In Shanghai Lingang, the "dream city" of world-class intelligent cars, SAIC decided to soar again.
A few days ago, the first batch of 200 Beta Experience Editions of Zhiji Automobile Performance Flagship True Intelligent Sedan Zhiji L7 was officially delivered at saic motor's Lingang Intelligent Factory, and the "urban parade" of 9 cities across the country was launched synchronously. At this time, only 22 months have passed since the product was approved.
Zhiji officially said that the off-line delivery of zhiji L7 Beta experience version is a necessary process of the intelligent car development process in the AI era, known as "data cooker". The so-called "data cooker" is to use real scene data to verify the intelligent performance of deep intelligent vehicles. In the view of Zhiji Automobile, this is the core difference between smart cars and traditional cars in the development process.
It is understood that as the "pioneering work" of Zhiji Automobile, from "data cooker", to 22 months of "agile development", and then to the "three new benchmarks" for calibrating deep intelligent vehicles, Zhiji L7 has built the development mode and product logic of intelligent cars in the AI era with the standard of "1+1+3", aiming to show "what cars should look like in the intelligent era".
The "agile development" model is a proof for the development of Smart Electric products
"22 months, from project establishment to production. It can be said that the time is very fast. According to Liu Tao, CEO of Zhiji Automobile, often at 4 a.m., engineers update a software version, and another group of engineers who go to work at 5:30 a.m. begin to test.
From the establishment of the project in March 2020 to the delivery of the first car of the Zhiji L7 off the production line, it took only 22 months for Zhiji Automobile. According to Zhiji Automobile, a set of "agile development" development models for deep intelligent vehicles have been explored.
Among them, the four new product architectures used by the industry are the underlying innovation of Zhiji L7, and also the core research difficulty of development.
The iO origin high-end pure electric architecture provides advanced four-wheel steering and four-wheel drive; the new generation of domain fusion central computing digital architecture carries 521 functions Of Nature, supporting vehicle depth OTA; SOA atomized software architecture breaks the boundaries between functions from the bottom; and the IMAD intelligent driving system brings users the "most human-like" intelligent driving experience.
In the face of the development challenges of Zhiji L7, Zhiji Automobile draws on the experience of "agile development" in the Internet industry to compress the development cycle through the method of "design, development, integration and iteration"; at the same time, it unites sister units and partners such as passenger cars, technology centers, zero beams, zebras, Momenta and Huayu to overcome difficulties one by one and improve the quality and efficiency of development in the form of multi-round offensive battles.
It is understood that in the past month, the architecture software of Zhiji L7 has iterated 88 versions; every 3 days to complete a version of the intelligent driving function software iteration; user contact IM Zhiji APP, to achieve a normalized 2 weeks 1 iteration of the update frequency. The development method of "agile development" finally ran out of the "wisdom speed" of 22 months, and initially formed a mature and reproducible intelligent car development model.
Liu Tao said: "There are more than 40 body controllers in the Zhiji L7 car, and each body controller has independent programs and software and corresponds to different versions. Zhiji Automobile's recent development activities have been relatively tight, and the iteration speed, cycle and frequency of software versions are faster. ”
What should a smart car look like in the AI era?
Through the context of "software-defined car data determines experience", Zhiji tries to define three new benchmarks for intelligent car products in the AI era through data training, cross-domain integration, and global deep OTA.
In terms of data training, create the "most human-like" intelligent driving experience. Zhiji Automobile has built a data factory to achieve full-process data drive in perception, integration, prediction, regulation and control. It is reported that the IMAD intelligent driving system of Zhiji Automobile is based on massive real user data training, and with artificial intelligence super algorithms, it shows the intelligent driving performance of "the most human-like".
Through cross-domain integration, Zhiji L7 opens up the vehicle control domain from the bottom layer in order to achieve "cross-domain integration" in intelligent scenarios. According to Zhiji, the "air pilot" function presented by the IMOS interface of Zhiji L7 operating system opens up the intelligent driving domain and the smart cabin domain, and in the complex urban road section, various road information is displayed across the screen.
Global depth OTA, so that the vehicle function is commonly used in the new car is the real depth of intelligent car. Zhiji L7 achieves deep OTA coverage of more than 40 modules, from large vehicle domain systems such as smart driving, smart cabin, chassis, etc., to small functional modules such as Carlog and airbags, which can be upgraded; FOTA is updated every 3 months, SOTA is updated at any time, and the user experience is refreshed from time to time; and the module adopts AB area backup.
