Written by | Eldon's Ring of Law
Edit | Routing Agency
In China, Ford, through its joint venture in China, Changan Ford, has completed the replacement of a vital strategic model, the Mondeo.
On February 24, Changan Ford officially released the new generation of Mondeo ST-Line models, and on the same occasion opened a small booking for new cars.
Changan Ford announced that from February 25 to March 17, users log on to the Ford Mall to pay a deposit of 555 yuan, and after purchasing the car, they can enjoy the 5-year/ 140,000-kilometer ultra-long vehicle warranty service.
The advent of the new generation of Mondeo is believed to help the Ford brand accelerate its "Ford China 2.0" strategy in the world's largest automotive market, and achieve the effect of further enhancing the brand image and profit margins.
Timing and space: Change is urgent
The reason for the above judgment may be related to the increase in the scale of the mid-sized home car segment in which Mondeo is located in recent years.
Statistics from the Association show that in 2021, in the top fifteen single models in terms of sales, the number of medium-sized and above cars will reach 4, accounting for 26.7%. Cumulative sales reached 757,567 units, up 3,396 units from the previous year.
This growth trend is even more pronounced if the observation period is extended to 5 years.
In the five years from 2017 to 2021, the cumulative sales of the top 15 medium-sized and above household cars increased from 391,753 to the current 757,567, an increase of more than 93%. Among them, in 2019 before the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, this data reached a peak of 961,385 vehicles.
In the past two years, considering public health problems, especially the shortage of semiconductor chips on automobile consumption, there is still a large amount of consumer demand in the mid-size car market that has not been fully met.
In this process, the upgrading trend of China's automobile consumption has also been fully revealed.
Take Ford Motor Company's sales structure in China last year, for example. While the company's 624,802 vehicles sold in China in 2021 posted a modest increase of 3.7 percent, slightly lower than the 4.4 percent overall picture of China's narrow passenger car market, the company's premium car brand, Lincoln, generated a 50 percent increase in sales over the same period.
It also points for Ford in the direction of its business efforts – Chinese consumer demand for high-end products is becoming more and more intense.
At present, the Ford brand's product line in China contains a total of two mid-size cars. Compared with Taurus, which has a stronger business temperament, Mondeo has always been more in line with the preferences of mainstream consumers, so it has long played a major role in The Ford product line as a major sales contributor.
It can be seen that the strategic value of Mondeo models to the Ford brand in China is self-evident.
However, in the domestic mid-size car market surrounded by strong hands, Mondeo's strong competitors are also everywhere.
In the 2021 mid-size car sales ranking released by the association, Tesla Model 3, Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, with annual sales of more than 200,000 vehicles, ranked among the top three in the market segment; the second camp was dominated by BMW 3 Series, Nissan Tianlai, Volkswagen Maiten, Audi A4L, Mercedes-Benz C-Class and other German and Japanese mainstream brands, and the monthly sales of each single model also exceeded 10,000 performance. In contrast, the Ford Mondeo before the replacement only sold 33,302 vehicles a year, ranking 18th.
*Image source: Auto Leaderboard.com
From an external point of view, such changes in the market pattern are related to the consumption upgrade of the mid-size car market, the continued sinking of luxury brand products, and the polarization of the mainstream brands of joint ventures.
Internally, this is also undoubtedly related to Mondeo's presence at the end of the product life cycle. Therefore, for this vital medium-sized family car, the change is urgent.
But now is the time for Mondeo to make a change: Ford has discontinued its sedan business in 2020 in its other core market, North America. This means that the new generation of Mondeo launched by Changan Ford will compete in the Chinese market as a "Chinese special" model.
Therefore, the multinational automaker, which promises to become "more Ford and more Chinese", will have more room for improvement in the new generation of Mondeo for the needs and actual conditions of the Chinese market than global models, and the degree of freedom in related product strength and configuration improvement will be higher.
In view of this, in the process of ushering in the fifth generation of models, Mondeo has made significant improvements over the previous generation in terms of body size, design and level of intelligence. To adapt to the rigid demand of the young generation of Chinese users for appearance, technology and space.
