The persistence and harvest of "Technology Chery"
Author | Lee thought
Edit | Jane
Produced by | Bangning Studio (gbngzs)
A lot of things are a reincarnation.
On December 28, 2021, Chery QQ ice cream was "resurrected" on the market. As the "first car for young people", chery QQ, the predecessor of Chery QQ ice cream, has been launched since 2003, with a total sales volume of more than 1 million vehicles in 10 years, and has been exported to five continents and nearly 100 countries and regions around the world, becoming a shining Chinese business card.
It even led a glorious era of Chery - before 2011, Chery Automobile won the sales champion of its own brand for 9 consecutive years, becoming a veritable independent brother.
At present, the mature fuel vehicle market has long entered the consumption upgrade period, but the new energy vehicle market is still in its infancy, and its A00-class mini-vehicles have once again ushered in the best era, like Wuling Hongguang MINI EV in 2021 sales of 426,000 vehicles, becoming a ride.
Riding on the east wind of the change of the times, the veteran Chery QQ chose to electrocute the new students and try to clean up the mountains and rivers that they had.
For Chery under the leadership of Yin Tongyue, secretary of the party committee and chairman of Chery Holding Group, the business card of QQ has been re-polished, which may mean the beginning of a new brilliant era.
On the night of the QQ ice cream listing, Chery held a huge press conference in its hometown of Wuhu, Anhui. Yin Tongyue ambitiously released the 2022 sales plan - Chery Automobile's annual sales will exceed 1.5 million units, striving for 2 million vehicles, and annual operating income of 200 billion yuan. Among them, QQ ice cream and small ants aimed at the new energy mini-car market will shoulder the heavy responsibility of 300,000 vehicles.
There is always a darkness before dawn. As early as 2017, Chery put forward the goal of one million vehicles, but it backfired. From 2018 to 2020, Chery Automobile's annual sales were 753,000 units, 745,000 units and 730,000 units, respectively, which is still far from the million vision.
But the chaos at dawn is, after all, the preface to dawn. In the short two-month pre-sale stage before the listing, QQ Ice Cream received 70,000 orders, which seems to be a footnote for the sales explosion in 2022. In addition to QQ ice cream, Chery's cumulative sales of the whole system reached 961,900 units in 2021, an increase of 31.7% year-on-year, setting a record for the best sales in the brand's history.
Among them, Chery exported 269,200 new cars to overseas markets, a year-on-year increase of 136.3%, ranking first in the export volume of Chinese brand passenger cars for 19 consecutive years. Chery Group's global automobile users have exceeded 10 million, reaching 1.95 million overseas.
All indications are that Chery is heading into the overtaking lane – more than 20 years of technological precipitation, finally pushing the brand to break the defense upwards.
01.
Thick and thin
In the past two years, the keywords that Yin Tongyue often hangs on his lips are power, mission, and opportunity.
"For today's Chinese auto industry and Chinese brands, the foothold of 'embracing change' is to rethink the mission and opportunities of Chinese brands in the context of a new round of global scientific and technological revolution and the road to China's great power." Yin Tongyue said during the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show that this mission is to make Chinese cars leapfrog from big to strong; this opportunity is a series of trend changes, including consumption upgrades, the wave of new four modernization technologies, etc.
In his view, embracing change does not mean blindly chasing the outlet, and the current hot high-end, electrification, and intelligent boom still comes from the long-term operation behind following the law, which is the product of thick accumulation.
From the initial imitation to the introduction, digestion, absorption, and now in the engineering design, product quality, energy utilization, vehicle design and other aspects have risen to the stage of independent innovation, Yin Tongyue believes that with the establishment of system capabilities, Chery has completed the basic layout of the technology chain, innovation chain, supply chain, industrial chain, Andcherry has gradually formed an influence on joint ventures and even foreign enterprises.
The star path built for high-end shows this potential. As the "top student" that Chery focuses on cultivating, although Xingtu Automobile was established for only 3 years, the whole game of chess has been laid out since 10 years ago.
At the ceremony of xingtu's moon rolling off the line in early 2021, Yin Tongyue expressed his chest directly, "Without the success of Xingtu, there will be no future for Chery." As the integrator of technology Chery, Xingtu has further expanded its product lineup with the blessing of M3X Mars Architecture PRO, handing over a total of 37,155 vehicles in 2021, an increase of 121% year-on-year, and successfully entered the Russian market, ushering in a rapid upward stage.
In contrast, The shortcut is more like inadvertently planting willows.
At the 2018 Jietu brand establishment conference, Yin Tongyue made a bet with the Jietu team: "If Jietu is successful, I will be fined, and if they do not do well, they will be punished." However, in 2021, Jietu sold 154,100 vehicles, an increase of 17.9% year-on-year, and its cumulative sales exceeded 460,000 units since its establishment, which was praised by Yin Tongyue as chery Group's innovation pioneer.
This "sharp soldier" is also inseparable from the concentration and patience of Jietu focusing on "Technology Chery". On July 8 last year, Jetway Was upgraded to an independent brand. In order to promote the "Travel +" strategy, Jietu Automobile has built a Kunlun architecture and launched hardcore off-road SUVs, hard pickup trucks, MPVs and other products, and the whole series of products will also plan hybrid models synchronously. This year, Jetway aims to sell 200,000 units and aims to achieve 1 million units by 2026.
In the process of new energy transformation, Chery did not choose to chase the wave of high-end, but built an iCar ecological platform, uniting Baidu, Huawei, Ali and other industry leaders to create users' exclusive cars through intelligent customized products.
