On January 10th, the day before the Yo-Run Technology Experience Day, I was invited to a small-scale media conference at Yo-Run. Then, on the morning of the 11th, we also participated in an exclusive interview with Li Peng, founder/CEO of Yo-Run Technology. At the end of December, we also had an in-depth exchange with Li Peng.
All of this stems from the concept of a "skateboard chassis" that has been hot since the second half of 2021.
01
What is a skateboard chassis?
Skateboard chassis is a direct translation of Skateboard Platform, which can also be read as skateboard platform, but in Chinese context, it is more often read as chassis, but what exactly is skateboard chassis, there is currently no clear and authoritative definition of this concept.
Rivian, who is regarded as a Tesla killer, took off after the listing in the United States, causing global attention, in addition to the unique business model, the skateboard chassis also began to become popular. Based on the skateboard chassis, Rivian developed the R1 series for the passenger car market, as well as Amazon's custom van Prime Van. Because their skateboard chassis has girders, for a period of time, the non-load-bearing body is the symbol of orthodoxy in the judgment criteria of skateboard chassis.
And in the United States, the new force Canoo, the main focus of publicity is their proud skateboard chassis, on their official website, the description of the skateboard chassis is more detailed than rivian, they did not mention the non-loader body, mainly on the high-performance power, steer-by-wire steering, high integration of these characteristics of the detailed description.
On Canoo's skateboard chassis, we can clearly find that Canoo is more imaginative than Rivian, and has already unveiled three completely different products with different functions: Lifestyle Vehicle, Box Truck MPDV, pickup truck Pickup Truck, and a high-performance coupe model that has not yet been officially unveiled.
In fact, in addition to these more well-known companies and companies to promote the advantages of skateboard chassis, Israel's REE Automotive, domestic PIX, are also players of this concept.
So far, my definition of the skateboard chassis is that the online control is used as a premise, and at the same time, it must have a higher degree of integration.
Of course, this is an unofficial crude interpretation. The concept of the skateboard chassis itself is not something that is out of reach and unattainable high-tech, and when it is not hyped up, it has been silently entered into our lives.
If the word "integration" is used as the core of the skateboard chassis, then the platform used by Tesla, the universal Ultium platform, and even the Volkswagen MEB platform can be understood as the skateboard chassis, because they all have a higher degree of integration than the traditional platform, which includes deep integration of battery packs, EEA architectures and other aspects involving soft and hard decoupling capabilities. For example, CTC technology, integrated die casting, etc., these technologies are essentially the performance of high integration. For the foreseeable future, we will see the word "skateboard" appear on the PPT extremely frequently.
Li Peng, ceo of Yo-Pao, defined the skateboard chassis in this way in an interview: "The body is separated, combined with the force." In the following, we will deeply appreciate how the entire product and business of Yo-Run are built around this sentence.
02
What does Yo-Yo Do?
Founded in April 2021, Yo-Pao has so far received Pre-A+ round of financing, with a valuation of RMB 1.5 billion. As of January, the number of employees had reached about 150, of which 60% had 10 years of experience in the automotive industry, half had worked in technology companies, and nearly half had master's or doctoral degrees. Among them, the team of engineers is close to 140 people, almost all of them, half of them are responsible for software, half responsible for hardware.
At the beginning of my contact with Yo-Yo- I actually wanted to find out what Yo-Yo-Yo does.
Li Peng's introduction to Yo-Yo is "building a car based on the skateboard chassis empowerment scene", but this kind of "empowerment" vocabulary is actually not very good.
In Li Peng's vision of the future new energy market, in the future automotive industry, there is no traditional definition of "supplier", "new force" and "main engine factory", but instead words such as "ecology", "user value creator" and "right to define the space of the cabin". He pointed out that the difference between the supply chain and the ecology is that the supplier is one-way transmission, there is no feedback to the upstream and downstream, and in the ecology, all participants, including car companies, suppliers, etc., can achieve two-way information feedback and exchange between upstream and downstream enterprises.
Therefore, from a technical point of view, Li Peng said that Yo-Yo Pao is a company with "soft and hard intelligent electric vehicle operating system" as its product. However, in order to facilitate everyone's understanding, I repeatedly communicated the positioning and strategy of Yo-Run, and finally Li Peng agreed with my "hardware Android" statement.
Android is a set of software systems, domestic ICT manufacturers, such as Xiaomi, OV, the previous Huawei, are based on the native Android personalized, localized construction, thus attracting users, become a reason for purchasing. And this concept is set on yo-yo, that is, yo-yo provides a highly integrated skateboard chassis and a unified software interface, and the definition of the cabin space is something that manufacturers have to think about.
