Image source @ Visual China
Text | Wise driving
"Some time ago I also deliberately went to the Guangzhou Auto Show to take a serious look, thinking that I can find a new car that is suitable for me to retire after half a year and take my wife to travel, and the salesman has worked hard to introduce to me which anime is a joint model, the grandson will like, I said that mobile phone software I am not familiar with, such a large piece of car I dare not use." Suber, 59, said in an interview with Chi Heng Dao.
Under the wave of electric intelligence, the new cars of car companies have targeted the wallets of young people, and the youthful elements such as two-dimensional IP cross-border, personalized mechanical appearance and on-board large-screen games have become the way for manufacturers to attract young people, for fear of missing any scene of young people haunting, worried about becoming a forgotten brand.
As everyone knows, just when the car companies thought that they were about to win all the future of the young market, there was a "grandpa with more gold and silver hair" who looked at the new car, but felt helpless, turned away, and could only silently open the bank VIP wealth management homepage.
The middle-aged and elderly people like Suber waiting to retire to change cars or buy new cars will continue to increase in the next 10 years. In the knowledge of young people gathering, enter the keyword of "retirement to buy a car", and find that many people ask "after retirement self-driving travel, what car should I buy?" It can be seen that this is already a potentially strong purchase demand group, but it is unfortunately ignored by car companies now.
Rejuvenation has become the mainstream of the car market, and even the three-child new deal has become the focus of car companies to seize, but for the aging market that is now becoming more and more serious, car companies are indifferent, is the "silver economy" unable to play an effect in the automobile market?
The growth of "old drivers" exceeds your imagination
According to the statistics of First Finance and Economics, the total birth population of China's "post-60s" is 239 million, of which the birth population in 1963 is as high as 29.34 million, more than 27 million in 1964, and close to 27 million in 1965. This means that next year 2022 China will usher in the first wave of retirement peak period, 1962 to 1974 this generation is China's largest birth tide, followed by a multi-year peak period.
Returning to the economy, the "post-60s" can be regarded as a relatively abundant generation of personal wealth accumulation in China. "My monthly pension is almost more than 10,000, which is higher than my daughter's current salary, and I often tell my children that they don't have to care about me, just take care of yourself." Aunt Lan was previously a senior teacher at a school in Guangzhou, and she was not worried about the unstable source of life in the future.
Most people's retirement work environment is mainly concentrated in party and government organs, enterprises and institutions, state-owned enterprises, etc., retirement life treatment is a certain guarantee, there are some retired teachers in colleges and universities are still rehired, occasionally go to work, pass the time.
64 years old this year, retired for 4 years, Teacher Lin said with Zhixing Driving Road, "Retirement suddenly does not have to work life, in fact, very unaccustomed, bored, children's life do not have to worry, I will continue to go back to school, not many classes per week, Saturday and Sunday fixed with other old friends to travel around, sometimes they drive, sometimes I drive them, life is much happier than my children." ”
In addition, there is also a wave of "local tycoons and post-60s" who have benefited from urban development, who have become demolition households with the acceleration of China's urbanization process, and have obtained a lot of demolition compensation, and they do not have to worry about wage income at all. Once the consumer demand of this generation of "many gold and silver grandfathers" has been released, it will give rise to various types of consumer demand in the market.
At the 2021 Auto Chongqing Forum, guest Zhou Lijun said that "the development of China's auto market is related to population information, in the past decade, China's car sales have rapidly exceeded 15 million vehicles, to close to the 25 million mark, the core driving force behind it is the population born in the 80s, and the post-80s have become the main force of Chinese consumption, while the number of post-90s births has decreased significantly, which has also led to the weakness of the auto market in recent years." ”
You may ask: even if the population is large, but the age is more than 60 years old, can you continue to drive on the road? The answer is yes, and the current policy is also tilted towards the elderly.
Since November 20, 2021, the Ministry of Public Security has relaxed the application age for small car driving licenses, small cars, small automatic cars, and moped driver's licenses are no longer limited to the age of 70 years old, as long as they pass a specific inspection test, conduct a physical examination once a year, submit a physical examination certificate, and can go on the road normally, which is equivalent to the previous car companies worried about the problem that the elderly people do not use the car for a long time, and they are directly broken by the policy.
This change can also be seen in the data released by the Ministry of Public Security, and the number of drivers aged 51 to 60 and over 60 has been increasing since 2020. Judging from the licensing data of these two years, the number of drivers over the age of 60 in 2020 reached 15.3 million, accounting for 3.2%. And this is only the data growth in the past two years, according to the evolution of the annual retirement population, coupled with the overall arrival of the aging society, the demand for car replacement or car purchase will only accumulate more and more.
"Grandpa's contribution to China's auto market in the future will reach 10%, the total of 20 million is 2 million, and the current medium-sized car is 2 million market share." Zhou Lijun pointed out.
