The finale will always make the audience have higher expectations.
Just like Avita, as the last new energy brand to appear in the "national team", it is inevitable that it will add a little more expectation inside and outside the circle.
Therefore, when Avita 11, which focuses on "emotional intelligence", revealed its true appearance on November 15, some people in the circle of friends cheered and praised, but some people thought that they were a little amazing.
"It may not have to bring rules-breaking things like 'Wei Xiaoli', but at least it has to be very personal, which is worthy of its hesitant appearance for a few years." Netizens commented.
Of course, this is only the primary form of Avita, in the era of new energy brands, people's aesthetic fatigue of a new brand is a high probability event.
It is too early to nod or shake its head at this stage, and everything has to be judged after a long cycle.
According to Tan Benhong, chairman and CEO of Avita Technology, Avita 11, a car positioned as a coupe SUV, has been successfully trial-produced in the Chongqing factory; it will be officially released in the second quarter of next year; in the third quarter of next year, the first batch of mass production and user delivery will be realized.
Changan plans to launch 4 new cars on the CHN platform in the next 5 years.
Avita now has preliminary answers about what kind of brand tone it should have, how CHN can maximize its cooperation advantages, and how to maximize the vitality of the organization.
Take a warm route
As a traditional automobile company like Changan, perhaps the most frightening thing is that it cannot establish the thinking that belongs to the next era, and it is impossible to find the changing customer needs.
So Avita chose to gather elites from all walks of life. For example, Wang Lin, who served as the chief marketing officer of Avita Technology, is not from the automotive circle, but has held important positions in Apple and Chanel China.
The purpose of assembling a cross-bank and cross-industry management team is to break the traditional thinking and see a new world, even a world that was completely incomprehensible before.
In the understanding of this group of people, the demand for the automobile as the basic attribute of the customer's bulk consumer goods will not be subversive, so luxury things cannot be lacking. But there are also some advanced needs, such as casualness, futuristic, warm and considerate.
To this end, Avita positioned itself as the "embodiment of wisdom that understands you" and proposed for the first time E.I. The theoretical system of user needs, that is, emotional intelligence, uses technology to connect the two major needs of "high-end luxury" and "warmth and thoughtfulness" to form a triangle of user emotional needs.
"Today's users regard the car as an object and symbol of their own aesthetics, and the car is personified." Tan Benhong concluded.
So they want Avita not to be a pile of pompous luxury, but to be extremely simple and a kind of casual luxury.
In addition, Tan Benhong believes that the heavy luxury brands in the past are all high and high, in exchange for the submission and worship of others, which has nothing to do with warmth and thoughtfulness.
"But now it's different, and users feel the need for a brand to be close to me."
We're looking beyond the automotive world, and in fact, many traditional luxury brands are already turning around because they've seen changes in their customers.
For example, some time ago, GUCCI 2022 spring and summer show, deliberately selected plus-size models in the catwalk. Prada, for example, opened a "Prada Market" in the center of Shanghai this year. Many actions are directly linking big names with pyrotechnics.
Customers are starting to have some "out-of-the-box" emotional needs. That's why Avita has "emotional intelligence" as its brand vision. They plan to make the brand warm and lovely, not cold.
"The same voice interaction, maybe we will make it warmer, in the long run is a kind of tonality." Tan Benhong said.
The tonality of the brand can reflect the direction of Avita in adapting to the tide of the times.
However, there are also media at the scene that question Avita's lack of landing expression on "warm and considerate". In addition, the new energy brand that mainly plays the emotional card has many pearls such as Weilai and Lantu in front, and how many original things Avita can make still needs to wait and see.
"Didn't plan to win by CHN lying down"
100 km/h acceleration is less than 4 seconds, high-pressure super fast charge 200 kW, intelligent driving power 400 Tops, cruising range 700 km...
Born on the CHN platform, Avita 11, from the parameters point of view, the strength can easily rank in the front row.
But people will still wonder, Huawei and CATL are also the core suppliers of others, what is the difference between their cooperation with Chang'an? For example, huawei HI solution to the Avita 11 body, what will be different from the BAIC Polar Fox Alpha S?
A cursory look at the existing data, the hardware level Avita 11 is equipped with the same number of 3 lidars as the Polar Fox Alpha S, plus the same level of computing power, the hardware composition of the two cars does not see much difference.
Therefore, some people feel that the cooperation between Changan and Huawei, but Erer, is featureless.
Is there really no differentiation?
