Text | Jiang Xiaohua
At the end of 2021, two interesting things happened in the electric vehicle world.
One is that Li Bin at NIO DAY, in addition to launching the widely popular ET5, also said more controversial, about his "do not understand" that there are still users who insist on buying traditional internal combustion engine cars; the other is that only 22 months after starting to build cars, he launched the first product of Zhiji Car, with the L7 that just came off the production line to light up the late winter night of The Magic Capital.
These are obviously two very iconic things.
First of all, leaving aside Li Bin's subjective statement on an internal occasion that may be misunderstood and cause controversy, but has a certain degree of truth. What he shows may be the self-confidence that the leaders of a pure electric intelligent car brand who have already had the confidence to come out of the most difficult moment and win market recognition should have.
You can also see more and more pure electric smart car brands gradually abandoning the previous business philosophy and product strategy that only aimed at Tesla, and they began to have their own gradually mature car-making thinking (such as many companies firmly take the lidar route, rather than following Musk's visual perception route), and hope to become the benchmark of the industry.
As a result, I began to look forward to this year, looking forward to the upcoming Zhiji L7 and NIO ET7. They are full of expectations and extreme volumes, and they have a good chance to push the level of China's intelligent electric vehicles to a new height.
Especially the Zhiji L7, which has just come off the production line.
As a new energy intelligent car brand jointly built by SAIC Motor, Zhangjiang Hi-Tech and Alibaba Group, Zhiji has never been doubted since its inception. All the questions are basically focused on what kind of car the intellectuals will build, and whether they can create "the way smart cars should look" as they say.
Obviously, "what a smart car should look like" is a good idea, but there will be no final conclusion for the time being, after all, everyone is still groping. New cars that have been immersed in the smart car market for many years are groping, and zhiji cars that rely on the ability of million-level OEM markets are also groping. And in this process, inner volume, is inevitable.
Although homogenization has been very serious and obvious, the good thing is that the path of development has basically been recognized by most new car manufacturers.
This also makes me look forward to the 2022 that has arrived, after all, zhiji L7 and NIO ET7 have been agreed to deliver in this year. After all, only by grabbing the position of the ceiling of the smart electric vehicle can we have the confidence to represent what "smart cars should look like"; after all, in the field of pure electric intelligent cars that are updated at the speed of light, only by rolling deeper can we rush faster.
Differences in car-making concepts
Let the endurance be attributed to the endurance, and the control be controlled
Taking out the Zhiji L7 and NIO ET7 as sample analysis, it is obvious that it is not just because they will start to be officially sold and delivered this year. More importantly, these two products in the field of intelligent pure electric cars want to lead the development trend of a product, but also in the product research and development stage, it has begun to embark on the road of "inner volume" of secret competition.
As early as the beginning of the product development and design, Zhiji claimed that L7 this product has the world's top three, as low as 0.21Cd wind resistance coefficient. Of course, such excellent wind resistance data also opened the curtain for the inner volume. Last summer, NIO streamed a drag test campaign live online, and the result was that ET7 obtained a lower, 0.208Cd wind resistance data.
For more ordinary users, such a wind resistance difference is actually not strong in perception, or even not at all. But to be a benchmark, to go further where there is no way to improve, sometimes you have to think about the less, even the nuances of the last three decimal places.
Of course, this does not mean that Zhiji can no longer continue to make progress in the field of wind resistance coefficient. In the future, Zhiji will continue to optimize the aerodynamic structure of its own products and do more excavation in wind tunnel performance. Obviously, the "roll" in this part of the wind resistance alone is enough to look forward to.
The wind resistance coefficient is actually just a small microcosm of the externalization of the inner volume. With a body of more than 5 meters, NIO already wants to push the ET7 into the field of traditional mid-to-high-end luxury cars that do not focus on driving control. But Zhiji did not think so, the intervention of Williams' forward-looking engineering team, the addition of four-wheel steering technology, so that the L7 car on the basis of a luxurious positioning configuration, to obtain better driving performance, as well as driving pleasure.
For pure electric vehicles, stronger acceleration performance is innate, so for the Zhiji L7, 0-100 km acceleration of 3.87 seconds should be regarded as the embodiment of its basic performance. But more importantly, the braking distance of 32.69 meters is nearly one meter shorter than the WEILAI ET7. This means that the overall driving experience that the L7 can bring is to run faster and brake more steadily.
