[Autohome?News]?Recently, Tesla has competed with Pinduoduo for many rounds, causing an uproar. Speaking of which, Pinduoduo has taken advantage of the popularity of other brands more than once or twice. From cosmetics to family planning products, from mobile phones to game consoles, from household appliances to transportation...it will take advantage of whoever is popular. In the automotive field, this is not the first example. Cadillac and Pinduoduo had previously made a deal during the May 5th Shopping Festival, but Cadillac had to give in half-heartedly. But this time Tesla’s attitude seems very determined, and it seems that it intends to fight to the end and never compromise with Pinduoduo. There are many discussions in the industry about why Tesla does not compromise, but they are limited to the level of brand image and sales channel management. Tesla needs to maintain its own brand image, so it is very natural to distance itself from Pinduoduo.
●?Brand Communication To a certain extent, Tesla’s core competitiveness and core products are not technology and cars, but the brand. Be it technology, products, services, or communication, they all exist to establish a brand image. Every model launched and every technology developed are decisions made based on brand positioning and strategic goals. In fact, in most fields, for companies with certain premium capabilities, brand is the core, and all business of the company is carried out around the brand. Therefore, it is normal for Tesla not to want anything to do with Pinduoduo. In addition, the industry generally believes that Tesla does almost no advertising. However, Tesla just does not do advertising in the traditional sense. In fact, Tesla has been sparing no effort in brand communication. Whether it is the topical Elon Musk himself, or other related companies such as SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, etc., they have brought huge brand effects to Tesla, even the "no advertising" business The behavior itself is an excellent "advertisement". Tesla's "advertising" is essentially the shaping of its own brand value. Although it does not use traditional media, it still requires huge investment. In other words, Tesla itself is a communication channel with huge influence, and Tesla’s “advertising” is only placed within its own system. It is precisely because of this that Pinduoduo is "taking advantage" of Tesla's popularity, borrowing its brand influence to expand its own communication, and even hopes to enhance its own brand image by establishing brand associations. To put it more seriously, it is directly robbing money. Therefore, from a communication perspective, Tesla will never let Pinduoduo take advantage of its own popularity.
●? Sales channel Tesla is almost the first mass-produced car brand to successfully achieve direct sales. As a complex and valuable commodity, cars have long sales cycles and complicated delivery processes. Especially in an era without comprehensive informatization, the sales and services of automobiles at terminals cannot meet national unified standards, and vehicle prices cannot be completely unified. Therefore, a large number of terminal sales personnel are needed to serve consumers. Automobile manufacturers do not have the ability to establish a sales team covering the entire market, so they must cooperate with dealers in various places. Dealers can not only solve the problem of localized and differentiated sales services, but also share the pressure of capital turnover, commercial vehicle inventory, spare parts reserves, after-sales services, etc. for automobile manufacturers, and even become a reservoir for automobile manufacturers to adjust sales performance. Now that the Internet is fully popularized, the world is becoming increasingly flat, and differences in time and space are no longer an obstacle for automobile manufacturers to expand their market size and cover the terminal market. Moreover, the car’s electrified architecture also makes maintenance and repairs simple. In addition, as the price of automobile products becomes cheaper and cheaper relative to consumers' disposable income, buying a car has become easier. Therefore, the complexity of terminal retail and after-sales business has been greatly reduced, making it possible for automobile manufacturers to implement direct sales. This not only makes their services more standardized and controllable, but also directly connects to consumers, saving a lot of money through de-intermediation. Distribution channel costs. Not only Tesla, but also new car-making forces such as NIO, Xpeng, and Ideal are also adopting the direct sales model. Even most traditional car companies are exploring their own direct sales models.
However, the core reason why traditional car companies have not implemented full direct sales immediately is probably not that the products they sell are new energy vehicles or traditional energy vehicles. The biggest obstacle is that it has damaged the dealerships that they had previously operated with and worked together through thick and thin. business interests. The above are the most common views everyone has in discussing the "Tesla vs. Pinduoduo" incident - brand image and channel management. But is this really the case? Is that all? Let’s combine some of Tesla’s other recent news and analyze the logic behind it from the perspective of business layout.
