AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)11/26 Report--

Recently, a notice about stopping taking orders from Mercedes-Benz E-Star has been published online, which has aroused widespread media attention. A few days ago, Changan New Energy vehicle issued a notice to its dealers across the country. The notice said that due to strong demand from end customers, insufficient supply of chips and power cuts in some areas and other factors, resulting in a backlog of insufficient production capacity orders. Dealers are required to stop taking orders for related models, including Mercedes-Benz E-Star and CS55-Rock.

A large number of orders, insufficient supply of chips, regional power constraints. The three reasons given by Changan New Energy seem reasonable. A hot-selling model cannot be delivered because of objective reasons, which naturally leads to a large number of customer complaints.

Check Changan New Energy vehicle's official Weibo and still have daily updates every few days to introduce model information and advertisements about Changan New Energy. However, the comments below these contents are surprisingly consistent user complaints. In the comments, many car owners talked about their car booking experience, "Xinyi version has been booked for 115 days, do you say that if you don't hand in the car, you won't deliver the car?" This is a complaint from a car owner. Some car owners think that the manufacturers are just playing hooligans, that the orders they have already received are not produced, and that 30,000 cars cannot be produced, saying that "it is true that they do not understand!" Surprisingly, Changan New Energy's Weibo did nothing to deal with these comments.

In a popular top Weibo post on Nov. 15, Changan New Energy launched the national version of Mercedes-Benz E-Star, which is officially priced at 49800 yuan. Obviously, the manufacturer's reasons for not being able to produce and supply cars due to lack of chips and regional power restrictions have been overturned by themselves. under this post on Weibo, there are nearly 400 comments about the non-delivery of older models.

Mercedes-Benz E-Star officially launched in April 2020, positioning minicar, a total of two models, the guiding price of 6.98-74800 yuan, official figures continue to drive 301km. Its biggest competitor is a Wuling Hongguang MINI EV launched by SAIC GM Wuling in July 2020, with a guiding price of RMB2.88-38800. Wuling Hongguang MINI EV reached 126600 vehicles in the last quarter of last year, which is a far cry from the sales of Changan New Energy. Seeing that its competitors are selling so well, Changan New Energy understands that product price is the most important factor. When the national version of Changan Mercedes-Benz E-Star went on sale in January 2021, two new models were launched with a guiding price of 2.98-39800 yuan. Changan New Energy officials achieved immediate results in the first quarter of this year. The retail volume of Changan New Energy vehicles from January to March in 2021 was 12096, an increase of 1543% over the same period last year.

Among them, the retail volume of the Mercedes-Benz E-Star was 5286 and the national version of the Mercedes-Benz E-Star was 6056. In the first five months of today, it has surpassed the sales volume for the whole of last year, ranking fourth, followed by Hongguang MINI, Tesla's MODEL Y and MODEL3, and Benz E-Star. So by the end of the year, why did Changan New Energy stop taking orders?

Success is the price, stop is also the price. The national version of the Mercedes-Benz E-star is the same as the old Changan Mercedes-Benz EV, which means that although it is a new model of the Mercedes-Benz E-Star, it does not continue the design of the model on sale, but looks like the Changan Mercedes-Benz EV. The price of the national version of Changan Mercedes-Benz E-Star has been pulled down to 29800 yuan, which is 20, 000 yuan lower than the starting price of 49800 yuan for the minimum version of the old Mercedes-Benz EV. The 20,000 yuan, including the national version, canceled airbags, parking radars, brake aids, wheels changed from aluminum alloy to steel, air conditioners only provided warm air, and lithium iron phosphate batteries were used. The old model uses a ternary lithium battery and its battery life has been reduced from the older 210km to the 150km. It can be seen that Changan New Energy saves money in order to compete for sales, and consumers also pay for it. Obviously, this may be a loss-making business for Changan New Energy.

Like many car companies, the driving force of the national version of E-Star for Changan New Energy vehicles may come from points. According to the current environmental protection regulations, car companies' points = average fuel consumption negative points + new energy vehicles positive points, that is, the production of fuel vehicles is a subtractive item, while the production of new energy vehicles is an additional item. For companies that mainly produce fuel cars, they either spend money to buy points, or sell more new energy vehicles to earn points. FAW-Volkswagen will buy new energy vehicle points from Tesla at a price of 3000 yuan per cent, Reuters reported earlier.

In 2020, the negative score of the average fuel consumption of Changan automobile is close to 620000 points, while the positive score of new energy is less than 30,000 points, which is the reason why Changan New Energy is willing to lose money. In the automobile consumer market, many models do not really sell the most entry-level models, and the national version of E-Star seems to do the opposite, and consumers are certainly willing to accept it. Although there is a lot less configuration, it still supplies a large number of orders to Changan new energy, and there is not much profit in itself, resulting in a bad cycle. In September, Changan New Energy added an airbag version of the national version of E-Star Xinyi with a price of 43800 and a mileage of 301KM, while sales began to slowly guide customers to order products with higher prices. Stopping or delaying delivery has led to a scene in which there are more complaints under Changan New Energy Weibo today.

At this time, another problem arises. With the product on the market for a period of time, some problems of the product itself began to be exposed. On a number of complaint websites, there are more and more complaints about E-Star products, including "serious false battery", "cliff power loss", "not allowed to last" and other problems, as well as user feedback that the power suddenly dropped to zero when driving the remaining 100km. These are all fatal problems for new energy vehicles.

The owner responded on the complaint website, "when driving shows 165km, the power goes off very quickly. When driving a 140km, you take a photo and leave a license. When you drive a 24km, you lose power to 70km, and the manufacturer claims to continue 301km. The actual situation is too different." Some car owners even said: "when the vehicle has a range of about 58 kilometers, it suddenly breaks down in the middle of the road, and there is a serious safety risk." At present, from the complaints of a number of car owners, Changan Mercedes-Benz E-Star shows a range of 140,150km, the battery life is fast, seriously affecting the car experience. "

Some sales blamed the battery supplier for the problem, saying that the supplier recalled that the Changan automobile manufacturer was already communicating with the Changan automobile manufacturer, but had not yet come up with a solution, and there may be cases of passing the buck to each other. In Baidu Tieba's "Chang'an Ben Bar", there are many similar topics trying to keep warm. Changan New Energy vehicles have so far given instructions to stop delivery, and these problems continue to accumulate.

Welcome to subscribe to the WeChat public account "Automotive Industry Focus" to get the first-hand insider information on the automotive industry and talk about things in the automotive circle. Welcome to break the news! WeChat ID autoWechat