How does StarTour start the "Star Era"?

Recently, Chery's exposure to the outside world has continued to climb.

First, it announced four "firsts" in 2022, followed by a high-profile announcement that it had been the No. 1 exporter of passenger cars for 14 years. In March, Chery Group announced a 52.7 percent year-on-year increase in sales, and first-quarter sales were up 44.1 percent year-on-year, a record high.

And over the weekend, Chery Automobile announced that its entire brand had entered new energy, not only launching a new new energy brand, iCAR, but also unveiling the "Star Era," an array of high-end products under the Star Road brand. Two days later, while the iron is hot, the Star Road Range Moon is also on the market. According to the latest news, before the Shanghai auto show, Jetway, iCAR and the Chery brand will also have updated products and information released.

All kinds of information show that:

Chery is speeding up in the second half of the competition for new cars.

Behind this speeding up is the whole system layout of "4+1": iCAR's innovative and independent operation, the stable development of Chery and Jetway's basic plate, and more importantly, Chery's high-end mission of the Star Car and Star Era.

Turning back the clock to September 2017, Chery's new high-end product series "EXEED" was officially unveiled.

Unlike the now-familiar StarTour brand, EXEED was still a product, not a brand. The EXEED TX production concept was unveiled as a high-end concept car for the Ruihu lineup, and only after it was well received was it elevated to the premiere of the premium brand, and the original dragon scale grille was removed for this purpose.

Still can recall, at the time of the launch of the brand Star Road, Star Road has said that the birth of the EXEED TX/TXL this model took a full 10 years, in the continuous establishment and continuous overthrow, is committed to in all aspects of the others in their own comprehensive transcendence, as "EXEED" The word "EXEED" is the original meaning of the word.

Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery Automobile Group, even said bluntly:

"Chery's high-end is my dream for many years, and Xingtu is a brand new brand that carries Chery's high-end. Other people's cars can be made of money, made by engineers, we do it with our soul, we use our soul to design, use our soul to sell cars, and use our soul to serve."

Undoubtedly, from the beginning of its birth, the Star Road carries the major mission of Chery upward high-end. Even today, this mission remains unchanged, and is still given high hopes by Chery.

Just as Yin Tongyue said at the launch of the Range Rover yesterday,

"The Xingtu is the tip of Chery's brand pyramid, and it is the globalized high-end strategic brand of Chery that will face the future layout, and it must unshirkably lead Chery's mission of technological breakthroughs and brand upward mobility. Chery has the confidence, determination and patience to make Xingtu the No. 1 luxury brand of China's independent brands."

Only, beyond the expectations, the problem StarTour must solve is how to give Chery and the outside world confidence.

Horizontal comparison, the star and the same period before and after the start of the Link compared to the sales and brand image there is still a gap; vertical point of view, as a start more than five years of the brand, the current market sales and brand image can not be called "successful".

"The problem in the past is that the brand label is weak. Some industry observers believe that compared to the huge product and brand image distinction between Link and Geely, there is a fuzzy zone in the product positioning between Xingtu and the Chery brand. The person said, for example, in the independent "three high-end" early start, Link's label is young, stylish, WEY's label is dynamic, luxury, what is the Star Road? It may be difficult to describe the label of the Star Road at first glance.

In fact, it's only since 2022, through models such as the Yaoguang, that the outside world has gradually recognized the high-end exploration image of the Xintu, and consumers have only very clearly perceived that the Xintu and Chery brands are different.

Currently, the new automotive revolution is advancing in depth. The superimposed industrial form of electrification and intelligence has given Chinese automobiles brand new opportunities. As mentioned earlier, as the carrier of Chery Automobile's premiumization, Xingtu must re-establish its brand value label in the second half of the new automobile, and reshape its brand value image through strong brand operation.

In this way, the arrival of Star Era STERRA is full of realistic and powerful brand symbolism.

From the information of the previous conference, inheriting the product definition of STERRA to focus on the middle and high-end market, "the Star Era series will be built around the ultra-comfortable category to build, the target group is the warm technology, middle-class families, and the main attack on the high-end new energy models of 200,000-500,000 yuan market."

Compared to the previous StarTour's product price range, the Star Era STERRA is undoubtedly on a whole new level.

In terms of product matrix, STERRA will cover a wide range of models from B to C class sedans, SUVs, MPVs, etc. In the sedan category, pure electric models will be the mainstay, while SUVs and MPVs will adopt the idea of walking on two legs, pure electric and hybrid. At the launch site, the Star Era series launched two new models - the super comfortable mid-size electric sedan Star Era ES and the super comfortable mid-size SUV Star Era ET.

