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Cross-border car building is really not OK.
Author: Liang Zhihao
Yesterday afternoon, Huawei launched a new high-end car brand - AITO and its first model, the M5, at its own press conference. As another product created by huawei and Jinkang Cyris, according to Yu Chengdong at the press conference, aito asked the M5 to use a price of 250,000 yuan to exceed one million marriott cars in appearance, design and experience.
However, after watching the entire conference, my mood can only be described as "disappointed", this disappointment is not for the M5 product, but because I found that Huawei, as a technology company, may really "not understand the car".
01
Hull-swapping Cyrus SF5?
Before we get into something deeper, let's take a look at this new car. First of all, the positioning of the M5 is a mid-size SUV with extended range hybrid, and its technical platform and overall size are not bad from the previous Cyrus SF5. In terms of price, according to the news at the press conference, the standard version of the afterdrive of the M5 starts at 250,000 yuan, and will also provide a more powerful four-wheel drive performance version (280,000 yuan) and a four-wheel drive flagship version (320,000 yuan).
Since it is unveiled as a "high-end brand", Huawei naturally does not want everyone to have any association between the M5 and SF5. Therefore, although the cooperation between them and Xilisi is very close, Yu Chengdong did not mention "Xilis" at the press conference, obviously this time they want to let AITO cars and Huawei brands "bind" together to promote the image of the new brand in the market. After all, Xilis, which belongs to Dongfeng Xiaokang, once the "life" is deeply investigated by consumers, in fact, there is no benefit to the overall image of the brand.
However, no amount of avoidance can change the fact that the M5 is the "shell" of the Cyrus SF5. Of course, this is actually not difficult to understand, after all, this practice is actually used to traditional car brands, the most important thing is whether the strength of the product itself can support its high-end positioning.
In the mechanical part, the "hardware" of the M5 is not bad at all, the all-aluminum alloy chassis, the front double wishbone rear multi-link suspension, the front axle 165kW asynchronous AC motor + the rear axle 150kW permanent magnet synchronous motor and other configurations are not at all virtual in the current new energy market.
Coupled with its own set of range extended hybrid system based on a 1.5T four-cylinder engine, according to official data, this car can also have an endurance of more than 1,000 kilometers with 4.4 seconds of acceleration from 100 kilometers.
All of this seems so beautiful.
02
Huawei "doesn't understand cars"?
As in the tradition of the science and technology industry conference, diss friendly business, comparison with competitors and other links, in the Q&A M5 conference will naturally not be absent. So we can see that Huawei pulled out the M5 and competitors such as Porsche Macan, Mercedes-Benz GLC, Audi Q5L, BMW X3 and Tesla Model Y, and compared them in terms of power, endurance and engine technology.
The practice of only listing parameters is too "mobile phone circle", which led to the criticism of many auto industry insiders at this conference.
For example, as a range extender hybrid model, Huawei actually listed the 1.5T range extender of the Q&A M5 and compared it with the engines of each fuel vehicle opponent separately, and the comparison project is not horsepower, torque, fuel consumption, but compression ratio and thermal efficiency, which is very "confusing".
As we all know, the range-extended hybrid internal combustion engine does not participate in the drive of the vehicle, but only exists as a "generator". Therefore, when designing and developing, it can actually be calibrated for the single working condition of "efficient power generation", and because of this, the compression ratio and thermal efficiency of the range extender can actually be very extreme data. The traditional fuel vehicle is not the case, because the working hours of the engine are related to the driving conditions of the vehicle, in addition to the simple "efficiency", it must also take into account the power and driving experience, so the two do not have any comparison at all.
It's like comparing a bicycle to a car, and in the end, the wheels of a bicycle are larger than those of a car, so it is more advanced.
In addition, Yu Chengdong also secretly rubbed diss about the ideal ONE that also uses a range extender hybrid mechanism at the press conference, saying that "some friends are still using three-cylinder cars, and they must not buy a three-cylinder engine car." And remarks like "endurance crush electric vehicles", "performance crush fuel vehicles", "good cars to listen to the sound of closing doors", "McPherson can't hang in front of" and other such as online keyboard heroes, but also a car conference into a mobile phone conference feeling.
03
The "old problem" remains the same
When Huawei built mobile phones, it has caused controversy many times because some words used in official propaganda are not rigorous, and in this time of the M5, this old problem has not been changed. In the promotion of the screen on the new car, Huawei used the "2K HDR central control screen", but after checking the information, everyone found that the resolution of this screen is only 1920X1080. The official explanation is that "the horizontal resolution reaches about 2000 pixels" is 2K resolution, which can be described as "redefining" the 2K screen.
In addition, the "Nappa leather" on the official poster is also confusing. According to the definition of the general car manufacturer, the Nappa leather seat refers to the seat wrapped in expensive Nappa leather, and Huawei's "Nappa leather seat" is spliced according to the official note: "Nappa leather and Nappa texture PVC material spliced together." ”
Honestly, for a 250,000 yuan car and its target consumer group, whether napa skin is really not so important, but this kind of word game is quite a bad feeling.
04
"Cross-border car building" is really not OK?
Huawei has repeatedly said in public that it will not build cars, but will only participate in the smart automotive industry in other forms. However, with the release of the AITO brand and Huawei's "official platform", in fact, clear-eyed people can see that this is not so much a deep cooperation between Huawei and Cilis, but rather a signal that Cialis has completely become Huawei's "foundry".
For Xilis, they are actually not weak in strength behind the Dongfeng Group, but they chose to cooperate with giants, which is naturally expected to have such a day. Recall that in July this year, Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Motor, publicly stated that SAIC would not cooperate with Huawei, because in this way, "Huawei became the soul, SAIC became the body" situation. I have to say that the boss's gaze is poisonous...
However, Huawei's "curve to save the country" and the parasitic practice of other brands do not mean that they will be able to build a good car. Although the M5 does have a head start over its rivals at many hardware levels, in some respects they also have many problems. For example, in terms of assisted driving, the M5 adopts a combination of 8 cameras + 3 millimeter wave radar + 12 ultrasonic radars, not to mention the lack of advanced configurations such as lidar, the number of sensors alone, it has a large gap with the main models of new power brands such as Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal.
At the software level, its assisted driving does not even support basic functions such as automatic lane change with lights. The UI design of the car machine is incomparably similar to that of Tesla, coupled with the appearance design of the new car is full of Porsche Macan's visual sense, the two models that were dissed the most by Huawei at the conference eventually became the shadow that the M5wu could not get rid of.
I was looking forward to Huawei, as China's pride, the first new car product that really made a difference, which can bring certain surprises to the market, but the old saying is that this so-called high-end brand new car is not even as attractive as the Huawei P50 Pocket folding screen mobile phone released on the same day... And this "inertia" brought about by the identity of technology companies will not appear in the follow-up of Xiaomi cars that also cross-border cars? Will the "grudge" between these two companies in the mobile phone market continue to the automotive market? I'm sure you're more curious than I am.
Today's topic
Huawei Cars, what do you think?
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