Not as popular as Lei Jun’s Weibo, many car companies were absent from Chengdu, why are large auto shows no longer popular?

The Chengdu Auto Show opened. As the largest auto show in the second half of the year, it attracted 130 companies and more than 1,600 new cars to participate.

This result looks pretty good. In the past few years, the Chengdu Auto Show has basically maintained this level. But as many big Vs said, this year's Chengdu Auto Show was not as popular as expected.

Not only the media had such an opinion, many manufacturers were also uninterested and simply participated in the exhibition without bringing any major models or holding press conferences. Some manufacturers were even absent directly, such as Nissan and Kia.

As one of the four major international A-level auto shows in China, the Chengdu Auto Show should be the most watched industry gathering this year. But the reality is the opposite of what was expected, and neither the manufacturers nor the media seem to have made any big splash.

However, looking further back, it is not just the Chengdu Auto Show. Similar situations have occurred at the Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou Auto Shows in recent years, and their attractiveness is declining.

Abroad, the situation seems to be more serious.

The 2024 Geneva Motor Show in Switzerland attracted only about 40 exhibitors and only 168,000 visitors, which was dubbed a "county-level" auto show by domestic netizens. The organizers subsequently announced that the century-old auto show would be discontinued next year.

The 2023 Tokyo Motor Show attracted 500 companies to participate, but many of them were companies outside the automotive industry. Only three foreign automakers, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and BYD, participated in the exhibition. The Tokyo International Motor Show was also renamed the "Japan Mobility Show" with a broader meaning.

The earliest international auto show in history was the Paris Auto Show in 1898, which has a history of more than 100 years. With the rise of the global automobile industry, the five major auto shows in Paris, Frankfurt, Geneva, Tokyo and Detroit came into being. With the comprehensive rise of China's automobile industry, the four major international A-level auto shows in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu have also begun to appear on the international stage.

If trees are like this, how can people be any more? From internal combustion engines to electric motors, from newspapers to Weibo, from the current situation, auto shows are becoming increasingly unable to keep up with the development logic of the times.

Auto shows come in all shapes and sizes, but generally speaking, they serve three purposes.

1. Information release platform, displaying new products and technologies, referred to as "advertising";

2. Trading platform, referred to as "selling cars".

3. Show your muscles, demonstrate your industry status, and declare industry boundaries.

The current situation is that all three uses seem to be ineffective.

In the past, automakers valued auto shows mainly because they attracted a lot of attention and could release some important information. But now, traffic can be generated in various ways. If a person in charge of an auto company posts a few Weibo posts, the communication effect will far exceed that of offline auto shows.

Lei Jun posted nearly 200 Weibo posts in July, and each post received an average of about 6,000 likes, reposts, and comments. A simple calculation shows that the number of onlookers was 1.2 million. How many auto show booths can have such a high popularity?

The Chengdu Auto Show is currently underway, and specific attendance data has not yet been released. Let's take a look at last year's data, which showed 902,000 attendees.

More importantly, the Chengdu Auto Show is shared by more than 130 automakers and more than 1,600 cars, while Weibo is a traffic-generating machine and its communication power is not at the same level at all.

In addition, the cost for manufacturers to generate "traffic" is far lower than the cost of participating in offline auto shows.

The standard booth rental fee for a general auto show is about 2,000 yuan per square meter, and the area of ​​the booth is generally more than 2,000 square meters. Add to that the cost of design, construction, decoration, promotional materials, media vehicles, etc., and it can easily consume tens of millions of yuan of budget.

If we take into account the food and accommodation of the exhibitors, the costs of on-site models, and the transportation of vehicles, the cost of participating in a Chengdu Auto Show may be over tens of millions of yuan.

How many cars do I have to sell to make back the profit?

During the Chengdu Auto Show this time, the most "rich" brand is BYD, which directly took the approach of booking the entire hall to show off its strength. The exhibition hall covers an area of ​​5,000 square meters, and the venue rental fee alone is staggering.

Manufacturers are actually very painful for this level of expenditure, but they used to be more dependent on auto shows, and brand image building and on-site car sales can offset some of the expenses to a large extent.

But the problem is that in an era where "traffic is king", manufacturers only need to hold an online press conference or have the person in charge of a car company conduct a live broadcast to achieve results that far exceed the sales at the auto show. What auto shows can give are getting less and less.

To give some typical examples, the new M7 Pro exhibited this time received over 6,000 pre-orders within 48 hours. Based on the average price of 250,000 yuan per car, the transaction volume was around 1.5 billion yuan. Xiaopeng MONA M03 received over 30,000 pre-orders within 48 hours of its launch.

Although these models were unveiled at the auto show, consumers learned about the products and placed orders through the Internet, so the auto show is actually dispensable.

When car companies no longer rely on auto shows as platforms for information display and new car sales, the high exhibition fees seem unnecessary. The reduction or even cancellation of auto shows such as Geneva and Tokyo are all due to similar factors.

In addition, domestic auto shows in recent years have occasionally brought some unexpected negative impacts to manufacturers, such as the Tesla female owner's rights protection incident in 2021 and the BMW "ice cream incident" in 2023. At present, the disadvantages of auto shows are already obvious, and they have shown a downward trend in overseas countries with insufficient population. The rapid development of the Chinese auto market is also "extending the life" of auto shows, but in the long run, the influence and necessity of auto shows undoubtedly need to be rethought.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.