Editor | Yu ‘er Lake
Produced by Chaoqi. com "See the column"
With the acceleration of electrification in China’s automobile industry, the penetration rate of new energy passenger cars has increased year by year in recent years. In order to seize the opportunity of new energy market, many established car companies have launched new products of new energy vehicles, and deep blue car is one of them. Deep Blue Automobile, formerly known as Changan Deep Blue, is a new energy automobile brand launched by Changan Automobile in April 2022.
Backed by Changan Automobile, Deep Blue brand has performed well since it came out. Although it just turned one year old, the brand has already enjoyed the title of "New Energy Dark Horse" in the industry. However, the highlight of the dark blue brand came and went quickly, and soon received many complaints about quality problems. The operation of price increase and price reduction also caused many doubts, and the sales volume declined, and the brand development went downhill.
In March of this year, Changan Deep Blue officially changed its name to Deep Blue Automobile. It seems that there is a plan to operate the brand independently, which has once again sparked heated discussion. From the "new energy dark horse" to the dilemma that word-of-mouth and sales are frustrated now, I am afraid that the life of the dark blue car after self-reliance will be even worse. Nowadays, the new energy automobile industry is becoming more and more involved, and it will take time to give an answer to the future development of Deep Blue Automobile.
Prices rose first and then fell, and the public opinion storm was difficult to solve.
In recent years, the new energy automobile industry has developed rapidly, and there are many entrants. Different from other companies, Changan Automobile, as an old car company, always maintained a wait-and-see attitude. Until 2022, Changan Automobile, which had been dormant for several years, launched a brand new intelligent new energy car brand "Changan Deep Blue", and immediately launched the first production car product "Changan Deep Blue SL03".
The deep blue SL03, which had high hopes, made outstanding achievements at the beginning of listing. With the price-performance ratio advantage of only 160,000 yuan, this model quickly gained the favor of many consumers. Unfortunately, the good performance of Deep Blue SL03 was not maintained, and it soon fell into a public opinion storm due to frequent price adjustment.
At present, the price of raw materials for power batteries is rising, the cost of batteries for new energy vehicles is gradually increasing, and with the arrival of subsidies for new energy vehicles in China in 2023, the profit margin of low-priced new energy vehicle products is greatly reduced. To this end, in January, 2023, the official price of Deep Blue SL03 extended-range model and pure electric model was raised by 3,000 to 6,000 yuan.
The rising price makes Deep Blue SL03 lose its cost-effective advantage to some extent, which leads to the loss of some consumers. As a result, the sales volume of Deep Blue Automobile also fell by more than 30% after the price rose, and once became the only automobile brand in the new energy automobile market with a decline in sales volume in early 2023.
However, soon Tesla, Tucki, Wenjie and other new energy automobile brands launched a wave of new energy price reduction, and then more than 40 brands in China joined the price war of new energy vehicles. At that time, the situation of the dark blue car that had just risen in price became very embarrassing. In order not to be left behind by other brands, Deep Blue Automobile reduced its price again. In mid-March this year, it launched a 20,000-yuan car purchase package and a 22,000-yuan car purchase subsidy.
The magic operation of the official announcement of the price increase and then the price reduction of Deep Blue Auto has caused a lot of consumer dissatisfaction. Among them, the old owners of Deep Blue SL03, who bought deep blue automobile products at a high price and have not received any compensation, launched a large-scale questioning and spit, pointing out that Deep Blue automobile is treating consumers as "leeks". For a while, the deep blue car cut leeks, and a large number of old users took off the powder, and the brand reputation was greatly frustrated.
In fact, the operation that the price of deep blue car rises first and then falls not only makes the brand fall into a storm of public opinion, but also lays a lot of hidden worries for the subsequent development of the brand. Insiders pointed out that the official price reduction of Deep Blue Automobile can really attract consumers’ attention in a short time, but the unstable price will lead consumers to have a wait-and-see mentality, which will have a counterproductive effect on brand sales. At the same time, under the subsidy, the profit margin of the products of Deep Blue Auto has been compressed again, and the price war is still going on. The road of Deep Blue Auto will only be more difficult in the future.
For a new brand like Deep Blue Auto, which has just been established for one year, brand reputation is very important. The price rising first and then falling has caused a lot of public opinion, which has caused the decline of brand reputation. In the future, how to stabilize the brand image and maintain the brand reputation is a problem that Deep Blue Automobile should consider as soon as possible.
Quality complaints continue, product quality control is worrying.
The product quality of new energy automobile brands has always been a hot topic of widespread concern inside and outside the industry. Recently, due to the quality problems of its products, Deep Blue Auto was complained by new and old users on a large scale and embarked on the road of "black and red".
As of the beginning of June, the number of complaints about the term "Chang ‘an Deep Blue" on the platform of Black Cat Automobile has exceeded 300. Just two months after the brand was renamed, the cumulative number of complaints from Deep Blue Auto has reached 292, ranking first in the quarterly list of black cars on the black cat complaint platform.
Judging from the accounts of car owners on the complaint platform, the main problems of Deep Blue car are not only consumer dissatisfaction caused by frequent price adjustment, but also vehicle failures such as brake failure, steering failure and limited power, as well as driving experience problems such as seat pressure sensing failure, abnormal car body noise and seat bulging.