In the real estate cycle, there is a logical law of urban housing price development: short-term policy, medium-term land, long-term population. This law is not only suitable for real estate, but also in line with the future development of the automobile circle, but unfortunately many car companies have not realized it so far.
Looking back at the current point in time, if car companies are still focusing on young products and do not take into account the retirement travel needs of "old drivers", then they will lose important strategic groups in the next 5-8 years. For enterprises, the most unaffordable is the cost of time, think of the current popular new energy vehicle brands, many of which are less than 10 years now, but enough to turn the world upside down.
A set of logic hit the world and failed
Now that we have ushered in the peak of retirement, what about in the specific car sales market?
Judging from the models currently on the market, Japanese cars have made changes for the elderly relatively early, such as the Guangqi Honda Odyssey Rui Hybrid Welfare Edition, which can solve the problem of inconvenient getting on and off the car by remotely controlling the automatic lifting of seats. Japan also issued regulations in 2019, requiring all new cars to be equipped with automatic braking functions as standard from 2021, in order to cope with the frequent traffic accidents of elderly drivers, toyota motor in 2020 on the car safety devices upgraded, so that the car can start the automatic braking function.
"My child asked me to see Wei Xiaoli, said that it is currently a relatively hot new energy car company, I calculated that I probably have more activities in the Pearl River Delta, buy an electric can also be accepted, opened a fuel car for most of my life, but also want to try what the electric car feels like, the result went to the mall, in the face of a big screen, I picked up my reading glasses, touching the screen various functions is really a little difficult to remember." The 66-year-old Master Lin frequently shook his head when he talked about the big screen.
In contrast, the 64-year-old Cai Bo, who likes new things, likes voice interaction very much, and feels that he can control the car through voice, which is something that he has never thought of in his previous life, "When the sales took me to test the car, it felt very convenient, but what I was more distressed about was that my non-standard Mandarin, several consecutive voice conversations, all failed, really speechless." ”
Post-60s people like Master Lin and Cai Bo, even if they want to buy or change cars, in the face of the current hot variety of intelligent electric vehicle models, it seems impossible to adapt, even if they are psychologically prepared to accept new things, in the face of different operating logic interface, a variety of software functions that are not important for aging drivers, but increase their driving psychological burden, after all, live to this age, safety is the first meaning.
Yang Li, who sells in the 4S store in Guangzhou, said: "Every day, many families will come to see our car, and there are many elderly people who come together and ask a lot of things about the operation of the on-board system. At this time, I will talk about the lidar on the car, which can better monitor the road conditions, and they will feel more at ease, but there are very few grandfathers who pay the deposit in the end, and there are basically many young people. ”
However, another car company's direct store sales Yang Ming is more happy, he sold 6 cars this month, are introduced by an elderly customer, "at that time, the group of grandfathers most valued is intelligent assisted driving, can monitor the situation of other cars on the road, give some warnings, automatic car this function they like the most, mainly they used to drive manual gear, in Guangzhou peak traffic jams, no technology and temper, can not withstand, now have this function to improve the attention of driving, the elderly are more friendly." ”
Through the investigation of different consumers and stores, we can clearly perceive that under the intelligent development of electric vehicles, the technology under different dimensions has brought different driving experiences to the elderly, and the standard that young people are accustomed to, for the elderly group, it is not the same set of logic that can hit the world.
Back to the specific models, the impact of the grandfathers on the sales of car companies is becoming more and more obvious, according to the data of the AutoMotive Media Research Institute, since 2020, high-level models such as Crown, Land Cruiser, and Prado have been discontinued, which has greatly affected the purchase rate of elderly users for Toyota, and the proportion of intended purchases has dropped from 8.59% in 2020 to 5.46% in 2021.
In the market, the impact of the head effect is becoming more and more obvious, especially in the elderly group that attaches importance to word-of-mouth communication, the characteristics of everyone will make car companies suddenly erupt in a single population, such as Changan, Geely and Haval, the three independent brands that attract elderly users have greatly improved their ability to attract elderly users, and in 2021, they have advanced to the top 10 of the elderly car market intention to buy, and medium and large SUV explorers have also helped Ford to advance to the TOP10.
In today's lack of core environment, the greatest impact on intelligent models, any intelligent function to rely on chip computing power, now can complete the smooth delivery is not easy to do, but the elderly users to buy and change cars, roughly follow the past fuel car habits, the demand is not intelligent and complex, in the existing supply chain to do rapid adjustment response, it is one of the reliable paths. After all, the aging population is growing much faster than the current birth rate of babies.
What cars do elderly users need?
Through field interviews with the elderly and previous discussions, it has been clearly felt that it is an unfeasible path to use young and intelligent logic to provide cars for aging users.
