You can download the original shorthand of Li Yinan's interview
The new energy market at the end of previous years is like fireworks, and after the brilliant display, everyone will be satisfied and go back to their homes.
But the new energy market at the end of 2021 is like a multi-stage rocket, and whenever you feel the fire disappear, the next climax comes again.
Within 24 hours, Akio Toyoda, who had previously said that he was going to sell Japan's last oil car, suddenly announced the largest pure electric transformation in history with 15 concept cars. On the domestic side, the rhythm of two new brands unveiled in one day also makes people dream of the prosperity when the concept of new forces first appeared.
But this means that the competitive environment has changed dramatically, and the giants have turned around, bringing about the rapid improvement of vehicle quality standards, and the acceleration of new forces has also made the spare market space smaller and smaller. Everyone is asking newcomers: What is your advantage in catching up with the forerunners?
For example, today's most talked about niu innovative energy, and their new brand of the whole vehicle - self-tourer.
Unable to get around Li Yinan
With the deepening of everyone's understanding of the car-making process, the criteria for evaluating a new car company have gradually become three-dimensional: people, cars, and factories have become three-dimensional from point to surface.
When it comes to Niuchuang, it must be inseparable from its founder Li Yinan.
On the one hand, Li Yinan's legendary experience has brought natural curiosity and aura to this company, on the other hand, Li Yinan's rich experience in the entrepreneurial track also determines the soul core of this car company.
In order to reduce the interference of irrelevant information, his story can be searched by yourself, but as Li Yinan said in an interview, he is a "whether it is the development of complex systems, hardware and software, or the establishment of brands, the logic of sales channels, I have dabbled in and seen." There is also the financing capital market, I can't talk about mastery, but I know a little bit about it."
These experiences are almost the standard of the founders of the leading successful new forces car companies, and for the automotive industry, which is "many orders of magnitude higher in complexity", the ability to build and control complex organizations, as well as the sensitivity and persuasiveness of the capital market, is an important guarantee to ensure the rapid progress of the entire team.
In this morning's simple communication, Li Yinan gave us a three-sided view of these dimensions: the overall idea has personality, people and financing are not lacking, and specific problems are "not cared".
"Just like when we went to high school to do the problem, a set of problems was made, and there were many solutions to the conclusion, or it may not work in other ways, it may be the most reliable method that everyone thinks, and it will not work in the end." What I'm trying to say is that there is no absolutely right only way and the only way."
Therefore, although it is not early to admit that the entry time is not early, Li Yinan does not think that the opportunity for the industry has not existed, "Japan is an automobile powerhouse, and in the process of Growing Japanese companies, we know that Honda entered the automotive industry a full 30 years later than Toyota and Nissan." In the intervening 30 years, I don't believe anyone else in Japanese industry has done it."
From these two paragraphs, you can read Li Yinan's rationality and determination for decision-making in entrepreneurship, and Ziyoujia did not choose a path that was completely rolled out against other brands one by one, but concentrated resources and traded offs are the quick ways to quickly obtain the possibility of survival.
And Li Yinan's background and experience have also played a big help in recruiting and financing, "We involved the development of automatic driving and intelligent cockpits in Beijing, and then the design aspect is mainly in Shanghai, the engineering aspect is actually the team in Changzhou, the time we started the main recruitment time, the time of executive recruitment was in 2019, at that time I thought it was very good to recruit people, I think we did not encounter any problems."
"I think cars are also a high threshold of funds, there is no doubt that in 2014 I judged that I could not raise 3 billion US dollars to do this thing, and now I think I have a high probability that I should be able to raise this money." 」
And what makes everyone care more about Li Yinan's unusualness is precisely his indifference.
There are three levels of indifference here.
First, the indifference to competitors, "First of all, I think the biggest feature of the automobile industry is that there is no shortage of control models, and there are many products in the market when you make any thing", and there are no qualifications to evaluate others.
Second, the indifference to invalid expressions, "no" has become a high-frequency word in today's interview, the rhythm of spending money that cannot be said, the proportion of investment in the start-up team that is not shared, and the unrelated entrepreneurial experience - simply a direct reply, from the perspective of onlookers, Li Yinan's focus on core affairs is higher.
Third, the lack of concern for metaphysics, in all aspects involving "philosophy", "strategy", and "logic", Li Yinan has used the answer of "technique" to solve the problem of "Tao", and the starting point and destination of everything is: I hope that users like our car.
At a time when all the new forces are preempting the "label", Li Yinan actually does not care about any label.
Can you feel proud to drive our car?
Before this part begins, it is necessary to explain the relationship between Niu Chuangxin Energy and Self-Traveling, the former is the company name, the latter is the model name, to a certain extent, equivalent to the relationship between "car and home" and "ideal".
Now, we need to completely empty the whole impression of The Cow Innovation Energy before.
