In October, Diess invited Musk, who "stormed Wolfsburg", to teach 200 executives of the Volkswagen Group a lesson in the name of "accelerated electrification". At the "doorstep" of Volkswagen, Musk changed his previous slightly exaggerated style, humbly regarded Volkswagen as the benchmark of the automotive industry, was his "idol", and was also Tesla's biggest challenger.
In the eyes of many people, Musk who is a "guest" at Wolf Castle is just politely saying some "polite words". After all, on the battlefield of new energy, Tesla has taken the lead, like a sharp knife inserted into the heart of the global giants, how can a revolutionary who has come to "subvert" praise the person he is determined to "subvert"?
ID. Family Strikes Back
Yes, from the global new energy sales in the first half of this year, the Volkswagen Group's 170,000 achievements are less than half of Tesla's, and there seems to be a certain gap between the two, but the year-on-year increase rate of 165% is also silently indicating that the hysterical "ALL IN" electrified Volkswagen will not be easily defeated, and it is gathering momentum to set off a "counter-offensive" frenzy.
Wolfsburg must be great again.
The 63-year-old Dees has broken through the resistance of the union, has initially opened a door to a new era for the public, and has also won internal support, and the location of the counter-offensive decisive battle is 8,000 kilometers away in China.
For this turbulent country, Musk said that China's GDP will be 2-3 times that of the United States. Dies hastened to say that we need to push for broader cooperation in China with a more far-reaching impact, rather than doing the opposite.
"Battery costs have dropped by 50%, annual sales of 2 million vehicles, and four years to become the global leader in electric vehicles", Diess in March when he was full of ambition, the heart of the Chinese market is certainly looking forward to it.
However, when Langyi, Passat and Tiguan still maintain an unquestionable leading edge in China's traditional fuel vehicle market, the ID.series seems to be somewhat unfavorable, and the cumulative sales of ID.4 CROZZ and ID.4 X in the entire first half of the year were only more than 6,000 vehicles. In an instant, Volkswagen's previous transformation of the rhetoric pushed the Volkswagen ID. series to the cusp of the storm.
But it has to be said that some market viewers still underestimate the ID. series, underestimate Diess' determination to transform, and underestimate Volkswagen's unrivaled global scale and manufacturing capabilities.
In the face of doubts, after several months of running-in period, coupled with the ID. family's rapid rollout of five models in the Chinese market, a relatively complete and competitive product matrix has been formed, especially the landing of ID.3, which represents a new situation in the offensive of traditional car companies led by Volkswagen in new energy.
The market potential of the ID. family has also been continuously released in the reinforcement of the product line, with monthly sales successfully exceeding the 10,000 unit level in September, reaching 12,726 units in October, and continuing this level in November, with 14,167 deliveries and a cumulative delivery volume of about 57,000 units. And all this is still the result of the natural selection of the market under unfavorable conditions such as lack of cores and limited production capacity.
In response to this achievement, Dies can rightly reassure Volkswagen employees in an internal speech, "In China, their electric products sold 60% more in the third quarter than in the first half of the year combined." ”
Behind this hard-won achievement, it is inseparable from the strong technical support formed by the Volkswagen MEB modular electric drive platform. "MEB is superior to all competitors' pure electric platforms, and with the delivery of the ID. series models, the decline of the Volkswagen brand in the Chinese market (new energy) will be swept away." Feng Sihan said proudly.
After the release of ID.3, "the only joint venture model within 200,000 using a pure electric platform", such a name has not gone away, and the drums of war have been beaten in the joint venture market full of "oil to electricity".
From the architectural point of view, the MEB platform does have its own unique advantages, it removes the traditional fuel vehicle chassis needs the horizontal design, front engine, front-wheel drive layout, from the beginning of the design to the battery, motor and other three electric layout to consider the space design, not only through the uniform distribution of load, to achieve excellent counterweight structure, more important is the increase in space utilization, in the greatly improve the level of endurance while having a more generous internal space.
Taking the interior space as an example, the ID.3 has a wheelbase of 134mm longer than the e-Golf in the case of a body length of 10mm shorter than the e-Golf, and the space advantage is self-evident.
In terms of endurance, whether it is ID.4 or ID.3, the Germans' understanding of "stability" in their bones and the practice of electric travel do not allow them to "endlessly" endurance and roll up, and the endurance of thousands of kilometers is not what the public is currently pursuing. In fact, the essence of endurance anxiety has always been complementary anxiety, and the significance of ultra-long endurance is indeed debatable.
Perhaps, Volkswagen's "Buddha" in battery life makes it temporarily unable to take the lead, but in terms of endurance accuracy, Volkswagen ID. series is really "real". There have been industry tests that say that the Volkswagen ID.4 test mileage is 2.3% more than the apparent mileage, and the test score of the comparison model is indeed 36.7% lower. Reliability is one of the reasons why Volkswagen has always been loved by the Chinese market.
