In 2021, Tesla's performance is relatively strong, in the face of fierce market competition, Tesla's annual car delivery volume exceeded 900,000, continuing to lead the new energy vehicle market. In the new year, Musk revealed that Tesla will not release new models, and there are currently no plans to launch cheaper models. From this point of view, Tesla will focus more on the improvement of the brand market layout and other supporting services this year to ensure that it continues to maintain a certain advantage in products and services.
According to the Financial Associated Press, Tesla investors who "know the inside story" revealed that Tesla is developing an APP app store, similar to Apple's App Store, which enables car owners to download and use various third-party applications autonomously. Teslascope, a media outlet that follows Tesla's development, also said that since May last year, Tesla has carried out preparatory work to develop an app store.
Tesla, which does not take the usual path, has always played the role of industry disruptor, and this time it will focus on the field of car APP application stores, perhaps it wants to use software services to promote the development of the traditional automotive industry and redefine "hardware" with software.
Why does Tesla need an app store?
Before the real rise of new energy vehicles, the central control screen of many traditional cars is difficult to describe with intelligence, the appearance seems to be tall, but most of them only have basic functions such as playing music, switching air conditioning and sunroof, but only map the function of traditional physical buttons to the interface of the central control screen. Many users prefer to use the car system accessed by smart phones such as CarPlay, and use the central control screen as a simple display.
With the development of automobile intelligence, the central control car machine can achieve more functions with the help of chips with stronger computing power, and get rid of the dependence on smart phones. However, considering the compatibility of the software and interface adaptation and other issues, many brands of central control screens mostly use pre-installation, download and install the corresponding applications in the system in advance, these "restrictions" also highlight the value of the automotive APP application store, the existence of exclusive app stores can meet the user's more needs for car central control screen entertainment.
It is worth noting that Tesla's central control vehicle system is not Android, but a proprietary system developed based on Linux. The advantage of the system is that it has a higher degree of integration with the whole vehicle, can control and display most of the functions and information of the car, and supports OTA software upgrades, but the number of third-party software is not as good as other Android car machines, some users do not like the system's own listening software, but limited by the system and can not easily replace other APP.
In fact, Tesla has long had a layout in the gameplay of the central control car machine, as early as 2019, users can play the "ATV Racing 2" game on Tesla, directly using the car steering wheel, throttle and brake to control the car in the game. Thanks to the advantages of Tesla's high combination of software and hardware, game manufacturers can mobilize part of the car's hardware to participate in the game and enhance the user's sense of game presence.
So why did Tesla choose to lay out the APP app store this year? At the beginning of the article, it was mentioned that Tesla has no plans to release new cars this year, but in order to continue to increase car sales, Tesla needs to find new ways to stimulate user consumption outside the car and maintain the market heat of the brand. You know, according to Musk's declared 2022 target, Tesla's sales this year will increase by 50% compared with 2021, that is, sales will reach more than 1.35 million.
From the perspective of market development, Tesla's purpose of developing the APP app store is mainly three points. The first is to make all kinds of third-party APP have a unified download space on Tesla, on the one hand, it is convenient for users to download and use, on the other hand, it is conducive to encouraging developers to develop special software for Tesla, improve the richness of the system's exclusive software, and narrow the gap between the software ecology and android car machines.
Second, the existence of an exclusive APP app store can enhance the uniqueness of Tesla products to a certain extent. Whether in automatic driving or in the "three electricity" system, Tesla has a certain leading edge, but at this moment, under the catch-up of manufacturers such as "Wei Xiaoli", some of Tesla's advantages are no longer obvious, and the development of APP application stores with higher software and hardware integration in the automotive industry is conducive to Tesla's development of new product features, and it is also in line with its role as a pioneer and subversive in the automotive industry.
Third, in the era of intelligent automobiles, users put forward higher requirements for the safety of on-board systems. Tesla's in-vehicle system has been hacked by hackers, and there are reports that foreign hackers have cracked Tesla's security system in less than 1.6 seconds, and many users can't help but have doubts about the security of Tesla's system.