This includes both the full association of the "Maverick electric car" and the concept picture of the so-called Niuchuang car that has appeared before.
The first product of the tour, the NV, is a medium-sized SUV.
In the past three years, Ziyoujia has identified the parallel direction of the two technical routes of pure electric and extended range, and now on the official website, you can see the architectural picture of the gimini platform on which it is based.
In fact, when many people see a car range extension and pure electricity at the same time, they instinctively think that this will be a product with a range extender as the main sales direction, and the similar models on the market have also proved this truth with a very large sales comparison.
Before the interview, the only thing Li Yinan took the initiative to explain to the media was precisely the relationship between the two power forms of the car, he stressed that he hoped that the user would always think of a tram when he saw the car, he said that the car from the design to the interior to the intelligent cockpit and driving experience, should be the appearance of the tram.
He hopes that this is a "electric oil" product.
At the scene, we saw the interior and exterior model of the car, but due to the restrictions of the confidentiality agreement, we had no way to disclose the pictures of the whole car.
On the official website of the self-traveler, we can see the general outline of this car, and toughness has become the overall keyword.
The front face design of the whole vehicle and Ford's Bronco have some tacit understanding, and the side of the whole vehicle is said to have seen the shadow of the Land Rover.
The front and rear ends are the most electrified in design, such as the two design details specifically mentioned at the conference: the charging indicator on the C-pillar, and the rear wiper that can be fully hidden into the upper edge of the rear window.
The front and rear light groups are more futuristic, not only the edges are protruding from the body, but the paragraph-type LED light groups are distributed in the current domestic models.
According to the tourer, this design concept is called Urban Exploring, hoping to make the feeling of being in the heart of the city and exploring, if you want to ask me when there are many similar products on the market, wildness may be the original impulse to choose.
At the interior level, there is no interactive runnable software, the design on the screen is also displayed in stickers, should not be synchronized to the latest design status, the overall layout of the interior is similar to the combination of Xiaopeng G3 and Zero Run C11, using the style of the central vertical screen protruding from the platform on both sides, while the steering wheel is similar to the style of Xiaopeng P7, and then the operating areas on both sides are replaced by the scroll wheels of the Model 3 structure.
Of course, the self-touring NV, which is positioned in high-end models, also tries to add more luxury elements to the details of the interior, and the specific craftsmanship and details can wait for the real car to be unveiled in the first half of next year.
Also, the car's seat layout will be positioned in a large five-seater SUV.
Ziyoujia NV also runs through Li Yinan's straight-line car-building philosophy, he said that "the smart cockpit is developed by ourselves, and the automatic driving is developed by our own definition and partners", on the model, you can see the front and rear cameras used for ADAS on the side of the vehicle, and the self-touring home also clearly stated that this car will not be equipped with lidar.
This may be the product definition road after Li Yinan's trade-off, and what has not been traded off is that he hopes that the user will have a driving experience for this car.
"Physically, whether we can make most of our users proud to own this product, or open this product, this is our biggest concern." 」
But he also said that since the early days of the tour will take the route of multi-product parallel research and development, and Off-Road and self-driving tour is not a necessary attribute of its products, the product sequence of the self-tour will have an eclectic design direction.
This may be the original meaning of the brand "self-traveler".
Factory, there is
Since various brands have called themselves "X factory", the word factory has a double meaning in the automotive circle, which can refer to both a specific plant and a company-wide team.
This time, all the media were invited to Changzhou, but also to tell everyone that at least in terms of production, self-travelers do not need to worry.
Factory, we have.
The modern intelligent manufacturing base of Youjia inherits a previous automobile start-up project, covering an area of 770,000 square meters, and is currently undergoing pre-mass production transformation and calibration.
From our visit, it can be seen that the similar stamping workshop has a ready-made and complete production line, and at the welding and assembly level, it is still in the layout state of some equipment.
The official production capacity of this production site is 180,000 vehicles per year, and some workshops can support the flexible production of four models.
In today's initial communication session, Ziyoujia gave two plans for the NV model, which is expected to be put into use in March next year, with vehicles entering low-volume production in the same period and the first deliveries in September.
Judging from the current factory situation, there should be no big problem in achieving this timetable with no problem with funding.
"We're here today because we've just put everything in perspective, and we want to communicate with the media, through the voices of the media teachers and our potential consumers who might be interested in us. Because for any ultra-high-value consumer durables like a car, the consumer's decision-making cycle is very long."
Finally, everyone is trying to give Niu Chuangxin Energy and Ziyoujia an evaluation, but I think that no one is more qualified to make an evaluation than Li Yinan now:
"It's true that we started doing it in November 2018, and I don't think we've been lazy a day in the whole process, I haven't been short of money for a single day, and I haven't been short of money in the whole process. People think we're doing it slowly, and I don't think it's fast enough, but I think the good products are polished."
This is Li Yinan, who has no label, and he only talks about the experience of self-traveler.
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