SAIC Motor recently announced a one-year report card: in 2021, the group's wholesale vehicle sales of 5.464 million vehicles, maintaining the first place in China for 16 consecutive years, the leading edge has expanded to nearly 2 million vehicles, independent brands, new energy vehicles, overseas exports have achieved double-digit rapid growth.
End products, including automobiles, have always been an important track for major enterprises to compete. Whoever grasps the new terminal will grasp the initiative of the next round of industrial development. From fuel vehicles to electric smart cars, the automotive industry is experiencing a round of large-scale track switching. For the frontrunner SAIC, it is particularly crucial to build new terminals and seize new tracks.
Lead and breakout
Dare to break a new road, laying the foundation for saic's former glory.
In April 1983, in the assembly workshop of the Shanghai Automobile Factory in Anting, Jiading, boxy Santana cars rolled off the production line here. This is the first joint venture project in China to open up to the outside world, and it is also the initial cognition and imagination of Chinese consumers about cars.
At that time, Anting, without any supporting support of the modern automobile industry system, was a poor industrial island, and only 5 kinds of parts such as radios, antennas and small signs could be domestically produced, and the localization rate was only 2.7%.
In this context, santana localization is regarded as a major event by the Shanghai Municipal Government. At that time, Shanghai led the formation of the "Santana Localization Community", from Shanghai to the Yangtze River Delta, all aspects of the market players participated in the Santana localization project.
China's first Santana sedan was assembled off the production line. Xinhua
For more than ten years, the localization rate of Shanghai Santana is close to 100%, and Anting has also built a world-class automobile city.
Today's competition has quietly shifted from Anting to Lingang. Last month, at SAIC's Lingang plant, the first batch of Zhiji L7 Beta Experience Editions with pearlescent white was officially rolled off the production line.
This action is quite symbolic.
Ten minutes' drive from SAIC's Lingang plant, Tesla has achieved mass production of the Model 3 on this land.
Traditional automotive products such as Santana and Sail were once the glorious memories of the Shanghai brand. Nowadays, the automobile industry has ushered in major changes, and the new track of the electric intelligent car industry is accelerating, and Tesla has become a dark horse in the track. In this track, can the intellectuals engraved with the mark of "SAIC" reshape the glory of that year?
From the era of fuel vehicles to the era of electric intelligent vehicles, the "gray rhinoceros" of the deep transformation of the automobile industry has gone through the "hair" and entered a new stage of "power". In the face of great changes in the industry, the frontrunner SAIC is facing a new breakthrough.
Open terminal
Cars with extremely distinct physical features are undergoing disruptive changes on the "four wheels".
The car was "turned on". "The original vehicle development process is step-by-step, and it takes about three years from demand finalization to mass production." The relevant person in charge of SAIC Motor said that it is difficult to put the demand for smart cars in place at one time, and the demand is gradually polished during the development process. Moreover, the original development mainly focuses on hardware, while the development process of smart cars is a combination of soft and hard, which is more reflected in software development, testing and iteration.
More importantly, the new development process extends to the use of the product, that is, after the car is delivered to the user, the product can also be upgraded and iterated through OTA (over-the-air download), which is equivalent to adding a virtual engine to the car in addition to the physical engine.
Software-Defined Cars. Eight years ago, Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Motor, first made this judgment.
8 years later, this sentence has become the public awareness of car builders in the era of smart cars. The cornerstone of a car being "smart" is to empower it with the core of the software. A service-oriented architecture (SOA) that is centrally controlled and connects the control domains of the vehicle is a concentrated embodiment of the capabilities of "software-defined vehicles".
Zero Beam, one of the 20 "Science and Technology Innovation Little Giants" cultivated by SAIC Motor. At present, the company has brought together more than 1,200 electronic architecture and software engineers to improve the vehicle's central centralized electronic architecture and service-oriented SOA software platform.
SAIC Chase's driverless shuttle bus is undergoing a road test
"We have 'atomized' the vehicle software package, each service is like a Lego brick, can be freely combined, through the published online integrated development environment and standardized service interface, to provide subscription-based services, users can customize the personalized scene experience of the vehicle, to achieve the needs of smart cars 'thousands of faces'." The relevant person in charge of SAIC motor said.
Automobiles are changing from functional vehicles based on traditional electronic architectures to integrating a number of transformative technologies such as big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things, and truly becoming a mobile intelligent terminal.
Building a "Circle of Friends"
On Christmas Eve 2021, SAIC Overseas Travel engineers launched a software update package.
That night, in India, more than 300 MG Astor users immediately downloaded the update package, eagerly waiting for the small robot ai assistant on the center console of their vehicles to make more Christmas-limited emoticons. This is the charm of openness.
It's not just cars that are open, but entire industries.
The original definition of "industrial boundary" in the automobile industry is also constantly being extended, and digitalization and intelligence are becoming the core competitiveness of automobile enterprises. At the same time, the traditional automobile zero relationship has gradually evolved into a new type of cooperative relationship that integrates mutual assistance.
Momenta, the algorithm provider of intelligent driving solutions for Zhiji L7, was selected as one of the "50 Smart Companies in the World" by MIT Technology Review for two consecutive years in 2019 and 2020, and is the only intelligent driving company among them. SAIC is Momenta's number one institutional investor.
Through Zhiji, Momenta's intelligent driving technology has landed from the air, and SAIC Motor is gradually realizing its ambition to become a world-class head resource gatherer by integrating various head resources.
Inside the Wisdom L7 Beta Beta
On the new track of electric intelligent network connection, SAIC is firmly grasping the new terminal of intelligent networked vehicles, mobilizing all internal and external resources for innovation, and at the same time, the new terminal also drives enterprises to comprehensively transform from manufacturing enterprises to high-tech enterprises in terms of innovation mechanisms, development processes and institutional mechanisms.
In the future, will the automobile become the entrance to the interaction between the virtual world and the real society in the future?
"As a large intelligent terminal, the car is born with the foundation of immersive experience, and we are very convinced that the car will surpass the mobile phone and become one of the very important carriers of the metaverse." Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile, said.