Author: Yuyan Editor: Zhou Zhiyu After the price of Porsche fell to more than 440,000 yuan, the price of another luxury brand BMW also dropped to more than 170,000 yuan, breaking people's perception of luxury cars. In recent times, many car owners have told Wall Street News that they have purchased the BMW i3 for around 170,000 yuan and are expected to pick up the car after the Dragon Boat Festival. Calculated by the official guide price of 3.539 million yuan, the landing price of 170,000 yuan means that the entry-level pure electric BMW in China has been cut in half. In addition, models such as i5 also have discounts of more than one million yuan compared to the guide price. BMW, a luxury car brand with a rich reputation worldwide, has been accelerating its fall from the altar due to the rise of domestic new energy vehicles. Since the rise of domestic new energy vehicles, BBA's electric vehicles have long been living in jokes. Now that the entry-level BMW has dropped below 200,000 yuan, the joke of "if you don't work hard, you can only afford BBA" is no longer a joke. Faced with the howling of the new energy era, BMW needs to work hard to maintain the value of its models on sale and uphold its positioning as a luxury car before its "new generation" models arrive. This will be a difficult battle. Loss Before this significant price cut, models such as BMW i3 had already shown signs of "price for quantity." For example, when some owners bought the BMW i3 in June 2023, the lowest price they got was around 250,000 yuan. By the end of 2023, although the BMW i3 had been redesigned, its terminal price did not rise due to the update, but had to continue to be reduced to drive sales. A car owner from Anhui began car shopping in February of this year. Initially, he considered models such as Tesla Model 3, Model Y, NIO ES6, ET5T, and even the Xiaomi SU7, and also took a look at BMW's ix3 and i3, but ultimately found that the i3 was more cost-effective after comparison. The dealer's quote for February was 240,000 yuan, and by the end of May, the quote was 187,000 yuan. After several conversations, the final result was picking up the car for 175,000 yuan. That is to say, the price of the BMW i3 has dropped by about 70,000 yuan from February to now. BMW i3 for 170,000 yuan is not uncommon, as many BMW dealers can offer prices around 170,000 yuan. A BMW salesperson in Beijing said there was even room for negotiation at 170,000 yuan. Although sales policies of each store differ, BMW i3s for less than 200,000 yuan are everywhere. The car owner mentioned above believes that he does not have any requirements for smart driving and just wants a cost-effective electric vehicle. The current BMW i3 is a very good choice for him. Among the several models he had previously focused on, the BMW i3 is now the cheapest, which truly confirms the old saying "if you don't work hard, you can only afford BBA." In May, as the price of Porsche continued to fall, dealers who could not bear the subsidies confronted the headquarters, and then BMW took the initiative to send a letter to its 4S stores, "due to the market background and the huge impact of domestic brands. It has been decided to provide many subsidies and exemptions to BMW 4S stores." This also gave the dealers more confidence to reduce prices for promotion. Wall Street News learned that the landing prices of many entry-level BMW models have dropped significantly, even the i5 and other models are affected. The newly launched BMW i5 has also not escaped the curse of price cuts, with a starting price of 4.399 million yuan and many dealers offering discounts of around 100,000 yuan. The collapse of BMW's electric vehicle prices has also affected petrol cars, with the entry-level BMW 3 Series priced at around 240,000 yuan. From a sales perspective, BMW's strategy of pricing for quantity with its new energy vehicles has indeed worked well, which is enough to lead the way among BBA and even the entire traditional luxury car track.

Author: Yuyan Editor: Zhou Zhiyu The weather is good today The weather is good today.

Being born with a "silver spoon", but approaching the brink of delisting, Polestar finally waited for its major shareholder to take action.

Huawei witnessed on June 6 that Qinquijie, Deputy General Manager of Geely Automobile Group's sales company, was officially transferred to Polestar Technology as Chief Operating Officer, replacing Chen Siying, in charge of overall sales, channel development and marketing business sectors.

As the local sales responsible person, Qin Peiji had done a lot of work on the innovative sales business of Volvo in China, especially in ensuring the interests of dealers while keeping Volvo at the forefront of direct sales among traditional luxury brands.