From the perspective of Yo-Yo-Pao, although 3 concept cars and concept chassis were unveiled this time, this is the product of the two products of chassis and cabin in different combinations, among which Yo-Yo-Pao has mastered more technology related to skateboard chassis.
Let's look first at the most important skateboard chassis
The official "UP Super Chassis" is an upgrade from the skateboard chassis. It has the ability to integrate the traditional body-in-white, and further integrates the three electric, suspension, braking, steering, battery, electric drivetrain, suspension and other components.
The walking staff showed us the tracking function on the concept chassis. Seeing a chassis wandering on the ground reminds me of the "headless horseman" in the duck detective when I was a child, watching the engineer holding the handle in the remote control, I suddenly realized, isn't this the ultimate driving mode? Controlling real vehicles online, in the cloud, is a bit into the concept of a "metacosm".
Speaking of this prototype concept chassis, in addition to the 4G network reception module and the relatively complete suspension structure, I found an interesting place on the rear motor, which is a 150 kW permanent magnet synchronous liquid cooled motor that may come from BYD, and the impression is that this may be the first time THATD has output a three-electric product like this, right?
For its skateboard chassis, Youpao summarized four core technical advantages: full-line control of the whole vehicle, pluggable ring network electronic and electrical architecture, CTC battery system and highly integrated thermal management system.
The whole vehicle is fully in-line control
We know that not long ago, Toyota's bZ pure electric series pilot product bZ4X will start production in mid-2022. The most radical part of this car is the steering with full-line control, which is important for Toyota and the entire automotive industry.
And yo-yo, as early as 2023 mass production of "full" line control point, this "full" refers to the wire control steering and wire control brake. Wire control is very advantageous for assisted driving, without the hard connection of the mechanical mechanism, the algorithm can be executed more efficiently, the accuracy is improved, and the delay is reduced.
In addition, the full in-line braking and steering can bring the strongest "custom" mode. Manufacturers can package the braking and steering data of the supercar in the OTA update, so that everyone can have a "close" supercar driving experience, which is more direct than the current sports and economic mode switching. We diverged and could even introduce interesting driving styles such as buggies, vans, buses, and more. But the most interesting thing is that because the steering feel and brake feel can be precisely modified and fine-tuned, we can really get the driving style that is closest to the individual.
Pluggable ring network EEA
The main technology of Yo-Run is integrated on the chassis, and the cabin is left to the B-end manufacturers to play, so Yo-Run has standardized the hardware interface in the VIU (Vehicle Interface Unit) area, thereby realizing the unification of the underlying software and allowing B-end customers to define on this basis, which is more similar to Android.
For the "pluggable" hardware that is being nurtured in the trend, Yo-Pao claims that on HPVC chips, supporting heterogeneous large-scale computing platforms, HPVC's maximum computing power can be expanded to more than 1,000 TOPS, and can meet the future L4 and above autonomous driving needs.
CTC battery system
Regarding CTC (Cell to Chassis) technology, this is also the embodiment of the integration idea. Simply put, the battery becomes a structural part integrated with the chassis, and the vehicle is subjected to force from all directions. Due to the disappearance of the structural parts supported between the battery modules, the volume energy density of the battery has been improved under the condition that the chemical formula is unchanged. However, this is a big test for the design of the heat dissipation structure of the battery.
The engineers of Yo-Trabo said that in the skateboard chassis of the first-generation Yo-Trade, the battery pack supports CTC and CTP technology solutions, and is compatible with mainstream base lithium power batteries such as lithium iron phosphate and lithium ternary lithium, and can reach an endurance of up to 1,000 km. In the future, semi-solid-state batteries and solid-state batteries will also be supported.
Highly integrated thermal management system
According to the official, under the integrated energy management, the heating energy consumption in winter can be saved by 70%. The specific technical interpretation is not very in-depth, and the speculation is that the heat pump air conditioner is on, and the temperature control management of the battery and the cockpit is opened. But the specific references and technical details, I still need to know.
Cabin design
Yo-Yo has achieved hardware standardization in five areas, such as chassis, three electrics, thermal management, passive safety, and electronic and electrical architecture, so as to meet the needs of different scene forms. At this event, Yo-Yot also directly exposed 5 concept cars with different functions and forms for customers on the B-end to see.
At the scene, Yo-Yo brings three of these concept cars. Let's take a look at how Yo-Yo is planning for B-end manufacturers.
UP SPACE 01 super sedan
This is a coupe product. It can be seen that there is a continuous arc from the front to the rear, including the rear design is also conducive to improving the aerodynamic effect, which is jokingly called the flat replacement of the Mercedes-Benz EQXX concept car by the staff on the spot.