Disruption and Legacy: Can Design Break Through?
As the top model of the family, the new generation of Mondeo ST-Line, which was first displayed on Thursday, focused on Ford's attitude of "seeking change".
The most intuitive change is in terms of body size.
The length, width and height of the body are 4935 mm, 1875 mm and 1500 mm respectively, and the wheelbase reaches 2945 mm. Among them, the length and wheelbase are increased by 64 mm and 95 mm respectively compared with the previous generation model, and the relevant parameters are comparable to taurus, and even approaching the more high-end medium and large sedans.
The design of the new car has also undergone great changes compared with the previous four generations, and even a subversive "breakout".
As the first mass production presentation of Ford's new family design concept of "potential energy aesthetics" in its sedan products, the new generation of Mondeo has formed a dynamic appearance of a four-door coupe.
At the same time, the designer also created a strong sense of visual impact by blackening the fast-back roof, forward-leaning body posture, sharp lines and flexible profiles.
On the other hand, the slender hood, sharp A-pillar inclination, and short and powerful rear shoulder shape make the new car more dynamic from the perspective of body proportions.
What is valuable is that the new generation of Mondeo is seeking subversive changes in design for the Chinese market, while also continuing Ford's tough, masculine and passionate brand genes to a certain extent.
As a result, we can still find the classic octagonal grille on new cars. However, in such classic design elements, designers have incorporated details that are more in line with the aesthetic preferences of the Chinese market. They dramatically treated the octagonal grilles to make the proportions and shapes more exaggerated, while adopting scaled designs derived from modern architectural curtain walls, supplemented by precise parametric calculations.
In addition, the design style with the Ford brand brand, such as strong body lines and three-dimensional profile, has also been retained. The integrated through wind blade light strip runs across the front face, which emphasizes the visual width and sense of strength of the whole vehicle, which is more in line with the aesthetic preferences of Chinese consumers.
On this basis, the new generation of Mondeo ST-Line exteriors feature a larger area of black dynamic materials to emphasize the performance GENES of the Ford brand.
Focusing on the front face of the new car, the two sides of the lower surround adopt a unique aerodynamic wind blade design with side air intake curtain function, with st-Line combustion exclusive front bumper and skirt encirclement, breathing kinetic energy scale armor grille, rotor aerodynamic wheels and other designs, so that the performance of the vehicle can be visually revealed.
The ST-Line logo and exclusive red brake calipers on the fenders, as well as the flying wing design embedded in the exclusive underwing of the rear, enhance the exclusive dynamic qualities of the ST-Line models, further highlighting the premium and sporty sense of the flagship model.
In terms of interiors, the new generation of Mondeo ST-Line uses exquisite craftsmanship to strike an effort to strike a balance between dynamic and digital.
Entering the cockpit, exclusive red trim and mood lights create an immediate sense of sportiness. Exclusive seat materials, stitching from door panel trims to soft-touch materials, further underline ST-Line's unique identity. The wrap-around cockpit is highly layered and technological, while the slim flat-bottom steering wheel has been redesigned to make it easier to hold and very user-friendly for female users.
Difference and leadership: The level of intelligence of the leap level
In particular, it is worth mentioning that relying on the rich accumulation of technology in recent years, Changan Ford has carried out a large number of high-tech blessings on new cars, which has also made the level of intelligence of the new generation of Mondeo reach the level of refreshing the same level.
Take the 1.1-meter ultra-wide-area giant screen equipped with the new car as an example.
This huge screen integrates a 12.3-inch full-color digital LCD instrument cluster and a 27-inch large true 4K central control screen. In terms of human-computer interaction interface, it adopts Ford's latest UI design style, and the function distribution is more intuitive, concise, and fully integrated with the overall cockpit design of ST-Line.
From a functional point of view, during the driving process, the 12.3-inch full-color digital LCD dashboard can present a variety of information such as AR navigation, entertainment, and road conditions, and the 27-inch central control screen supports the free switching and multi-touch of the whole screen and the split screen, allowing the owner to share the infotainment system with the co-driver through the "joint driving fun" function.
