green and white as the background color, and Option 3 uses a white background with a blue logo at the bottom.

Regarding the introduction of new license plates to distinguish between gasoline vehicles and electric vehicles, we received notification beforehand. Carbon Silicon has studied the plan together with the Traffic Management Science Research Institute, as well as the design plan submitted by BYD.

Yu Xing himself thought the license plates and European style of the cars he saw in Hong Kong were quite nice, but the white license plates with black characters in China were given to the political and legal departments. Oil cars had blue plates, trucks had yellow plates, and foreign cars had black plates.

The actual idea was to use green, since it would highlight the environmental benefits, and people might get used to seeing green license plates after a while. However, he hadn't gotten used to it yet and thought that using gray paired with black would be cool, but he also had to consider the resolution of the camera when taking pictures.

Ultimately, the Silicon Carbon team submitted three design proposals for the Traffic Management Science Research Institute to choose from. The institute selected a design with white as the main color, blue stripe logo at the bottom, and black lettering, which was then chosen as one of the options for the Administration Bureau.

Yu Xing was busy with many things and had almost forgotten about this matter. He suddenly remembered and asked about it, only to find out that Plan 1 received more votes.

After much deliberation and comparing the effects of the license plates on the Kyushu platform, he decided to push for the new energy vehicle license plate option. So he went on Weibo to leverage the power of the internet.

Before this Weibo post, only 14+ people had actually participated in the vote on new energy vehicle license plates, and Option 1 only had a slight lead. However, with the big short seller personally stepping in to advocate for it, the online voting campaign from the Traffic Management Bureau quickly garnered over 100 million votes, directly widening the lead for Option 3.

The enthusiasm for voting surprised even Yu Xing himself; the netizens were really giving him face...

Although there are still several days until the deadline, this outcome is basically certain.

Yu Xing posted another Weibo message thanking the netizens who voted.

Since the exposure of the mountain peak, the big short seller has rarely appeared in the public eye, and his Weibo comment section has been unusually active, with all sorts of questions, some about short selling, some about LeEco, some about the lawsuit, and some about the stock price of silicon carbon.

Yu Xingbing, expressing his gratitude, selected some questions he could answer.

One of the questions was about the sales performance of the Trumpchi GS7, which is touted as a competitor to the carbon and silicon Kyushu region.

Yu Xing praised him.

"As far as I know, the GS7 uses high-strength steel to improve vehicle safety. BBA and Kyushu are among the few companies that have started using this material in the last two years. Its widespread use can better protect the owner and passengers."

"Whether it's gasoline cars or new energy vehicles, I hope to see more and more cars using better materials. This is progress for the domestic industry and it's a good thing."

"The future of the domestic auto market is promising."

(End of this chapter)