UP SPACE 02 Super MPV
This is the only model of the three that can open the door and see the interior. Positioned as a "multi-urban mobile space". The vehicle does not have B-pillars, and the A and C pillars are close to the edge of the vehicle, so under the length close to the golf, a three-row arrangement is realized. The co-pilot removed the seat and set up a luggage rack module. The second row of seats also supports flipping to form a meeting mode.
UP SPACE 03 Super SUV
It adopts the current popular "mecha" style. The firewall in the traditional sense no longer exists, and this long front cabin is for the purpose of "concave shape", which is actually an electric kitchen tool similar to the "off-road module".
In addition to the chassis and body, the connection part of the two is also a technical difficulty. Different from the traditional non-load-bearing body connecting the upper and lower body through rubber, the UP super chassis and the upper body are rigidly connected to achieve the effect of "common force, common bearing", and the specific technical details have not been announced. But at present, Yo-Run has applied for 46 patents in this field.
03
Who are Yo-Run's customers?
In fact, we can start from the sentence "body separation, combined with force" mentioned by Li Peng at the beginning, and talk about the core business model of yo-yo running, that is, around the skateboard chassis, after mastering the integration of related technologies, the design of the cabin and the user's experience are handed over to the manufacturer, which is Li Peng's "right to define the cabin space".
From Li Peng's point of view, the current development of pure electric models still strictly follows the vehicle development process, from product definition, modeling design, combination verification, trial production verification, and then large-scale mass production. According to this tandem development logic, in the fuel era, the development cycle of a vehicle will reach 3-5 years. Under the chase and competition of the new forces, and the platform concept that has been quite developed, the shortest time has reached about 30 months.
Yo-Yo showed the B-end manufacturers the effect of their "UP super chassis", in the case of the separation of the chassis and the cabin, the development work became parallel, distributed, tooling adjustment and process verification time can be compressed. In the production cycle of the traditional new models of the same platform, it can be shortened by 6-12 months, which is more obvious for the first generation of products developed by Youpao in 9 months.
This leads to an interesting question, is Yo-Yo a self-built factory or looking for someone to do it? Is it the output chassis, or can it all help? The answer is the latter, the OEM is The Kaiyi of Wuliangye Holdings, the output is to see the needs of B-end customers, and yo-yo runs with affection.
But we need to see this "traditional new model with the same platform", which once again implies that Yo-Yo's customers are new potential entrants who do not yet have platform products, which is equivalent to saying: "Since you don't have (no money to develop, time is tight) platform, just use mine."
Does this mean that the existence of Yo-Pao is not too tempting for those who already have mature platforms and traditional OEM giants? Because under their traditional and strong supply chain management, the platform has become the core strategy, although there are complex personnel struggles within the mature system, but under the support of the mature platform and supply chain, the cycle of launching products is not very long, and there are relatively abundant funds to develop pure electric platforms, or exclusive skateboard chassis.
(Source: Reuters)
Li Peng quipped that Yo-Run's customers, similar to Rivian's own technology giant Amazon and fuel giant Ford as two major customers, Yo-Run currently has its own "Amazon" and "Ford".
However, regarding the specific customer list, due to the restrictions of the confidentiality agreement, we are not aware of the existing customers of Yo-Run.
But Li Peng may not know that although Ford invested in Rivian and gave the body-in-white body as research and development support, At present, Ford has canceled the project of cooperating with Rivian to develop Lincoln models, which is a state of "peaceful separation". This makes me even more curious about who the "Ford" of the yo-yo is.
"Ford" I guess is Changan, and "Amazon" I am not convenient to say, but ICT manufacturers, you can guess at will in the comment area, and then we can let the bullet fly an answer.
04
Running? Huawei? Silly can't tell
As the article goes all the way, I, like you, have a deep question, mastering the skateboard chassis technology, the underlying software platform, and even showing a yo-yo with a similar concept car, will it build a car in the end?
This problem first appeared on Huawei, which has strong channels, a huge fan base, many years of precipitation in the ICT field, and we have actually experienced amazing assisted driving capabilities, which is only one step away from building a car.
Now this problem falls on Yo-Yo. Li Peng's reply was that "at present, we will not get involved in C-end brand building."
I was very curious to ask Li Peng this question, his answer is very interesting, he said that in the C-end brand, to create value for users, and in the whole life cycle to serve, it takes a lot of money.
05
Exclusive interview with Li Peng, CEO of Yo-Run
Written by: Liu Guangzhen
Edit: Reinhardt
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