"Chery has accumulated up to 20 years in the field of new energy vehicle technology, and we have launched new models such as QQ ice cream based on the iCar ecosystem, which represents Chery's confidence and determination to transform." Yin Tongyue stressed, "Chery's new energy products do not rely on cost performance, but on the ratio of price to price - the ratio of price to high technology." ”
02.
Technology-based
Technology is the key to Chery's continuous improvement of market share in domestic and foreign markets, while making the "Chinese business card" more and more shiny.
Through independent innovation, Chery has made breakthroughs in core technologies such as TGDI turbocharged cylinder direct injection technology, CVT stepless transmission technology, new energy and intelligent technology, which has led to the technological upgrading of all products. In the field of new energy, Chery has accumulated deep technical reserves in 4X4WD, battery, battery industry chain, hydrogen energy, on-board chips, automatic driving, etc., and has applied for more than 23,000 patents.
In the 2021 of the attack, Chery also uses technology as the source of strength.
On April 20, Chery unveiled "Kunpeng Power CHERRY POWER" at the Shanghai Auto Show. The power system is a global power architecture of Chery 4.0 era, including fuel, hybrid, pure electricity and hydrogen power, which is the culmination of Chery Automobile's 24 years of power technology.
Among them, the Kunpeng 2.0TGDI engine has a maximum power of 192 kilowatts and a peak torque of 400 Nm, and the power level is comparable to that of mainstream luxury brands.
At the same time, the world's first full-featured hybrid configuration Kunpeng DHT power has the first dual motor drive of the Chinese brand, 9 working modes, 11 combined gears, and can bring an ultra-smooth driving experience through the TSD dual axle drive. The first model equipped with this system, the Tiggo 8 PLUS PHEV, has an acceleration time of less than 5 seconds per 100 kilometers and a comprehensive fuel consumption of less than 1 liter per 100 kilometers.
On August 18, Starway released the M3X Mars architecture PRO. The architecture was iterated from the M3X Mars architecture technology released less than a year ago, and a 400T power system with higher power and torque was launched, with the highest liter of power of 96KW/L and the highest liter of torque of 200Nm/L, and the thermal efficiency was as high as 41%, reaching the ceiling level of its own brand at that time.
Technology is also Chery's bottom line for going to sea.
On the basis of maintaining the first place in the export of Chinese brand passenger cars for 19 consecutive years, Chery is accelerating the layout of the European and American markets, of which Xingtu will serve as a pioneer for Chery to enter the internationalization 3.0 stage and open up the European and American markets. "At present, we are developing American Standard products of Xingtu, and some heavyweight international cooperation projects are in progress." Yin Tongyue said.
On the road of technological development, no one has the right to lie flat.
Today's technology Chery, but also plugged in the customer thinking, Internet thinking of this pair of "wings", hope to build a new advantage in technology for the new track, the technology Chery's golden signboard is more and more polished.
"With the acceleration of the transformation of automotive products to the direction of intelligence and informatization, coupled with the advent of car sharing and platform ecology, the future ecology of the automotive industry will become larger and larger, and there will be more and more shared services." Yin Tongyue said that in the future, Chery will shift from selling cars to selling lifelong services, from car services to life services. Chery will continue to improve the industrial layout around "one line, five floors", accelerate the layout of new tracks such as new energy, intelligent network connection, shared travel, platform and ecology on the basis of traditional fuel vehicles, and open up the whole value chain of automobiles.
At the same time, plug in the "wings" of customer thinking and Internet thinking, to create value for customers, let customers get excited and moved, and provide accurate services around their "pain points" and "itch points"; to do open systems, let Internet thinking continue to expand Chery's technical boundaries and business boundaries.
"It is not very accurate to say that the current global automotive industry is in the 'switch' between the old and new tracks, and it should be said that the new and old tracks are 'superimposed' stages." Chery not only has to continue to run on the traditional track, but the layout of the new track must also be fast. Yin Tongyue told us that technology Chery will achieve greater breakthroughs in revolutionary and original technological innovation. At present, the company is preparing to build the Anhui Intelligent Network and New Energy Vehicle Research Institute, building more than 300 special original laboratories, hoping to build Chery's "Bell Lab".
In the field of new energy in full swing, many car companies, including Chery, have chosen to enter the A00-class mini-car market. Some experts said that this path of small profits and high sales will indeed hit the nail on the head for short-term sales increases. However, in the context of consumption upgrading, it remains to be seen how long the carnival of mini cars can last.
In the new energy market, Chery's "card" is not only a mini car. In terms of new energy passenger car business, Chery will comprehensively build three types of brand business: boutique new energy cars, value models and luxury models. In terms of new energy for commercial vehicles, Chery Commercial Vehicle New Energy has ranked first in the new energy logistics vehicle industry for two consecutive years, with a total of nearly 50,000 green city logistics vehicles delivered. By 2025, the sales volume of new energy vehicles will account for 50% of Chery Group's total sales.
Behind the ability to comprehensively lay out new energy passenger cars, commercial vehicles and special vehicles, in the final analysis, it is the support of key technologies and platforms of Chery.
Yin Tongyue said that Chery focused on creating two plug-in hybrid vehicle product platforms and three lightweight pure electric vehicle product platforms, and formed five general-purpose subsystems (vehicle control system, power battery system, electric drive system, PHEV powertrain, electric drive rear axle) and ten core technologies of new energy (vehicle integration, vehicle control, chip, battery management and battery system design, battery cell, motor, PHEV system design, lightweight technology, intelligent interconnection design, range extension/ Hydrogen fuel technology, etc.) complete layout.
The future is here. In Yin Tongyue's view, Chery must not only win the war on the traditional track, but also win the war on the new track at the same time. How to take advantage of this round of rapid growth momentum to truly achieve "smiling pride", Chery's next performance is waiting to see.