The existence of the Tesla in-vehicle APP app store, the third-party APP listing and distribution channels in their own hands, can form a closed-loop software ecosystem similar to apple App Store, not only can reduce the probability of users inadvertently exposed to Trojans, but also can form a software audit wall, as far as possible to block hackers through the third-party software hack into the system of the hidden channels.
In addition, it is also worth noting that in the content layout and operation of the APP, Tesla, like "Wei Xiaoli", has launched many brand peripheral products, including whistles, mugs and golf umbrellas. On the one hand, these products can tap the consumption potential of users and enhance the company's revenue channels.
On the other hand, Tex's peripheral products can be regarded as an attempt to cultivate user consumption habits in advance, so that some car owners can develop the habit of paying attention to Tesla products, laying the foundation for the promotion of APP application stores in the future. Even in the purchase channel and commodity display, in the future, Tesla can rely on the APP to display goods on the central control screen, forming a closed-loop "car owner economy" circle, and the APP app store on the car is the core of various new features and new marketing games, expanding the development boundary of Tesla's functions, services and commercialization.
The author believes that Tesla has developed its own FSD chip and central control system, the development of APP application stores is sooner or later, a complete set of self-developed software and hardware system can be more development initiative in their own hands. In the new energy vehicle industry, app application stores still have a lot of imagination space, especially in terms of revenue, the car central control screen charging software is still a blue ocean, if Tesla can gain a foothold in this field, the future or can rely on the operation of the APP application store to expand revenue channels.
The Internet thinking of new energy vehicle companies
Whether it is Tesla or "Wei Xiaoli", they are enhancing their user operation capabilities, and the APP app stores mentioned above and various peripheral goods are channels for car companies to convert private domain traffic. This also highlights a major difference between new energy vehicle companies and traditional car companies, the former has a stronger Internet thinking, and in order to better play with private domain traffic, they need to be closer to users in order to continue to tap the potential value of users.
In terms of role, some traditional car companies are more like treating themselves as pure vehicle providers, considering the cost of vehicles, market promotion and sales, the intelligent system of the central control car machine adopts the products of third-party manufacturers, and the sales and after-sales of cars rely on the dealer's 4S store. The existence of this interval invisibly increases the distance between consumers and car companies.
As for many new energy vehicle companies, how to get close to users, in addition to their own development of customized car machine system and self-operated sales system, some manufacturers even move vehicles into the mall to sell, so that users can buy cars like ordinary goods.
For traditional car companies, it is more difficult to imagine cutting channels to develop a direct store system, vigorously laying out brand peripheral products and attaching importance to software operations. Or that the traditional car companies are ship is difficult to turn around, the formed company operating model and dealer system is difficult to change for a while, so they are more commonly used to develop new energy brands to explore the way.
Many new energy vehicle companies can be different, most of the mainstream new energy vehicle companies in the market were mostly founded after 2010, with the development of the wave of mobile Internet, Internet thinking has become part of its brand operation spirit, the "car" as the core of the product matrix rather than all.
Is this pattern familiar? In fact, it is similar to the product system construction idea of Internet manufacturers, using one or more software as the "fulcrum", and then launching other supporting software to form a certain number of product arrays. Similar to Tencent software with WeChat as the core and Byte software with Douyin as the core.
It can be said that the change in the idea of car manufacturing determines that Tesla and other car companies need to pay attention to the construction of private domain traffic, for them, not only want to sell cars to make a deal, but also want to attract users through a variety of supporting services and surrounding goods to continuously attract user consumption, leaving more aspects of users' lives in their product system.
The auto app store is only one aspect, and I personally think Tesla will also launch more categories of services and peripheral products. As for the traditional car companies facing transformation, if they still build cars (including new energy vehicles) in a pure hardware way, do not pay attention to software and user operations, and will eventually be abandoned by the trend of the times, then our attitude towards them may be the same as the mobile phone manufacturers we originally looked at Nokia and BlackBerry.