In addition, the MEB platform was designed at the beginning of the safety as the top priority, whether it is passive safety or active safety, whether it is the body structure or the safety performance of the battery system is very outstanding, it can be said that safety is embedded in the lowest level of the MEB platform gene.
Data show that the ID. series of products of the MEB platform need to pass 338 stringent enterprise tests, which is nearly 7 times the 53 requirements of the national standard. Recently, the ID.4 X security assessment results released by China Insurance Research Institute also support this security attribute.
Although tested based on the more demanding new version of the test standard, the ID.4 X scored excellent in the four major indexes of crash resistance and maintenance economy, occupants, pedestrians outside the car, and auxiliary safety, setting a record for the best score in the history of China Insurance Research Institute.
Of course, volkswagen ID breakthrough development is not only a change in technology and products, but also an adaptive adjustment of the entire organizational structure, management system and corporate strategy.
A war that the masses have never experienced
"Volkswagen must change the way it sells electric vehicles in China to deal with the poor sales of electric vehicles in the world's largest automotive market." Before, Dees looked at the gap between China and Europe, and his heart was obviously a little anxious.
The Chinese team led by Feng Sihan also adjusted the action strategy in a timely manner, and it can be seen that since the second half of the year, Volkswagen's resources in China have been consciously tilted like the ID. series, not only the production capacity priority is high, but also a set of agency marketing models have been established.
By utilizing and strengthening Volkswagen's channel advantages in China, the agency marketing model is essentially a disguised "direct operation", which is different from the direct sales model of the new car-making forces and the traditional 4S store model, but is in between. Along with the agency marketing model is the ID. digital city exhibition hall, which is similar to Nio house of Weilai, bringing new marketing touchpoints to the public.
In this way, this new marketing model avoids the cost of large-scale new direct stores opened by OEMs, avoids competition with existing dealers, and revitalizes the resources of existing dealers.
Under the operation of this model, on the one hand, it can realize the direct interaction and efficient communication between the main engine factory and consumers, and on the other hand, it can also realize the national unified price system, so that agents can reduce inventory risks and obtain new profit points.
The challenge is that the mutual transformation of the two models from sales functions to service functions requires dealers to strive to change their way of thinking and adapt to and digest new service models. "Ideologically, we must change from bargaining."
"The next golf must not come from China," Dies's voice was particularly in his ears. Volkswagen is accelerating Sinicization in all aspects of the whole value chain system, rapidly laying out, and striving to innovate China's technology, brand and channel advantages, and from the current effect of the ID. series, the effect has begun to appear.
It must be admitted that in the value chain system such as manufacturing process, brand influence and channel capability, Volkswagen has indisputable advantages, but the times have changed, and the times have not only changed the public, but also changed the standards by which the market judges the public.
The core of the competition, shifted to chips, autonomous driving systems, intelligent cockpits and FOTA, especially based on big data, "manufacturing process" and "brand" these traditional forces are proud of the so-called "barriers" seem a bit embarrassing.
Passive at the software level, Volkswagen and Dies never shy away from it. In an internal exchange, Dies admitted that "integrating powerful software into Volkswagen's new model is much more difficult than powering the car on."
Volkswagen is becoming more and more aware that the speed of software iteration in the future dominates the rhythm of automobile evolution, and if car companies cannot establish an organizational structure dominated by software capabilities, the research and development progress and product rhythm will inevitably be limited.
As a result, it can be seen that in the new round of five-year plans announced by Volkswagen at the beginning of the month, Volkswagen will invest 89 billion euros in the research and development of software and electric vehicle technology, with a total investment of 56% of the total investment.
"What do we have? We have money! At the end of March, Xiaomi finally ended up after countless times of stirring up the market, and "Rebbs" incarnated as "Reyk" simply and rudely talked about the capital advantages of Xiaomi's car. When countless people are crazy for Xiaomi, they seem to forget that strong capital reserves are also the most proud transformation driving force for the public.
It is not easy for traditional car companies, especially industry giants like Volkswagen, which have been stared at by countless pairs of eyes, to get rid of decades of technological advantages and development paths, and it is inevitable that elephants need to rebuild the competition system for the future from all aspects of the underlying architecture.
But once the public bets all the pride and glory to set foot in this crazy land, who dares to conclude that the defense line built by software technology and Internet thinking of the "Houlang" will not be quickly breached?
"We are the best in the world of the internal combustion engine, but in the new world we call NEW AUTO, what awaits us is a war that we have never experienced before." As a result, Diess is directly responsible for the business of cariad, the volkswagen software division. At this stage, making up for the shortcomings, enriching the ecology in the next stage, and then creating a universal operating system in the future are the three levels in front of Dies.
In the face of the surging tide of new forces, the traditional forces, including the masses, have indeed been slightly passive, but there is an old Saying in China, "The movement of the opposite way, the use of the weak way." Things are always cyclical, when the huge body of the public begins to rotate, resulting in its own inertia, then the so-called traditional car companies are no longer traditional, and the new car forces may no longer be subverted.
You have to believe that if even Volkswagen can't complete the transformation, then it won't be good news for all traditional car companies.