Both models are built on Chery's new pure electric platform E0X. Many people are no strangers to this electric platform. As Chery's new intelligent electric vehicle platform, it has been "dramatized" many times before.

Data shows that the E0X platform is EEA5.0?electronic and electrical architecture, realizing 1000TOPS high computing power, Gigabit Ethernet high transmission, software and hard decoupling full stack controllable. It can cover A+~C class SUV/SD/MPV, five-seat, six-seat and seven-seat models. In addition, besides pure electric models, there will also be extended range models.

In terms of range, the E0X platform models can achieve 700+km, 150km charging in 5 minutes, and 0-100km/h in less than 3 seconds. The platform also supports 800V high-voltage supercharging, ultra-low wind resistance coefficient, intelligent cockpit, ultra-large space efficiency and air suspension system. The range is 700+km, with a 5-minute charge of 150km and 0-100km/h in less than 3 seconds.

An obvious conclusion is:

Chery's future electrified products may not all be built on the E0X platform; but the high-end Star Chronicle will be fully empowered by the E0X platform. In other words, Chery's top electrification and intelligent technologies will be fully added to the Star Era sequence.

A bold judgment is:

Starterra's brand development has entered the 2.0 era, and Starterra's high-end new energy product sequence has become an important reference, which is not only a footnote of Starterra's R&D investment in the past years, but also a new starting point for Starterra to move towards a new track of development. STERRA is of great strategic significance to StarElite.

However, STERRA is still officially referred to as a "high-end new energy product series". But in reality, the planning of these products already has the shape of a new brand. Perhaps we can venture to guess that Star Era is an important sequence that will drive the upward mobility of Star Road in the future, and its planning today may reflect the future appearance of Star Road. After all, at the beginning of the birth of the StarTour, has also gone through a period of Chery brand high-end sequence of positioning.

And from another point of view, Star Era harmonizes with New Era. Its arrival is both a new era for StarTour and a new era for Chery.

"The current Chery Group from the sales volume is not a problem, the key problem lies in the high-end market deep plowing." Industry analysts pointed out that the current Chinese brand is in the new energy and intelligent track to make a comprehensive breakthrough. With the advancement of supply-side structural reform, high-end, especially new energy high-end models has been a key topic that has to think about. If it is still in the low-value range roll, neither efficiency nor future. "For Chinese auto brands, high-end intelligent products will certainly be the focus of competition, Chery is missing this piece".

At present, car companies including Azure, Ideal, BYD, Geely Extreme Kryptonite, BAIC Extreme Fox, SAIC ZhiJi, GAC EAN, etc. are fiercely competing for the new energy high-end market share of more than 250,000 yuan, while Chery new energy products under the product price range covering 30,000 yuan to 180,000 yuan of the mid-range and low-end price range, most of them are still below 200,000 yuan.

Specifically, Chery New Energy's current **** has six products under its banner, including the Little Ant, Big Ant, QQ Ice Cream, Boundless Pro, and Arena e, most of which are priced at around 100,000 yuan.

There's no doubt that Chery's new energy endeavor needs stronger brands and products to pick up the slack, not just small cars.

Just as industry analysts pointed out, when Chery's traditional fuel part of the sales bucked the trend, facing the future of Chery's new energy or have to work harder, after all, the new energy pattern is now roughly solid. If this wave of development of the dividend can not catch up, behind the want to break through again, will be very strenuous.

This is also Chery at the moment, the core motivation of the new energy strategy to promote large sums of money.

Chery needs a brand to help Chery stand firm in the high-end electric smart market. Like Audi to Volkswagen, at the tip of the pyramid, holding up the entire image of Chery.

And such a mission can only be carried out by StarTour (Star Era). Although iCAR also announced that it would enter the 150,000-300,000 yuan new-energy vehicle market at that weekend's conference at the Water Cube, everyone knows that the iCAR is a much more affordable vehicle than the iCAR. But everyone knows that compared to iCAR's youthful and trendy positioning, the high-end and intelligent Xingtu (Star Era) is another important expectation of Chery.

What's certain is that, in the face of such expectations, the StarTour is ready to go big.

As Huang Zhaogen, assistant general manager of Chery Automobile Co. and general manager of StarTour's marketing center, told Auto Prophet, the three main dimensions of extreme technology and products, quality user operation, and strong brand power are indispensable to building a premium brand. Centered around the three major dimensions, Xingtu has already launched a comprehensive change ......

The ancient saying goes: when you meet water, you will get rich.

How high can Chery, which has set its ambition in the Water Cube, boost StarTour (Star Era)? Or Star (Star) can pull Chery upward road to what kind of situation? Let's wait and see.

This article is from the author of "Car Prophets", all rights reserved, please contact the author for any kind of reproduction.