At the same time, Williams's tuned chassis and four-wheel steering were added to make the handling performance stronger and the turning radius smaller (a total of 12° rear wheel steering angle in both directions, reducing the body turning diameter of more than 5 meters to 10.8 meters, and the C-class car was comparable to the A-class turning radius, smaller than the golf). This makes the steering to the L7 more flexible and the driving control more confident.
Yes, in the cognition of the intellectual self, the car in the era of smart cars must contain a more enjoyable sense of control, rather than just staying at the point where the acceleration of pure electric vehicles is faster. After all, for the Zhiji L7, whose power performance is already comparable to that of million-level traditional energy vehicles, choosing a top chassis tuning team and configuring a configuration that can provide a better driving experience is Zhiji's insistence and original intention for the driving experience.
These product points related to driving control directly prove the overall concept of intelligent self-manufacturing cars, first of all, based on SAIC's decades of experience in car manufacturing and strong industrial foundation, and then on the infinite possibilities of exploring future travel. You can sit comfortably, you can be cool, and under the new trend of new energy and intelligence, it should still not be ignored. For those ordinary consumers who do not have much interest in early adopters, the satisfaction of these traditional characteristics of automobiles has become the driving force that can push them to take the initiative to "taste early".
Of course, not providing more intense driving, in fact, it also has its own advantages. For example, a smoother driving experience and a better wind resistance coefficient lead to better endurance. At this point, the Zhiji L7 provides a two-wheel drive version of 708 km of endurance.
Careful analysis will find that the battery currently equipped with the Zhiji L7 is a 93kWh battery pack. In the future, users can choose to upgrade it to a larger 120kWh large-capacity battery pack.
Because SAIC Motor Group has already laid out SAIC Times and Times SAIC earlier, two battery technology companies responsible for battery pack technology and battery cell technology respectively. This is also the most important reason why the Zhiji L7 can quickly improve the battery performance by more than 20% in the case that the body has long been fixed.
For WEILAI ET7, it is obviously a good choice to keep a good head. After all, in the era of smart cars, many parameters of the car can be adjusted through OTA upgrades. If you want a better driving experience than before, adjusting some parameters can be achieved. However, in terms of hardware, the initial data setting and the type and form of hardware matched with it are the decisive factors.
Therefore, it is difficult to make up for the congenital lack of food in the day after tomorrow, and if it is necessary to adjust to a more "fierce" car, it will lose more endurance. Obviously, this is not worth the loss. Therefore, letting the endurance belong to the endurance, and let the control belong to the control, is a better choice for Zhiji and Weilai, of course, this good choice is also attributed to the consumer.
The battle for smart driving
Let data be the core driver
In the middle of last year, a video of the Zhiji L7 relying on intelligent driving assistance technology (IM AD) on the streets of Shanghai for 40 minutes without taking over automatic driving became a viral hit. This also allows more people to understand the Jihu Alpha S equipped with Huawei technology, but also know that an intelligent driving assistance is strong enough to be expected to represent China to develop intelligent driving assistance, and even automatic driving standards products and brands. Obviously, this is the birth of the zhizhi car, the core mission that needs to be carried.
Such road tests have not only been implemented in Shanghai. After Shanghai, Zhiji Automobile has successively conducted similar tests in many first-tier cities such as Hangzhou, Suzhou, Chengdu and Guangzhou. The reason why it can achieve repeated tests over long distances, complex road conditions, and complex weather depends on the power of data.
Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile, once said, "User data will become the core driving force for the development of Zhiji Automobile. Similarly, in the field of intelligent driving, user data is also the ultimate implementation. Alibaba, one of the shareholders of Zhiji, has created a powerful data processing capability for Zhiji L7 through Alibaba Cloud supercomputing. And rely on the use of data for IM AD for high-quality training, updated in real time through OTA.
As we all know, the most difficult problem in the intelligent driving process is not in the 90% ordinary driving scene, but in the 10% long-tail case with a small probability. With Alibaba's supercomputing platform, Zhiji L7 has the possibility of continuously generating data to solve these long-tail problems.
Through collection, calculation, and upgrading, Zhiji L7 will realize the data-driven and automatic optimization iteration of the whole process of perception, integration, prediction, and regulation. In short, the data provides the teaching materials, and the technology trains the vehicle, ultimately making the car smarter and smarter.