●? Travel services Tesla controls channels. In addition to protecting the direct sales model, it is more important to firmly hold users in its own hands. Because what Tesla sells to users is not just cars, but a complete set of car-based travel services, as well as other value-added services that will have more market imagination in travel scenarios in the future. According to the changing trend of the main sources of profits, automobile marketing can be divided into the following stages: the first stage, selling automobile products; the second stage, selling automobile services; the third stage, selling travel solutions; the fourth stage, selling based on Value-added services for travel scenarios. Currently, the automobile market is in the initial stage of transition from the second stage of "selling car services" to the third stage of "selling travel solutions". As hardware, cars will have fewer and fewer profit points and lower profit margins. The essence of user demand behind car purchases is travel, and a series of services surrounding travel will be the market opportunities in the future. In particular, the electrification changes brought about by new energy vehicles have enabled OTA to be realized and gradually popularized. Cars are no longer simply defined by hardware, but can be kept up to date, expanded functional applications, and even improved performance through online upgrades. The core profits of vehicles will come from new demands in a series of travel scenarios such as system updates, functional permission opening, performance upgrades, application purchases, and charging services. And this is exactly the model pioneered by Tesla. Tesla is continuously compressing hardware costs and gaining a comparative advantage by continuously lowering vehicle prices. At the same time, it is shifting its profit sources to OTA upgrades, home charging service packages, and Supercharger station charging services. Therefore, Tesla must control the entrance of cars and machines and firmly hold users and their travel consumption in its hands. This is one of the reasons why Tesla must distance itself from Pinduoduo.
●?Autonomous driving In the third stage of marketing competition, Tesla has achieved first-mover advantage. Other competitors have already unknowingly entered the "script" written by Tesla in advance under Tesla's lead. Moreover, Tesla has already made plans and plans for the future: autonomous driving is the core and foundation of the fourth phase of automobile marketing, "selling value-added services based on travel scenarios." In the future, not only communication, including access to the Internet, will become a basic human right, but travel will also become a basic human right. Enjoying basic free travel services will be one of the possibilities of human social life in the future. From the perspective of improving logistics efficiency, releasing human travel time, and liberating productivity, autonomous driving of cars is almost an inevitable development trend. Therefore, human beings' growing travel needs and the large amount of leisure time in transit brought by autonomous vehicles will inevitably need to be filled with various services, which will be a huge commercial space. Tesla is actively promoting its autonomous driving business, and its purpose is to seize this huge business opportunity first, and build a value rent-seeking space through the time difference of the first launch and the exclusive entrance to the car and machine. In this way, even when competitors generally enter the third stage of competition in travel solutions, Tesla can still maintain its lead, take the first bite of the cake in the fourth stage, and obtain huge benefits through value-added services in travel scenarios. With such an imaginative future opportunity, how could Tesla let Pinduoduo take advantage of it now?
●?Product technology “Function determines form.” The development of electrification and autonomous driving will change the shape and structure of vehicles.
Although the current automobile is still in the transition stage from the E era (electronic era) to the i era (intelligent era), new energy vehicles with pure electric architecture represented by Tesla have already allowed us to see some changes: the four-corner distribution of wheels, Obtain a larger wheelbase and arrange the battery; move the A-pillar forward to improve effective space utilization; reduce the area of ??the air intake grille or even eliminate it directly to obtain a better aerodynamic layout... not only the shape and structure, but also the production process and materials Changes have also taken place. Recently, Tesla disclosed its body-integrated molding process: using a die-casting process to manufacture an integrated aluminum alloy body. Although it is currently only used in the production of the rear floor assembly of Model Y, the ultimate goal is to be used in the entire car body except for opening and closing parts and outer covering parts. The current car body is mainly produced using the stamping and welding process. In order to ensure the structural strength, stiffness and other properties of each part, complex sheet metal structural design and a large number of repeated CAE calculations are required, which will inevitably lead to redundancy in structure and performance. . If the die-casting one-piece molding process is used, each part of the body structure can be designed "just right", saving chassis space for more batteries. It can not only improve safety performance, but also reduce maintenance quality. In addition, without the stamping and welding processes, a large amount of equipment investment such as