Behind the high degree of intelligence of the new generation of Mondeo, the new electronic and electrical platform shared by the new car and Ford pure electric models - Ford FNV intelligent interconnection network architecture plays a pivotal role. The architecture not only brings a trolley-class intelligent cockpit experience and intelligent driving capabilities to new cars, but also has the ability of a vehicle-wide OTA.
While creating the ultimate sense of technology, the new generation of Mondeo also pays attention to the emotional connection between the car and the person.
The unique "Wolong Awakening" welcome induction system injects a sufficient sense of ceremony into the process of greeting the owner. When the owner approaches the vehicle with the key or Bluetooth mobile phone, the headlights are lit sequentially from the inside to the outside, the breathing 3D scale grille rises and falls in turn, the hidden door handle seamlessly pops out from the door, the atmosphere light in the car is lit in turn, and the machine screen is also lit up instantly. The sense of technology and luxury brought about by this sense of ceremony can be clearly perceived by the owner.
The new generation of Mondeo's human-computer interaction methods have also been upgraded. The new car is equipped with Ford's latest generation of vehicle-machine system SYNC+2.0 Zhixing Interconnection System, which integrates industry-leading Baidu artificial intelligence technology and rich Internet application ecology to support multi-dimensional interaction methods such as multi-touch, AI speech recognition, gesture control, and facial recognition.
Among them, the human-vehicle dialogue and voice control integrate the AI intelligent voice interaction system and the industry-leading natural semantic recognition function, support 70+ semantic vertical classes, understand the needs of the main and co-drivers in seconds, and control the use scenarios in the car, truly realizing "moving the mouth without moving".
Combined with Ford's world's first visual virtual artificial intelligence assistant VPA Zhixing Partner, the above system can also continuously learn the owner's preferences, with different animations and anthropomorphic expressions to match different driving scenarios. Gesture control provides multiple gesture control/multi-mode interactions, including static commands, dynamic commands, and Easter egg modes, allowing the driver to precisely control the vehicle even in noisy environments.
In terms of intelligent driving, the new generation of Mondeo is equipped with Ford's new generation co-Pilot360 intelligent driving assistance system, equipped with the industry's leading visual perception system, equipped with more than 23 sensor configurations in the same level, which can achieve up to 18 intelligent driving assistance functions, including Ford's world's first L2+ automatic driving function - BlueCruise active driving assistance function, which can easily achieve "quasi-automatic driving assistance" on specific sections of highways and urban expressways. Greatly reduce the pressure of long-distance driving and improve driving safety.
In addition, the new generation of Mondeo is equipped with Ford's first mass-produced vehicle-to-road coordination system, which is based on cellular vehicle networking (C-V2X) technology, and the vehicle is connected to the urban intelligent transportation system to enhance the vehicle's perception of road infrastructure such as traffic lights.
In addition to the surprises of styling, interior and intelligence, the new generation of Mondeo also has a leap in power, safety and other aspects.
In terms of power, the new car is equipped with a 2.0T+8AT golden power combination, which easily ranks among the 6-second club; in terms of safety, the new generation of Mondeo adopts a high-safety cage body design, and the key parts are made of 1700Mpa ultra-high-strength materials of higher civil level.
Write at the end:
Following the launch of EVOS in 2021, the new generation of Mondeo, which also appeared as a "China special car", once again showed the outside world Ford's urgent attitude to "re-leverage the Chinese market".
In fact, since the release of the "Ford China 2.0" strategy in 2019, the multinational automaker has embarked on a series of effective strategic initiatives.
For example, as one of the most important product output forces of the Ford brand in the Chinese market, Changan Ford has launched strategic products such as Ruiji, Explorer and EVOS in the past three years, forming a rich product portfolio and strong competitive strength in the SUV market.
Can the new generation of Mondeo, which is more able to read Chinese users and be closer to the Chinese market, help Ford recover lost ground faster in the Chinese market? Or even grab more market share from Japanese and German competitors? This not only tests the intrinsic product strength of the new car, but also tests the pricing strategy and market decision-making of both shareholders. We may wish to wait and see.
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