Written by / Liu Baohua
Editor/ Zhang Nan
Design / Shi Yuchao
Lack of cores, price increases, supply cuts, suspension of production, supply chain difficulties in 2021 has finally come to an end.
"There has been a cliff-like decline in supply while market demand is still at a high level, and I have never encountered such a situation since I entered the automotive industry in 1994." Duan Jianjun, Chief Operating Officer of Sales and Marketing of Beijing Mercedes-Benz Sales Service Co., Ltd., lamented in a media interview in early 2022.
This year, Mercedes-Benz delivered 758,863 new vehicles in the Chinese market, a slight decrease of about 2% year-on-year. More information can be found in the sales figures by model. According to mercedes-benz official data, GLE, GLS models, as well as Mercedes-Maybach, Mercedes-AMG, Mercedes-Benz G-Class cars have achieved double-digit growth. And these are all high-end models of Mercedes-Benz.
Under the attack of electrification and intelligence, the core competitiveness of traditional car brands, including luxury brands, is being challenged. For example, the natural attributes of electric vehicles have greatly reduced the threshold of driving pleasure, and the combination of software and hardware intelligence has also made it more and more difficult to play the technology brand of the traditional car era.
How to continue the brand genes of long-established car brands, or reshape the brand tone in the new car era, is a problem facing all traditional manufacturers, especially luxury brands.
Judging from the new strategy released by Mercedes-Benz in the past year or so, the route chosen by the inventor of the car is to carry out luxury to the end and achieve the ultimate, while complying with the electrification and intelligent transformation.
"For so many years, Mercedes-Benz has insisted on creating luxurious brand attributes. What is luxury? We have said many times: 'Where there is luxury, there must be a story; all luxury and beauty must be the same in appearance; all luxury and beauty will always be styled.' In an interview, Duan Jianjun explained what Mercedes-Benz advocates luxury.
More and more car brands are moving towards the high end. What is the difference between high-end and luxury, and what is unique about luxury? Duan Jianjun believes: "The high-end comparison is whether it is worth the money, whether it is outstanding when compared with similar products, and whether it is a wise choice." But luxury is different, it has itself been fascinating, leading the way, the expectations of the crowd, giving more value and connotation outside the product, people yearn for. This is the luxurious feeling that we want to convey and tell from the marketing level. ”
The strategy is to find certainty in the uncertainty, and Mercedes-Benz's strategy in the era of automotive transformation is to adhere to the certainty traits of the brand that can cross cycles and transcend technological and model changes.
Luxury electric market: it has not yet reached the Warring States period
The new local electric vehicle brand can sell for 400,000 yuan or even more than 600,000 yuan and achieve sales success, which has never been seen in the traditional car era. Obviously, electrification is not only changing automotive products, but also reshaping the industry landscape, and the luxury brand segment is also in the scope of being reshaped.
Duan Jianjun believes that how to define luxury in the world of electric vehicles has been placed in front of many companies, including Mercedes-Benz. In the future, there will definitely be more electric vehicle participants in the Chinese market, and more participants will also want to enter the runway of luxury electric vehicles.
He analyzed that at present, China's luxury car sales account for more than 15%, reaching the level of luxury cars in the mature automobile market in developed countries, which is also an important indicator of the maturity of China's automobile market. From a global perspective, whether in terms of vehicle design, intelligence, brand richness and other aspects, the development of China's luxury electric market has the opportunity to lead the global market. But for the new brands of electric vehicles, he said that it is impossible to strictly define which brands are luxury electric brands.
"At present, the domestic luxury electric market is more like the Spring and Autumn Period, not yet to the Warring States period, not to mention the unification of the Qin Dynasty." He hypothesized that with 200,000 yuan as a measure, in the passenger car market of more than 200,000 yuan, electric vehicles accounted for more than 13%, and also exceeded the total market share of electric vehicles by 11.2%, which shows that the development of luxury electric vehicles has led the development of the overall market from some angles. With more than 200,000 yuan of electric vehicles entering the market, as well as subsidies and other factors, the luxury electric market will also stage a big drama, "Among them, Mercedes-Benz is not only an actor, but also a director, but also an audience, and the final referee is the customer." ”
"For Mercedes-Benz, we must continue to do a good job in the existing fuel vehicle field, and the other is to accelerate the pace in the electric vehicle market. We are confident that we will become a 136-year-old 'four youths' (with strategy, technology, products, services) and hope to continue to have a good performance on the road to electrification." ”
On July 22, 2021, Mercedes-Benz announced that its corporate strategy will shift from "electric first" to "full electric", with the goal of achieving 50% of sales of pure electric and plug-in hybrid models in 2025, and each newly released model will launch a pure electric version, fully prepared for fully pure electric in the market by 2030.
