Marketing is essential, but it should never overshadow the fundamentals.

As new energy vehicle (NEV) companies gear up for the year-end sales rush, a car blogger broke shocking news: a rising star brand will convene a general meeting this week to announce its immediate dissolution.

Screenshot: Weibo @Anting Dafan

Numerous netizens speculated that the protagonist could be either Geestone Automobile or Jiyue Automobile, given their unimpressive market performance. When the blogger @TechPlanet pinned posts on social media platforms about Jiyue Automobile's unpaid bills to communication suppliers and information from "internal employees" regarding unpaid salaries and social security contributions, rumors of "Jiyue Automobile's dissolution" began to swirl.

Screenshot: Xiaohongshu

Just now, Jiyue Automobile officially issued a statement denying the rumors of "immediate dissolution." In summary, the company is actively conducting financial adjustments and pursuing financing. There are no issues with service guarantees and new car deliveries. The changes are attributed to "strategic adjustments," and the company is entering the "2.0 stage of entrepreneurship," which involves four measures: strengthening sales and service capabilities, merging overlapping departments and positions, and reducing projects.

Diantong Auto is not entirely clear about the specifics of the "2.0 stage of entrepreneurship," but it understands the four listed measures, indicating that the company intends to reduce expenses moving forward.

Screenshot: Jiyue Automobile

With the support of Baidu's technology and Geely Holding Group's hardware, how did Jiyue Automobile find itself in such a predicament? It raises questions about the company's journey.

Prioritizing marketing over fundamentals

The content released by Jiyue Automobile at this year's Guangzhou Auto Show left a lasting impression on Diantong Auto. Although Jiyue Automobile did not invite Diantong Auto to the live event, Diantong Auto captured the following PPT from the scene.

Source: Diantong Auto Production

This is the short video ranking of automotive executives released by Jiyue Automobile during the Guangzhou Auto Show. Diantong Auto queried the "Guangzhou Auto Show Media Window" and found that Jiyue Automobile's auto show press conference lasted only 20 minutes, consistent with most other manufacturers. While other brands focused on quickly announcing their annual achievements and product plans for the next year, Jiyue Automobile, in addition to unveiling its AI-powered supercar, highlighted the short video data of its automotive executives.

Moreover, the night before the Guangzhou Auto Show, automakers would typically warm up their headline products to attract traffic. Xia Yiping specifically organized a "Xia Yiping's Hot Pot Party," live-streaming the entire process of Xia Yiping chatting, eating, and taking photos with others in a hot pot restaurant, all unrelated to the products. Combined with Xia Yiping's daily habit of updating short videos, it is evident that he genuinely believes marketing is crucial for an automaker's development.

Screenshot: WeChat Video Account @Jiyue Xia Yiping

The automotive market is fiercely competitive. A well-established marketing system can indeed help automakers stand out and even enhance their effectiveness.

Diantong Auto believes that it is acceptable for automotive executives to capitalize on their personal IP traffic. Lei Jun of Xiaomi Automobile and Li Bin of NIO have attracted considerable traffic through live streaming and short videos. However, it must be acknowledged that Lei Jun and Li Bin's live streams or short videos center around product strength and brand culture. Automotive executives are deeply tied to corporate culture. If they do not strengthen their brand identity but merely pursue traffic, it will be difficult to significantly boost brand sales.

Serious about benchmarking Tesla, but lacking unique selling points

Marketing is just one aspect. If a brand has highly competitive products, it can also gain recognition from consumers. However, actual data tells a different story. Official sales data shows that in November this year, Jiyue Automobile delivered 2,485 vehicles, a month-on-month decrease of 25%, with cumulative deliveries exceeding 14,000 vehicles in the first 11 months. To date, Jiyue Automobile's two market products, Jiyue 01 and Jiyue 07, have monthly sales of less than 3,000 units each.

With the dual support of Geely Holding Group's technical architecture and Baidu's intelligent technology, Jiyue Automobile can be considered a "born with a silver spoon" automotive brand. However, during the critical year-end sales rush, why is there a sales decline trend that is completely different from other NEV brands?

The answer may lie in the products.