With Qinquijie joining, it is anticipated that Polestar will initiate changes in sales and channel development business directions. Next, as the major shareholder of Geely, a series of measures will be taken to strive to bring back this "small and beautiful" luxury car brand from the brink of delisting.

Of course, Polestar is currently facing many problems. The biggest problem is that it has not yet submitted its 2023 financial report on time.

Before this, Polestar announced that it had received a notice from NASDAQ, stating that it had not complied with the listing rules of this exchange for timely submission of the company's annual report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Under the listing rules of NASDAQ, Polestar has 60 days from the date of notice to submit a compliant plan to NASDAQ. If NASDAQ accepts the plan, Polestar may obtain an additional period of up to 180 days from the due date of the annual financial report until November 11, 2024 to comply with the ongoing listing rules.

In addition, if the closing price of Polestar continues to be below $1 for 30 trading days, it will also receive a warning letter from NASDAQ and will need to raise the stock price to the trading standard within the designated time to avoid delisting. As of June 5, Polestar had closed at a price below $1 for 11 consecutive trading days.

Polestar said that it is expected to submit its annual report for the fiscal year ended December 31 and report financial performance for the first quarter of 2024 by the end of June.

Less than two years after its listing, Polestar's fortunes have been disappointing. The company was expected to have independent financing capabilities and become a larger and stronger player in the capital markets with the backing of Volvo and Geely.

However, Polestar has not had a smooth ride in recent years.

Firstly, there is slow development of new models. Currently, Polestar has four models. As a high-end performance model derived from Volvo, Polestar's first model, Polestar 1, was launched in 2018 with a price of 1.45 million yuan. It is positioned as a high-end performance model and is difficult to sell in large volumes, with only a few units sold after six years.

Three years later, Polestar's second model, Polestar 2, came late to the market. At that time, China's new force leader, Nio, had already entered a large-scale delivery phase. Polestar 2 was priced at 299,800 yuan, but the brand had low awareness and failed to capture the Chinese market with the highest purchasing power for new energy vehicles, resulting in another defeat.

It was not until 2023 that Polestar started to hastily capture the Chinese market, launching Polestar 3 and the relatively low-priced Polestar 4 (starting at 299,800 yuan). However, during the price war in the Chinese market, Polestar 4 was also once discounted by 60,000 yuan for a limited time, but this did not contribute much to the sales volume.

In 2023, Polestar delivered 54,600 vehicles globally, but only about 1,100 in China; even since being sold in China in 2020, the cumulative sales volume was only about 5,000 units. This year, the focus is on selling more vehicles, but as of the end of April, Polestar had only sold about 940 vehicles in China.

The four Polestar products have a large price difference, and their market positioning for volume sales is not accurate enough. Their promotional narrative relies heavily on backing from Volvo, but for Chinese consumers, domestic electrification is in full swing and the Nordic narrative is not enough to impress them.

The sustained low sales volume has also put pressure on Polestar financially. At the end of September 2023, Polestar Automotive had a loss of USD 468 million in profits. In the previous two years, Polestar Automotive had losses of USD 1.07 billion and USD 466 million, respectively.

So much so that in February of this year, Volvo announced that it would no longer provide funds to Polestar and would transfer its stake in Polestar to Geely. However, once the share transfer is completed, Polestar can also get more resources from Geely to help it achieve its global growth goals.

Li Donghui, CEO of Geely Holding Group and a member of Polestar's board, said that Geely Holding will continue to provide comprehensive operational and financial support to Polestar and will hold Polestar's shares for the long term, and will also participate in Polestar's future financing plan at an appropriate time.

With senior executives from Geely, including Li Pengju, entering the Polestar management team, a reform storm is about to kick off.

As a new force in the industry, backed by Geely and Volvo AB unsponsored ADR class B, Polestar is lucky to still have a chance to turn things around. But it should also be noted that with the changes happening in the global electric vehicle industry, vehicle manufacturers are delaying or cutting back on their electric vehicle plans, and investors are becoming more cautious about investing in electric vehicles. In this environment, whether Polestar can rise again is mostly up to its own efforts.