The year of the strategy launch has also become the "Year of Mercedes-EQ", and the new electric models EQA SUV, EQB SUV and EQS have been launched one after another, enriching the luxury electric options in different market segments. Among them, the new EQS, as the industry's first large-scale pure electric luxury car, refreshes the market benchmark with multiple technical dimensions such as the endurance performance of more than 849 kilometers under CLTC conditions, the wind resistance coefficient of 0.20, and the MBUX superlink screen of 1.41 meters.
Duan Jianjun said in an exclusive interview that due to the new EQA pure electric SUV, the new EQB pure electric SUV, the new EQS at the end of the year, the main sales model of the Mercedes-EQ brand in 2021 is still the EQC pure electric SUV, the annual sales volume is not high, and 2022 will usher in a major year of products: In 2022, Mercedes-Benz will launch 21 new models, of which 8 are new energy models, accounting for more than one-third, and the proportion of new energy model sales will continue to expand.
Autonomous driving: Hope to be the first to obtain certification in China
In December 2021, the Mercedes-Benz L3 autonomous driving system passed the strict technical regulations of the German Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA), becoming the first automotive company in the world to be certified by the UN-R157 regulation. This is the first time in the history of human automobiles that a vehicle can take over driving tasks under certain conditions. The L3's self-driving capability will be the first to be installed in the S-Class and the new EQS.
Autonomous driving, in recent years, has almost become a label for Tesla and new car-making forces, and the above news has let the public see that other car companies are not slow on this track.
In fact, Mercedes-Benz's exploration of autonomous driving has a long history.
36 years ago, in 1986, Mercedes-Benz began the research and development of intelligent driving technology through the European intelligent car project "Prometheus Project". From 1994 to 1995, Mercedes-Benz's research vehicles completed about 1,000 kilometers of autonomous driving range on European multi-lane highways.
In August 2013, the Mercedes-Benz S 500 INTELLIGENT DRIVE intelligent driving car retraced the "Bertha Mercedes-Benz Road" and completed an autonomous driving distance of nearly 100 kilometers from Mannheim, Germany to Pforzheim.
In September 2014, the Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 Concept was the world's first fully autonomous truck to travel freely on Germany's 80 km/h road.
In January 2016, the E-Class (W213) became the first production car in the world to have an official certificate for autonomous driving in Nevada, USA. In 2017, Mercedes-Benz's "Global Intelligent Driving Tour" conducted intelligent driving tests with a total mileage of 9.5 million kilometers and more than 1.2 million field data analysis on five continents, including China, to ensure that the next stage of research and development has the stability to adapt to different markets and traffic environments.
In China, Mercedes-Benz has invested in Self-Driving Technology Company Momenta, working with it to develop indigenous L3 and L4 level autonomous driving solutions. The 1.1 billion yuan Daimler China R&D Technology Center was officially put into use in October 2021, with the aim of strengthening local R&D strength in cutting-edge technologies such as intelligence.
Duan Jianjun believes that in the field of autonomous driving, China has the opportunity to play a global leadership role, "We hope that in the future, we will have the opportunity to become the first batch of enterprises in China to obtain automatic driving certification."
At the same time, like all traditional car companies, the first thing he emphasizes when talking about autonomous driving is safety - in terms of function, the current stage of L2 automatic driving, including L3 level automatic driving that Mercedes-Benz will equip some models, is aimed at helping customers achieve safer driving assistance.
"As an automobile company with a history of 136 years, we resolutely oppose unsafe driving habits and driving methods, so we must explore safety as the first priority in the promotion of driving assistance, which is also a responsible and responsible role that automobile companies must play in the promotion of new technologies." Duan Jianjun said.