Huawei's smart car solution BU COO Wang Jun looks at it this way:
"The differentiated thing is the core, but it contains several capabilities: first, the positioning of the brand, the second is its styling, the third is the basic car-making capability, the fourth is the supply chain, and finally the overall ability to sell." We're blunt, just providing a component. ”
In Wang Jun's eyes, Avita still has a lot of room to play.
Then again, the cooperation between Changan and Huawei is not completely undifferentiated, especially at the software level. A senior executive of a domestic Tier 1 supplier once revealed that among the traditional domestic independent brands, the level of planning control self-research is relatively high. "Changan has been doing intelligent research and development for a long time and has been insisting on doing it. Bosch has been used before, but in recent years it has also cooperated with Horizon. ”
Therefore, in the research and development of intelligent driving, Changan should have a greater voice than BAIC. Of course, the actual performance still awaits the performance on the road.
In addition, at the channel level, Huawei will also have network support, which complements Avita's self-built network.
As for the NINGDE era, it has demonstrated its sincerity of cooperation with a capital increase of 770 million yuan. Previously, ningde times invested in many car-making projects, such as byton, Aichi, extreme krypton, etc., but before that, most of them belonged to investment, led the investment and became the second shareholder, which was the first time.
Tan Benhong said with satisfaction that this time the cooperation model of the three parties has surpassed any supplier relationship that has existed in the past.
According to reports, neither Huawei nor CATL has ever charged Changan any samples and development fees. In the past, Changan cooperated with some Tier 1 suppliers, and the conventional was to pay the development fee, followed by the sample fee, and the sample fee was generally 10 times or even 20 times the price of normal parts.
Although the three-party cooperation has been very close, the Avita team also knows that it is not the core suppliers who can successfully pry Avita through the high-end car market. Tan Benhong took the PC as an example, "In the PC field, the core suppliers of hard disks are also 2 or 3, and the motherboard is also 2 or 3, but only Dell and Lenovo can break out." ”
"Even with CHN, Avita can't lie down and win." Tan Benhong said.
Behind the market-oriented operation
Some time ago, He Xiaopeng, the founder of Xiaopeng Motors, once questioned, "I have not understood why a brand should do a bunch of sub-brands in the same direction, if you think that new brands are more likely to succeed, then why can't the old brands?" ”
Thorough market-based operation is probably the best answer to this question.
The shackles of transformation and innovation of traditional car companies in the past lie in institutional redundancy, institutional constraints, and mixed interests.
Chang'an should be well versed in this truth. For the exploration of market-oriented operation, among several state-owned automobile enterprises, Changan belongs to a very early batch. After proposing the third innovation and entrepreneurship in 2018, Changan has successively set up a project follow-up investment mechanism and an employee elimination mechanism.
After tasting the benefits of the reform measures, it is only natural for Avita to move towards market-oriented operations.
Therefore, Avita chose to publicly list and increase the capital. Moreover, after the completion of the capital increase, Changan Automobile's shareholding ratio has been diluted from 95.38% to less than 50%, only 39.02%.
This means that Chang'an has given up its absolute control over Avita.
"We in Chang'an have such a determination, Avita really wants to operate in a market, whether it is employee incentives, employee shareholding, etc., all kinds of operational problems must be solved here, and this organization must have vitality and motivation." Tan Benhong said.
However, some people also question the so-called mixed reform nature of the "national team". Some people believe that the pursuit of capital is still the pursuit of capital, but the posture of the profit seeker has changed.
But in any case, what we can see is that Avita has gone out of Chongqing to Shanghai, a frontier capital, to establish a global brand and software research and development center, and a global design center in Munich, which seems to be laying the foundation for the corporate landscape.
We also note that Avita is conducting a large-scale recruitment process in Shanghai. According to preliminary statistics, Avita Technology has recently recruited more than 200 positions. From the salary package published on multiple recruitment websites, the expected salary of the position given by Avita is also higher than the level of the same industry.
Perhaps, this is Changan's determination, and it is a huge belief in the next few years to do new brands, and only allow success and not failure.
In fact, Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile, has conveyed to the outside world more than once: In the next ten years, world-class Chinese brands will be born in the world, and Changan will be among them.
At this press conference, he further said that he expected Changan's world-class brand to be Avita.
We can feel Avita's excitement at wanting to make a name, and we can vaguely understand its silent and final appearance in the past few years. A person who is really determined to do big things will not brag about it everywhere until he has a spectrum. We decided for the time being that Avita was trying to surprise the world.
But this ambitious start, which can be cashed in a few points, can only be seen in a few years. True success will count from then on.
Source: Automotive Sankei
Original authors: Chen Hao, Liang Qiumeng