So how should we think about the use of cars by the elderly? Let's first take a look at the changing needs of the same elderly people, and the mobile Internet transformation that is at the vanguard of change - suitable for aging.
In the use of digital products, especially under the mobile Internet based on mobile phone terminals, while providing convenience for various young people, smart tools have caused obstacles to the daily life of the elderly. The elderly who were hindered by the health code, the 94-year-old grandmother was carried to the bank for face recognition to activate the social security card, the rain paid medical insurance but was refused cash, and even some hospitals cancelled the on-site registration... This kind of heart-wrenching news is still staged every day in various parts of China, e-commerce shopping, face recognition, online registration, these young people's standard network services, but has become a "digital divide" in front of the elderly.
"My kids had taught me how to use the ride-hailing app before, but I quickly forgot, the screen was small, I had to find the window input location, tossed for a while, or failed, and finally I took the subway home." 」 Master Lin talked about the experience of not being able to get a taxi and trying to try the taxi software and finally failing, but still sighed.
There are more and more such incidents, and the state has also begun to take policy measures to help elderly users adapt to the mobile Internet. In December 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Special Action Plan for Ageing and Barrier-free Transformation of Internet Applications", requiring the three major communication operators and the Internet industry to carry out special actions for the aging and barrier-free transformation of Internet applications from January 2021.
The program requires the introduction of more products with large fonts, large icons, high-contrast text and other functional characteristics for the elderly. At the same time, the old version, caring version and barrier-free version of the Internet website and mobile APP after the transformation will no longer have advertising plug-ins.
With the guidance of the policy, the elderly users can finally break through the "digital divide", the result of accidentally falling into the "travel gap", from the digital mobile phone to the travel terminal car, is still intelligent development, the elderly users have once again been deliberately ignored, perhaps it is not yet the stage of policy introduction, but in the face of rapid market changes, the intention of car companies for the elderly, is able to harvest a good reputation.
In the end, what room does car companies have in the research and development of the whole vehicle?
Back to the characteristics of the elderly population, the elderly users' legs and feet are inconvenient, the body function degradation, which will certainly promote the application of some of China's intelligent functions, and now the hottest intelligent auxiliary driving, such as adaptive cruise, LCC, NGP and other functions, is able to release the driving pressure of the elderly users to a certain extent, if the ultimate goal is to achieve automatic driving, then directly push to the "travel gap" Wall, while the requirements for the intelligent cockpit are also higher, more in line with its physical characteristics. These two points are worth the car companies to seriously consider which functions are valuable to this group of people.
"My favorite is the voice interaction function of the smart car, at first I was not used to using the touch screen to helplessly use the voice, and then found that it is inseparable from this function, it is really very convenient, control the air conditioning, seats, windows, etc., no longer need to be so troublesome, but also feel very cool." Chen Bo, 63, bought a car of a new domestic force this year and loved it.
Because these golden grandfathers are broad enough, distributed in different economic cities, the demand is diverse, the distribution of models of concern is widespread, from hard-core SUVs, home MPV, caravans and old scooters, to now the sales of Wuling Hongguang MINI, and even to other A00-level cars, it is precisely in the fourth and fifth-tier cities of the elderly group, suddenly the purchasing power has increased dramatically, which also promotes the further segmentation of the elderly market.
If it is pulled back to the first- and second-tier cities, the elderly have a more adequate economic foundation, and it is feasible for car companies to launch high-end brands. In the second quarter of 2021, Yifeng and Guangfeng have successively increased the new Highlander, and at the end of 2021, North and South Toyota has also launched domestic new Saina and other models to attract elderly users, creating new opportunities for Toyota to fight in the elderly car market. But this does not mean that the price is expensive, this group is particularly frugal, so only in the details of the product polishing, it is possible to be welcomed, for example, in today's large-screen car system, as far as possible to retain some of the necessary physical buttons, can be quick operation.
"My wife is in poor health, but I often take her out, and if I can put a medical kit in the car for a long time, I will be very practical." When Suber mentioned the space needs in the car, he said that only the elderly people have needs. Emergency medical kits and THE USE OF CAR-CONNECTED SYSTEMS EQUIPPED WITH SOS call buttons are particularly important, but no such caring designs have been found in the current models.
Write at the end
In the business world, subject to the inertial thinking of mobile Internet to seize young people and create wealth, most car companies continue to revel in the strategy of rejuvenation, generally ignoring elderly users, but the aging transformation action of the mobile phone software terminal has long been underway.
When the aging group becomes the future growth constant, the impact on various industries will be obvious, car companies turn a blind eye, the loss will be the entire market segment, if when they are old, found trapped in the "travel gap", then life also lost the joy of travel.
(Su Bo, Aunt Lan, Teacher Lin, Master Lin, Cai Bo, Yang Li, Yang Ming, and Chen Bo interviewed in the article are pseudonyms)