Source: Jiyue Automobile

Most NEV companies seem to have benchmarked their products against Tesla, a prominent competitor. Tesla holds a significant position in the pure electric vehicle market, with the Model 3 and Model Y serving as benchmark products. Automakers draw to some extent on elements of Tesla models during the benchmarking process. Among the many NEV companies, Jiyue has the strongest Tesla influence.

Firstly, it should be noted that Jiyue 01 and Jiyue 07 do not resemble Tesla much in appearance. Jiyue 01 even features an innovative function that Tesla models lack: voice control outside the vehicle. However, there are many similarities in interior design, such as screen sliding gear shifting, half-rim steering wheels, and buttons replacing traditional levers for turn signals and wipers.

Source: Jiyue Automobile

Judging from online feedback, these three designs have not been well-received, and no other automaker is willing to fully adopt them except for Jiyue. Diantong Auto once test-drove the Jiyue 01 and found that while these three designs might seem to enhance technological sense, they actually add considerable learning costs. In particular, the half-rim steering wheel and button-operated turn signals are not very user-friendly for experienced drivers.

Moreover, during the Jiyue 01 launch event, Xia Yiping emphasized that "there are only two brands in the world that use a pure vision-based intelligent driving solution, and Jiyue is one of them." At that time, most new forces had not yet abandoned the lidar solution. Regarding intelligent driving performance, the Jiyue 01 remained calm facing the complex road conditions in the urban area of Guangzhou. However, its intelligent driving system is still in a state of continuous development, supporting a limited number of advanced intelligent driving routes and unable to achieve the level of "drivable on any road."

Source: Tesla Motors

Therefore, Jiyue Automobile finds itself in an awkward position. In the field of intelligent driving, the market reputation of Jiyue 01's pure vision-based intelligent driving solution is inferior to that of intelligent driving systems like Huawei's Kunlun Intelligence and XPeng's AI Tianji. Moreover, Tesla's pure vision solution is not inferior. It is difficult to persuade users who want to experience advanced intelligent driving to choose Jiyue.

From the perspective of hardware, configuration, and materials, Jiyue's main attraction is its intelligent cockpit, with impressive voice recognition capabilities. However, there are many other outstanding products in the intelligent cockpit field at this stage, such as Xiaomi's SU7, which benchmarks Jiyue 07, and AITO's 07 and AITO's M7, which benchmark Jiyue 01, not to mention power and endurance. More importantly, due to its deep reference to Tesla models, Jiyue's cockpit lacks the warm atmosphere of a family car, while other domestic cars have achieved rapid sales growth relying on their family-oriented characteristics.

When Jiyue 01 was launched, it was officially positioned as a "car robot." Honestly, Jiyue 01 is indeed unique in the pure electric SUV market. However, many of its selling points are too far removed from mainstream consumers, and some designs even seem outlandish just for the sake of being outstanding. This also dooms Jiyue 01 to have a low ceiling.

This includes the Jiyue 07 launched this year. After test-driving the Jiyue 01, Diantong Auto discussed with the brand about adding more humanized designs to showcase the concept of a "car robot" from other aspects. However, not much change was seen in the Jiyue 07, which is somewhat regrettable.

The automotive market elimination race is accelerating; cherish every moment

When Baidu officially announced its entry into the automotive industry, Diantong Auto has always kept an eye on this automotive brand. When Jiyue Automobile was still "Jidu Automobile," it had already unveiled its first automotive robot concept car, ROBO-01. However, as Jidu was controlled by Baidu and did not have an automotive manufacturing license, it had to establish the "Jiyue Automobile" brand with Geely Automobile to transfer actual control to Geely.

No one knows exactly what stage Xia Yiping refers to when he says that "Jiyue is entering the 2.0 stage of entrepreneurship." However, it is clear that Jiyue Automobile is currently losing ground in the mid-to-high-end pure electric vehicle market.

Source: HiPhi Automobile

This year, competition in the automotive market has intensified, and Jiyue is not the only new force suffering. Brands like WM Motor, Evergrande, and HiPhi have already been eliminated unnoticed, and NIO is struggling to recapture its former glory from two years ago.

With fewer and fewer new forces left in the game, none dares claim certainty. Mistakes in products or marketing can require substantial investments to rectify or may even lead to complete failure.

What is certain is that automakers must quickly absorb industry experience to cope with more complex market challenges at hand.

(Cover image source: Diantong Auto Production)

Source: Leitech