Wuling Hongguang MINIEV, which once dominated the sales list of new energy vehicles for many consecutive months, seems to have lost its glory.
According to data from the Passenger Federation, the sales volume of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV in April was only 18,086, a year-on-year decrease of 27.4%. It only ranked fourth in the new energy car list of the month, and the top three models were BYD Qin, Dolphin and Aion S. Although the result of 18,000 vehicles does not seem to be low, compared with the record of more than 50,000 vehicles in a single month in the glory days, the downward trend is very obvious.
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On May 22, Wuling Motors officially announced a limited-time price reduction for its Hongguang MINIEV and Air ev series models. Among them, the lowest price of Hongguang MINIEV was reduced to 29,800 yuan, while the highest price reduction of the Air ev four-seater version reached 13,000 yuan. Although this price reduction is in response to the new energy going to the countryside, to a certain extent, Wuling still hopes to use this price reduction to boost sales.
Some MINIEVs can’t be sold anymore
In July 2020, based on the concept of “what the people need, Wuling will build what”, Hongguang MINIEV was launched, which directly raised the threshold of micro electric vehicles to less than 30,000 yuan. , which can not only meet the needs of users for short-distance travel, but also solve the problem of rare parking in cities. After being launched, it was quickly welcomed by the market.
At the same time, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the “Notice on Strengthening the Management of Low-Speed Electric Vehicles” in November 2018, requiring the production and sales of low-speed electric vehicles to be cleaned up and rectified and new production capacity strictly prohibited. Low-speed electric vehicles are what we often call “old man” happy”. At that time, Hongguang MINIEV, whose starting price was only 28,800 yuan, perfectly replaced the demand of “Old Tou Le” in terms of legal compliance and safety, which further boosted the hot sales of this model.
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According to official data, since its launch, the cumulative sales of Wuling Hongguang MINI EV have exceeded 1 million units, and there have been 28 months of monthly sales of more than 20,000 units, with the highest monthly sales reaching 50,600 units.In 2022, Wuling Hongguang MINI EV will win the 2022 global sales champion of small pure electric vehicles with a sales volume of 554,000.
In 2022, affected by the sharp price increase of raw materials such as power batteries, Wuling will increase the starting price of Hongguang MINI EV by 6,000 yuan to 34,800 yuan. However, since October last year, the downward trend of Wuling Hongguang MINI EV sales has begun to appear. The sales volume of the month fell by 13.8% to 41,000 units. to 18,000 vehicles.
Since the beginning of this year, Wuling has launched two rounds of price reduction measures. The first round is from January 31 to March 31 this year. The original 32,800 yuan Hongguang MINI EV has a limited time discount of 3,000 yuan, reducing the starting price to 29,800 yuan. The second round of price reduction is from April 8 to May 31, 2023. Consumers who purchase Wuling new energy models will receive a subsidy of up to 10,000 yuan.
However, the effect of these two rounds of price cuts did not achieve the expected effect. From January to April this year, the cumulative sales of Hongguang MINIEV were 87,928 units, a year-on-year decrease of more than 36%. Among them, sales in March fell by 44.8% year-on-year. Obviously, the demand for Hongguang MINI EV is declining rapidly.
Since Wuling Hongguang MINI EV became popular, other car companies have also seen the vast space of the micro electric vehicle market, and have begun to deploy in this field, launching competing models, and consumers have more choices, such as Geely Panda mini, Changan Lumin, Zero Run T03, Chery QQ Ice Cream, Dongfeng Nano BOX and other models have formed fierce competition with Hongguang MINI EV.
From a product perspective, Wuling Hongguang MINI EV has a battery life of only more than 100 kilometers, does not support fast charging, and does not have any advantages in terms of power and intelligence. The product competitiveness is obviously insufficient. At present, the gap between Hongguang MINI EV and competing models is narrowing. In April this year, the sales of Panda min and Changan Lumin were 10,615 and 7,643 respectively.
Wuling looks forward to the next explosion
It can be said that success is also MINI EV, and failure is also MINI EV. Affected by the decline in Hongguang MINI EV sales, the cumulative sales of SAIC-GM-Wuling in the first quarter of 2023 fell by 40.96% year-on-year to only 192,500 vehicles.
In addition, although Wuling has achieved good results in the new energy market by relying on the extreme cost performance of Hongguang MINI EV, consumers’ impression of Wuling Motors is still in the impression of low-priced small cars, and it is not easy to hit the mid-to-high-end market. Easy, but once the sales of MINI EV continue to decline, it will be more difficult for Wuling.
In fact, it’s not that Wuling has never thought about developing mid-to-high-end products. In June 2022, Wuling and DJI will launch the Baojun Kiwi EV model, which supports L2-level automatic driving and has intelligent functions such as automatic parking. The price range is 87,800 yuan. ~102,800 yuan. However, after the launch, due to the high price and the low practicality of the automatic driving function for micro electric vehicles, the sales volume was very bleak. In April this year, the sales volume was only 380 vehicles.
On March 29 this year, Wuling launched a larger Binguo model, which features an exquisite and retro appearance, supports fast charging, and has a maximum battery life of more than 300 kilometers. The price range is 59,800 yuan to 83,800 yuan. Judging from the sales volume in the first month of listing, it has achieved a “good start”, with a total of 16,383 vehicles sold in April.
However, the pressure on Wuling is not small. BYD also launched a pure electric model Seagull on April 26 with a price of 50,000 to 100,000 yuan. The price is 73,800 yuan to 89,800 yuan, forming a direct competition with Binguo. relation. It achieved sales of 1,500 vehicles in the first week of its launch, and its subsequent growth potential is huge.
As a reference, the BYD Dolphin, which is also a boutique car, is basically stable at a monthly sales level of 30,000 units, so we can boldly predict that the monthly sales of Seagull will basically be stable at more than 20,000 units or even higher in the future, and it will become Bingo. biggest competitor.
Recently, another new car from Wuling, the Bao Junyue, has also been exposed frequently on the Internet. Its appearance really surprises people. It features a hard-core off-road SUV style and looks like Suzuki’s Jimny. However, judging from the current information, the car does not support the four-wheel drive system, and the battery life is only about 300 kilometers. It can be said that it has nothing to do with off-roading. Whether off-road off-road vehicles will be successful is an open question.