Such cleverness must be matched with more computing chips and richer sensors. Obviously, for now, the iteration speed of new technologies is obviously faster than the speed of hardware upgrades. In a car's life cycle, what prevents it from getting smarter is clearly the sluggishness of these hardware upgrades.
Therefore, a better, more advanced configuration that can be matched is indispensable to having a more suitable algorithmic program. In terms of hardware, it shows that the ET7, which will be equipped with lidar from the beginning, is obviously more dominant in hardware. When Weilai opened the reservation in ET7, it indicated that it would be equipped with a 1016TOPS computing chip, as well as lidar, which was obviously paved for intelligent driving assistance.
However, WEILAI did not reserve more possibilities for subsequent upgrades of the product. For example, the ADAM supercomputing platform equipped with 4 Orin chips is mounted on top of ET7. The wise self is different. From the very beginning, Zhiji reserved an interface for hardware upgrades for the L7. This leaves room for users to upgrade lidar and high-computing chips in the later stage.
Such a forward-looking layout is a very smart choice in the context of the accelerating iteration speed of the intelligent electric vehicle industry. Because for more people, it is important to buy a car with a new configuration, and the existing configuration can cope with the needs of 3-5 years, or even 5-10 years of longer use, in order to meet the definition of a good product.
Of course, upgrading comes at a cost, and will such a price lead to secondary consumption, thereby increasing the cost of using a car? It's a question to consider.
The battle for user services
Let the user value truly reflect the value
Since Tesla, more and more people have accepted the reality that smart electric vehicles are no longer disposable consumer goods. Kryptonian and paid OTA upgrades for various functions have become a generally accepted model. Similarly, Weilai, which has become an imitation object in the industry with more extreme user services, does not bundle the continuous payment projects that users serve users, such as BAAS.
It has to be said that the power exchange is a good model, it is compared to the previous Weilai launched such as the headless fly version of the charging car on the street, in the form of eliminating user anxiety is better; at the same time, the mode of renting a battery allows users to flexibly choose the capacity of the battery, reduce a large amount of costs related to the battery when buying a car; it can even greatly reduce the cliff-like decline in the retention rate of the previous electric vehicle battery that cannot be replaced.
However, this is still a model that requires users to pay continuously. After all, this is an ongoing cost problem that automakers cannot avoid. So, is there a better model that can do both?
On New Year's Day this year, I mentioned that if the company's user operating expenses are insufficient, it may as well cut marketing expenses to give users operations. Zhi ji, on the other hand, seems to have found a more feasible way to solve this problem.
From the beginning of the establishment of Zhiji, they have set up a user rights platform at the same time, and the company has divided 4.9% of the equity and given a company called "Zhiji and I" to be responsible for the operation of users. The specific form of expression lies in the Zhiji APP, which specially set up a plate called "Rough Stone Valley".
Different from the previous user APP, it is only provided to users to punch, post, reply to earn points and redeem gifts. In this "Rough Stone Valley", in addition to completing some of the previous interactive functions, Zhiji users can provide daily driving data for Zhiji Cars through voluntary mode in exchange for "Rough Stone" (another form of integral form).
These "rough stones" are no longer smart exchanges for daily brand peripherals, household appliances and other items. More importantly, in the process of future product upgrades (batteries, lidar, etc.), the corresponding value of the rough can become a chip for exchange.
This is a new model, which is in line with what Liu Tao said: let user data become the core driving force for enterprise development; at the greatest extent, reduce the user's continuous investment in subsequent vehicles. It not only makes it easier for the car to maintain the stability of advanced nature and value in the wave of "inner volume", but also allows users to continue to use the most advanced automotive products. To a certain extent, such a user operation model that can bring a sense of value to users will also add a lot of points to Zhiji L7.
When we understand the background logic of these inner volumes, and then look back, in fact, all the "volumes" are to better promote the iteration of the product.
After all, the "inner volume" premised on the competition for the market will quickly promote the overall evolution of the entire Chinese automobile industry as intelligent and new energy; at the same time, for ordinary consumers, the cost of car manufacturing is rapidly reduced by the "inner volume", and the user's car experience is also rapidly improved. So, in a sense, I'm even happy to see it happen.