Asia Tech Wire (Apr 23) -- Three to four car companies, including Xpeng Inc. (9868.HK), have allegedly joined the public opinion attack on Li Auto's new car, Li MEGA, which has been labeled a coffin-like car, according to Chinese media outlet Caixin.
Li Auto launched Li MEGA, a large MPV, at 559,800 yuan in early March. As the company's first all-electric model and its most expensive, Li Auto has high hopes for the car.
Li Auto CEO Li Xiang said bluntly at the launch event, "We are confident that Li MEGA will be Li Auto's next top-selling product, and become No. 1 in sales above 500,000 yuan."
However, before and after the launch of the car, comments and pictures about its "coffin-like appearance" quickly spread on the Internet.
Especially after the official launch of Li MEGA, someone maliciously edited the exterior pictures of the MEGA and widely disseminated them on Chinese social media platforms.
The MEGA, caught in a huge crisis of online public opinion, had a bad start.
Third-party data showed that within 72 hours after the launch of Li MEGA, orders for the car in China amounted to about 3,218 units, while consumers canceled orders for about 10,297 units.
Li Auto sold 3,229 units of the MEGA in March, according to publicly available sales data, which is a far cry from its goal of selling 8,000 units per month.
As a result of the MEGA's weaker-than-expected sales, Li Auto announced in late March that it was lowering its Q1 2024 delivery outlook from 100,000-103,000 units to 76,000-78,000 units, representing a 24% cut.
Meanwhile, the automaker adjusted its 2024 sales target to 560,000-640,000 units from the previous 650,000-800,000 units in order to secure a full-year sales growth rate of 50%-70%, sources said.
Li Auto on Monday announced to reduce prices across its entire product lineup, with the MEGA dropping by 30,000 yuan to 529,800 yuan.
In fact, as early as March 11, Li Xiang responded to malicious image editing related to the MEGA, saying, "For those organized illegal and criminal behaviors that existed in the incident, we are already in the process of dealing with them by legal means."
Some analysts believe that the "organized illegal and criminal behavior" mentioned by Xiang should refer to attacks by Internet water armies, in which people are hired to post information on the Internet to attack individuals or business rivals.
Caixin reported Tuesday that police in Hengshui, Hebei province, found clues involving Li MEGA while investigating cases involving Internet water army companies and public relations firms.
Authorities are currently investigating the water army companies and PR firms involved in the MEGA incident.
It is said that there are three to four car companies suspected to have been involved in the crackdown during Li MEGA's launch.
The report also said that Hengshui police launched multiple inquiries and that a mid-level employee of Xpeng Inc. is cooperating with the investigation, who could not be reached by phone.
And as public opinion fermented in early March, because a large number of articles comparing Li MEGA and competitor Xpeng X9 appeared on social media platforms, some netizens claimed that Li Auto counterpart Xpeng might be behind the incident.
However, Xpeng's legal department at the time reposted a disclosure on social media platform Weibo about the progress of a legal rights case last December, warning not to pass the buck, in a suspected response to netizens' speculations.
The X9, Xpeng's first MPV, was officially launched in early January, with deliveries of 3,946 units in March and nearly 8,000 units since its launch.
In response to the report, Xpeng said Tuesday afternoon that it is actively cooperating with the police in its investigation of suppliers.
Xpeng said it was very supportive of the police's crackdown on Internet water armies, and had reported the attacks it suffered from them to the public security authorities.
"The Xpeng X9 has also been widely maligned by online water armies since its launch, with more than 5,000 negative reports," it said.
Zhaoqing police in Guangdong province took up the case of Xpeng's damaged business reputation on April 13, according to a document provided by the automaker.
