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Recently, Dongfeng Motor Group released recruitment notices for M Division, including intelligent control engineer, chassis control development design, chassis integrated control system design, all-terrain off-road mode development, city general manager, sales strategy manager, brand promotion, mall operation director, advertising design and creativity, equipment electrical engineer, etc., including technology development, user operation, manufacturing and other fields.

At the 2021 World New Energy Vehicle Conference, Zhu Yanfeng, Chairman of Dongfeng Company, made it clear that Dongfeng would copy the advantages of new forces to build cars and launch a brand-new new energy customized product "M" in 2022. It is understood that the high-end electric off-road M business unit positioning is similar to the Great Wall tank, but its model will appear in the form of pure electricity, the product standard electric Hummer, and mainly high-end off-road market.

According to media reports, the first model code of the high-end electric off-road brand is "M18". As early as 2018, the project platform has been publicly tendered and named "Warrior". The pre-sale price is about 600,000 yuan-700,000 yuan, and it is about to enter the production planning stage. In addition, according to Zhu Yanfeng revealed that Dongfeng M business unit belongs to the new energy subscription brand, which means that Dongfeng Motor has no great requirements for the sales volume of "M" brand, and more importantly, it uses the advantages of military product manufacturing to test the water in the civilian off-road market.

At present, high-end and electric transformation has become the "fresh air outlet" of the automobile market, and more and more independent brands have successively launched high-end new energy brands.

In July last year, Dongfeng Motor announced the launch of its brand-new high-end electric brand Lantu. The first model, Lantu FREE, was officially launched on June 19. The new car launched two power models, pure electric version and extended range version, with the price of 333,600 yuan and 313,600 yuan respectively. It was officially delivered in August, and set a sales target of 13000 vehicles within the year. At this point, Lantu FREE entered the 300,000-yuan intelligent electric vehicle market, competing head-on with ideal ONE, NIO ES8 and other models. However, as a brand-new high-end electric Lantu, the performance in the market is not very good. Sales data show that Lantu FREE delivered 908 vehicles in September 2021 and 1316 vehicles cumulatively since delivery started in August this year.

For Dongfeng Motor, Dongfeng Lantu is not only to improve the brand image of the group, but also to be electric is the future development trend of automobiles, Dongfeng Motor still hopes to be able to do it. In this context, Dongfeng Motor still plans to launch a brand-new high-end electric off-road brand, mainly to open up new markets. However, the domestic off-road market is occupied by tank brands and other traditional automobile manufacturers such as Toyota, Jeep, etc. At this time, it is debatable to enter the off-road market. In addition, the "M" brand, which is powered by new energy sources, is obviously taking the road of differentiation, which may be able to seize market share, but it will lose all the time if it is slightly careless.

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