In March of this year, the owners of Deep Blue Automobile directly carried out collective rights protection against the main problems existing in Deep Blue Automobile, and the whole network published an article entitled "A Letter from the Owners of Changan Deep Blue SL03 to Changan Automobile". In this paper, the frequent problems of vehicle failures are discussed in detail, and it is pointed out that all kinds of failures of deep blue automobile have seriously affected the driving safety and driving experience of the owners, and there are certain safety hazards.
It can be seen that the quality problems of deep blue cars have a long history, which has led to the collapse of the trust of many consumers. At the same time, many car owners said that the hardware configuration of Deep Blue car was inconsistent with the official propaganda. The hardware configuration of Deep Blue SL03 model was reduced from "12G+128G" to "8G storage +64G flash memory", and the car battery was not the Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited battery in the official propaganda. In terms of battery life, the official electric version of Deep Blue Automobile has a battery life of 515km, but actually it is only 420km, which is suspected of being a virtual standard.
What makes consumers even more chilling is that in the case of frequent product failures and inconsistent publicity, the after-sales service of Deep Blue Auto can’t keep up. On all platforms, complaints about "poor after-sales attitude", "unprofessional", "delay in delivery" and "deposit dispute" of Deep Blue Auto appear constantly.
In fact, behind frequent failures and constant complaints, the problem of poor quality control of deep blue automobile products has begun to surface. Nowadays, the competition in the new energy vehicle market is very fierce. Ensuring the quality of products and providing high-quality services has become the key to the competition among vehicle enterprises. If Deep Blue does not strengthen quality control management in time, I am afraid that the brand will gradually lose its ability to retain customers, and even affect the future value trend of the brand.
Sales have fallen sharply, and the challenge of brand name change is great.
At the beginning of June, Deep Blue Auto took the lead in releasing the May brand sales report. The data shows that in May, the cumulative sales volume of the deep blue SL03 model was 7021 units, down about 10% from the previous month. In fact, this is the fourth time that the sales of deep blue cars have declined month-on-month.
As a new energy automobile brand that Changan Automobile has been grinding for five years, the first model of Deep Blue Automobile was once called "the Pearl of Shangri-La Crown". In the early days, deep blue cars did achieve good sales. Not only did the order break through 10,000 within one hour of launch, but by the third quarter of 2022, its order volume had exceeded 40,000 vehicles. In December last year, the monthly sales volume of Deep Blue Auto remained at more than 10,000 vehicles.
However, due to the price increase and price reduction of brands and the outbreak of consumer collective rights protection events, the sales of Deep Blue Automobile have continued to decline since 2023. The data shows that in January this year, the monthly sales volume of Deep Blue Automobile was 6,137 vehicles, a decrease of 47.3% compared with 11,650 vehicles in December 2022. The monthly sales in February continued to decline, only 4,103 vehicles, down 33.1% from the previous month.
In March, after the introduction of price reduction subsidies by Deep Blue Automobile, brand sales picked up slightly, increasing to 85.68 million units. However, the sales growth brought by the price reduction is undoubtedly only a flash in the pan. From April to May, the sales of Deep Blue cars continued to decline. According to statistics, at present, the cumulative sales volume of Deep Blue has not exceeded 40,000, which is far from the "400,000 sales target" set at the beginning of the year.
The dark blue car, which has just turned one year old, seems to have shown signs of development fatigue. In response to this phenomenon, industry insiders said that the development trend of Deep Blue Automobile is mainly related to the competition in the new energy automobile industry.
On the one hand, the price war in the domestic new energy vehicle market is endless, and the participation of young deep blue cars in price reduction activities has greatly damaged the brand reputation. On the other hand, compared with joint ventures and industry leaders, the quality, driving experience and reputation of Deep Blue are slightly inferior, and it has not yet formed the core competitiveness of the market, so it is under great pressure to survive.
Surprisingly, when the brand was established less than a year ago, Deep Blue Automobile also changed the original "Changan Deep Blue" signboard and renamed the brand. Experts speculate that Deep Blue Automobile may plan to be spun off from Changan to become an independent automobile brand, or it may be related to the collapse of previous brand reputation. Generally speaking, the development trend of the renamed deep blue car is full of unknowns.
Glamour came out, but the succession was weak, and the market performance of Deep Blue Automobile was really unsatisfactory. The involution of the new energy vehicle market is still intensifying, and Deep Blue will face more challenges in the future.
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In any case, the new energy vehicle market is still a battleground for the automobile industry, with a large development space. We also believe that the dark blue car with a bright start has good development potential. However, at present, Deep Blue Auto is still facing problems such as constant public opinion turmoil, frequent quality problems, and continuous decline in sales, which is a great pressure.
As a new entrant in the new energy market, Deep Blue Automobile faces both challenges and opportunities. If you want to gain a foothold in the new energy car track, the young deep blue car will face a protracted war. I hope that Deep Blue Automobile can withstand the development pressure, realize the brand development vision as soon as possible, and bring more possibilities to China’s new energy automobile industry.