molds, presses, fixtures, and welding robots can be saved, and the development and production costs of the vehicle can be reduced. In addition, Musk has also evaluated the feasibility of using heat treatment processes to achieve different colors of cold-rolled stainless steel. If this process can be implemented on the outer covering of the car body, then the four major processes of vehicle production will basically be completely centered on final assembly, and production efficiency will be greatly improved. Tesla has recently disclosed a number of patents: high-performance computing chips (HPC) using 7nm process technology, short-range motion sensors, new wire harness layout architecture... It is foreseeable that Tesla's future car products will be more intelligent. The mechanical structure is also simpler, and can even be completely packaged except for necessary opening and closing parts such as doors, luggage compartments, and charging ports. All these technical directions are paving the way for the realization of autonomous driving and the terminalization of vehicles. Tesla's future products will retain a certain degree of redundancy in performance in order to make money through user-paid upgrades and unlocked functions, or to be equipped with more functional car applications. This is also a necessary condition for the fourth stage of future automobile marketing - "selling value-added services based on travel scenarios." Financial Insurance Tesla has another recent news that has attracted the attention of the industry, and that is the establishment of an insurance brokerage company in China. It’s no surprise that Tesla is getting into the insurance business. UBI insurance, which the industry has been clamoring for for many years, cannot be implemented. One of the reasons is that the driving behavior data of car owners cannot be obtained. On the one hand, it is because there are many vehicle models and it is extremely complicated to analyze users' driving behavior through vehicle and machine data. On the other hand, it is naturally because data - especially car and machine data are the lifeblood of car companies and cannot be shared exclusively. But Tesla has a natural advantage in this regard. It has its own vehicle data and has the technical ability and feasibility to analyze car owner behavior on its own. Although Tesla's insurance brokerage company can only act as an agent for insurance, it can have enough data resources to influence the insurance pricing of its partners. If Tesla can provide its own car owners with insurance based on driving behavior, not only will users enjoy cheaper and more reasonable insurance costs, but Tesla will also have a cost advantage in related businesses with vehicles as its core, and can even Earn huge profits from insurance. In addition, although the one-piece body molding process mentioned earlier has many benefits, because the aluminum alloy material has low elongation and is difficult to weld, it has poor maintainability and high maintenance costs. However, Tesla’s future insurance will also take a route similar to Apple’s “AppleCare” to a certain extent, replacing repairs with new ones. Moreover, aluminum alloys have a high recycling value. If Tesla can expand its recycling and remanufacturing business and cooperate with its own insurance services, the overall cost will be greatly reduced. Once L5-level autonomous driving is realized and even the steering wheel is eliminated, the responsibility for putting the vehicle on the road will fall entirely on the car manufacturer. Therefore, car manufacturers may not sell cars directly, but only provide travel services.
Car insurance in the era of autonomous driving will be a larger market and competition will become more intense. Tesla has enough incentives to take the insurance business of its own vehicles into its hands to seek to maximize profits. Intellectual Property As early as many years ago, Tesla announced that it would open up its patents for free use by the industry. No matter what the purpose of Tesla's move is, whether it is brand communication or promoting the development of electric vehicles, it is obvious that the real core technology will not be open to the public. Tesla's purpose of opening up its patents, personally, is a bit like Sophon in "The Three-Body Problem": to lock down the technological progress of its opponents. By providing free patented technologies, some competitors are allowed to follow the technical routes designed by the "script", limiting or even locking the development possibilities of competitors. After all, free is the most expensive. Tesla will always maintain a leading position based on these open patents, and will also bring additional benefits: the entire industry is built on Tesla standards. It can be seen that Pinduoduo’s interest in Tesla may just be to borrow its brand influence. But from Tesla's standpoint, it's not just trying to gain popularity and destroying channels, it's simply disturbing the foundation of its lofty ideals and beautiful blueprint, so it absolutely cannot compromise. There is a saying: "The pole is long and the bench is wide. The bench is not as long as the pole and the pole is not as wide as the bench. The pole should be tied to the bench. The bench does not allow the pole to be tied to the bench. The pole should be tied to the bench." The pole and the bench The bundled Play products have been pushing each other for hundreds of years, and the dispute over sales channels between Pinduoduo and Tesla, which have their own opinions, may not come to an end for a while. So let us continue to pay attention. (Text/Autohome Big Data Analyst? Liu Xueshan)