VoltA huge glass funnel stands in front of the Aegean Plaza in Minhang District, Shanghai. When the neon lights on the monument light up at night, it seems that the future is being sucked into the city’s largest shopping mall with 25 million inhabitants.
Inside, two new electric cars from Volkswagen can be seen in the showroom. But there are few signs of futurism here. The seller provided a test drive to the customer’s door, but they were powerless and violated the laws of physics: the cheaper of the two ID.4 motors with small batteries can travel 400 kilometers on a single charge, but it takes 0 to 100 kilometers to accelerate in 10.9 seconds per hour .
Chinese automotive customers are used to something completely different from domestic suppliers.The Chinese electric car manufacturer also has a sales office in the Aegean Shopping Center, and highlights the performance value of its fashionable cars with an oversized size: the manufacturer XPeng’s P7 accelerates to 100 km/h with the most powerful motor of only 4.4, which is faster than a car slower Tesla Model 3The Weilai ES6, also a Chinese brand, is a large SUV, and it only takes 4.7 seconds to sprint. According to its own publicity, it can travel 610 kilometers.
Bad reviews on social media
Now, they can compare cars at home during weekend shopping like smartphones. This fact gives young Chinese people a clear judgment on Volkswagen and the models that Germany’s largest car company has been hoping for since it started selling. At the end of March: “For middle-aged people without passion, ID.4 is just right,” writing “cats and dogs” represented a lot of views on social media. “Acceleration feels like a gasoline engine,” said Du Geshuo, who has 1.7 million followers on Weibo’s SMS service. “ID.4 looks like golf,” another user commented. “It’s not just that Volkswagen can’t keep up with Tesla. It can’t even match the Chinese brand. A car like the last century.”
According to long-term industry observer Jochen Siebert, as of the end of May, 3341 Model X and CROZZ ID.4 had been registered in China-this was a “disaster”. A manager anonymously admitted to FAZ: “The quantity we produce Soon.” In May alone, the Chinese market leader Tesla sold 33,463 vehicles mainly made locally. Xiaopeng Motors sold approximately 5,700 vehicles that month, while Weilai sold approximately 1,000 vehicles.
Saturday at 9 a.m.
Volkswagen announced on Friday that the number of ID.4 deliveries in June has increased to 2,900. From Wolfsburg to FAZ, this model, which is advertised as the “world car”, has “progressed smoothly” in China, the largest single market to date. But Volkswagen did not mention the sales figures, but the deliveries provided to dealers. Autohome, China’s largest automotive portal, only counts sales in June 2014. This is less than one-third of Xiaopeng and Weilai, and only a small part of Tesla’s total sales of 33,155 vehicles in China.
So far, China is the most important market for Volkswagen. This billionaire country pays about 40% of the delivery costs; in the case of the Volkswagen brand, it is even more than every car. Ceo Herbert Diess This is why Volkswagen named a Chinese company. In this context, ID.4’s poor sales data “caused shock internally,” a manager of the Beijing branch said. If its electric strategy fails in China, where it may be faster to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine compared to any other large car market, Volkswagen will encounter real problems.