According to its plan, the Zhiji L7 will launch FOTA firmware updates every 3 months, and SOTA software updates will be carried out at any time. At the same time, the maximum upgrade package of global OTA exceeds 50G or more, and the volume after compression and forking is only below 4G. In addition, Zhiji will also increase the transmission rate by expanding the bandwidth, further shortening the time required for OTA. Zhiji Auto also confirmed that its ultra-large capacity cloud service has supported the ability of 1 million OTAs, and can support expansion in the future.
It is worth mentioning that in the near future, Zhiji Automobile will launch the "IMBeta - Zhiji L7 Beta Experience Edition Internal Testing Plan", and invite angel wheel and A round users to apply for participation through the IM Zhiji APP to promote the "data cooker", which is the optimization process that intelligent cars must go through, in order to create the value of the iterative evolution of intelligent cars.
The new energy category is single, and SAIC Motor has once again soared
The chairman of SAIC Motor said that the off-line delivery of Zhiji Automobile is not only a milestone, but also a charge. It is hoped that Zhiji Automobile can become a new benchmark for China's intelligent electric luxury brand, make greater contributions to SAIC driving into a new track at full speed and cultivating new kinetic energy in Shanghai.
This is saicid's hope for zhiji, and it is also the most intuitive positioning of this model.
Establishing a luxury brand benchmark, for SAIC, Zhiji Automobile is saddled with the heavy responsibility of brand soaring and group transformation.
According to the data, in the first three quarters of this year, SAIC New Energy vehicles sold 479,000 units, an increase of 231.2% year-on-year. In terms of performance, SAIC Motor's new energy business has grown strongly. However, it is worth noting that in the huge sales volume, Hongguang MINIEV sales accounted for about 60%.
According to saic motor group's public information, its SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM-Wuling and SAIC passenger cars and other sectors have been laid out in the new energy vehicle business, but from the monthly sales ranking of new energy vehicle companies in the third quarter, only SAIC-GM-Wuling and SAIC passenger cars have entered the top ten of the list.
Obviously, SAIC's new energy structure relies too much on the only trump card, GM Wuling. However, SAIC-GM-Wuling, which is positioned as a "scooter" car, cannot support savoy's entire race on the new energy track.
According to the financial report data of the third quarter of this year, SAIC Motor achieved a total revenue of 186.616 billion yuan, down 13.17% compared with the same period last year; in terms of net profit, SAIC Motor's data in the third quarter was 9.475 billion yuan, down 8.77% from the third quarter of last year.
According to the report, in the first three quarters of 2021, SAIC Motor's R&D expenditure was about 12.6 billion, compared with about 8.9 billion yuan in the same period of 2020, an increase of 41.57% year-on-year. In this regard, some SAIC Group personnel said that since the beginning of this year, SAIC Motor's R & D investment is mainly for the field of intelligent network connection and new energy.
The analysis believes that the increase in R&D investment not only shows that SAIC Has realized its shortcomings in technology research and development and product innovation, but also how to improve the overall performance depends on whether the efficiency of SAIC's R&D investment in market transformation can be improved.
With the subsequent launch of new energy models such as Zhiji, R Automobile, SAIC Volkswagen MEB, SAIC-GM Aoteneng platform, etc., the sales of the company's high-end new energy vehicles are expected to climb, and the sales structure of new energy vehicles is expected to be improved. SAIC motor previously announced its strategic plan for new energy vehicles, and plans to achieve global sales of new energy vehicles by 2025, accounting for no less than 32% of SAIC's vehicle sales.
It is worth mentioning that shortly after the release of the third quarter of this year's financial report, SAIC Motor announced that it would upgrade its "R" brand focusing on the high-end market of new energy to "Feifan Automobile", and said that this brand would develop independently after that.
Che Yun Summary:
Looking back, SAIC motor has tried to impact the mid-to-high-end and high-end new energy vehicle market in recent years, but due to the weakness of its model products in performance, interior and brand power, it has not been recognized by the market, so as not to achieve SAIC's goal of soaring. Nowadays, SAIC motor has once again laid out, with zhiji positioned at more than 400,000 yuan in the front and Feifan positioned at 200,000-400,000 yuan in the back, hoping to realize the dream of high-end new energy through both.
As for whether the future two models can support the dream of SAIC soaring, it should be said that there is still a long way to go. At present, China's new energy vehicle market in the high-end blossom, the new domestic car-making forces have formed their own labels and advantages; traditional main engine factories, BYD, Geely, Great Wall, Dongfeng in the high-end market to form a layout. In the face of market competition, whether SAIC's high-end products can stand out among many car competitors depends on whether the "intelligent" advantages of the products are obvious and sustainable; on the other hand, at the moment when many brands have formed a characteristic positioning, how to find a breakthrough is also a problem that needs to be considered.