A warm and cool mech hero

The automotive industry is never short of topic companies and topic models. At the end of 2021, I am afraid that the only one who can take on the king of traffic in the automotive circle is Sharon Motors and its first model, the Mecha Dragon.

The startups of the Great Wall Motor Group, the mecha dreams of the big boys, the user groups destined to be "pioneers", and the dazzling advanced technology configuration - these elements make people full of curiosity about the salon car, but also have some confusion. With these questions in mind, we invited Wen Fei, CEO of Sharon Zhixing, as a guest of "Zhishi Afternoon Tea" to talk to us about what Sharon Cars really mean and what they have experienced.

The Great Wall's "New Car-Making Force"

As we all know, in recent years, the newly established brands of Great Wall Motor Group are not few.

From Wei, to Euler, to tanks, each has its own characteristics. Some are mainly high-end, some are mainly engaged in new energy, and some are fighting in the off-road vehicle market. Great Wall Motors covers more and more markets, but it also means that there will be fewer and fewer tracks for new brands.

"We are standing on the shoulders of giants, and at the same time we are standing on the cusp of the Internet." Wen Fei only used one sentence to give an accurate summary of Sharon Automobile's position in the Great Wall Motor Group.

"Giant" of course refers to the Great Wall Motor Group. As a leading automobile group with 30 years of experience in car manufacturing and annual production and sales of more than one million at home and abroad, Great Wall Motors has sufficient technical reserves in vehicle manufacturing, quality control, especially in the field of new energy vehicles.

Sharon Automobile is facing the future high-end new energy vehicle track. Therefore, at the hardware level, what Sharon Motors needs to do is to deeply integrate the development and integration capabilities of Great Wall Motors in the three-electric system, intelligent network connection, automatic driving, electronic and electrical architecture, and achieve efficient research and development and high-quality delivery with the help of Great Wall Motors' global industrial layout, supply chain system and resource collaboration capabilities.

In terms of software, Sharon Motors reflects more of the cultural attributes of "new car-making forces". As a brand with a new and completely independent operation, Sharon Automobile adopts the Internet-based company operation model, independent financing and independent operation - in a sense, this is also a bold attempt by Great Wall Motors to change its own corporate culture. With the help of the exploration of Salon Cars, we will break through the shackles of traditional organizational structures and barriers, and let a more free and diversified corporate culture sprout in the soil of innovation.

Do the hard and right thing

The first model of The Salon Car was called the Mech Dragon. At the Guangzhou Auto Show in November, Mech Dragon opened a global limited edition reservation priced at 488,000 yuan. This pricing is not only directly in front of leading electric vehicle companies such as Tesla, but also in the same price range as the electric vehicle products of luxury brands such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW.

At this time, some people will always begin to question whether independent brands have the strength to break through their own ceilings and fight with high-end brands.

Achieving brand upwards and competing with joint venture brands and even luxury brands has never been an easy task for Chinese car companies. However, in Wen Fei's view, "this kind of difficult and correct thing must always be done by someone." "And it's not so much that Salon Cars chose this track, but more precisely that Times chose this track for Salon Cars."

The current Chinese auto market has a historical opportunity that has not been encountered in three hundred years.

The first is the change of the drive type of the car. In the era of fuel vehicles, European and American manufacturers can be said to have "won on the starting line", but the era of new energy vehicles has given Chinese companies the opportunity to overtake in curves and even change lanes to overtake.

The second is the young new generation of consumers, who understand more technology, a better sense of quality, and a better understanding of what they really need in their hearts. Most importantly, they have innate cultural and technological self-confidence.

Third, China has given the Internet application layer the best soil for development in the world, and in the context of intelligent and networked redefining the automobile, independent brands have the opportunity to achieve comprehensive transcendence of foreign brands on the product side.

The integration of these three gives Sharon Automobile the opportunity to end the Western technology philosophy that has dominated the history of automobiles for more than 100 years, gives Sharon Motors the opportunity to remove brand premiums and achieve consumer equality for domestic consumers, and also gives Sharon Motors the opportunity to create high-quality products with real high use value and high functional value for users.

Pioneering values

The origin of the brand name Sharon is a long story.

"The salon was first formed in the parlor of the European aristocracy in the Middle Ages; by the 18th century, it gradually moved to the city square, where poets, painters, and musicians shared their works and experiences; and in the 21st century, the salon continued to appear in the 3W cafes in Silicon Valley and Zhongguancun, where tech geeks and IT entrepreneurs gathered to compete for a great idea."

From Wen Fei's description, we see the basic characteristics of "Sharon" - in form, Sharon has always been "gathering a group of people and doing one thing", and in the core, Sharon has always been "the collision of avant-garde ideas".

These constitute the meaning and philosophy of the salon brand.

The concept of "Pioneer" is reflected in the salon's first model, the Mech Dragon, a work that restores the beauty of the mechanical industry, a warm and cool idea, a heroic dream of a big boy in his childhood.

"Pioneer" also means that the salon will not cater to the 100% mass market, and it is enough to find only the 10% minority that belongs to it. Sharon positioned its target group as 203 circles, that is, the post-80s/90s, as well as the circle of technology geeks, financial investment circles, and cultural pioneers. However, Wen Fei's description of the target group is obviously more emotional, with only 12 words, that is, "there is a home on the shoulder, a dream in the heart, and a light in the eyes."