Every year's large-scale auto show leads the development trend of the automotive market. From the independent rise in 2010 to the new energy batch on the market stage in 2015, the auto show continues to convey the direction of future automobile development to people, and the 2021 Guangzhou Auto Show let us see the unlimited potential of science and technology to the car. From independent brands to joint venture brands to luxury brands, they are emphasizing the comprehensive competitiveness led by science and technology, which is not only new energy products, but also fuel vehicles. Driven by the wave of new technology, today's traditional car companies are experiencing a change, the days of "sitting firmly on the Diaoyutai" are gone, and "going to the sea to start a business" has become a must-have option in front of them, the only difference is only active or forced.
Jiangling Ford Technology chose the former. "What kind of role should Jiangling Ford be remembered by this era? There's a saying in Ford's corporate culture that everyone agrees with, Compete like a challenger. I think our role is the 'challenger'. At the press conference of the 2021 Guangzhou Auto Show, the declaration of Dong Ping, president of Jiangling Ford Technology, stirred up thousands of waves. As a new joint venture company, Jiangling Ford Technology is determined to become a pioneer of the Ford brand to challenge itself and subvert itself. In the face of the market environment, Jiangling Ford Technology should be the first brand to stand out, challenge and reshape the market pattern.
Building a car is not a simple pile-up
What to challenge? The first is to build cars. Professional automakers have always adhered to the idea that building a car is never about simply piling everything new together. This is also the reason why there seems to be a certain "lag" in any change in the car, whether it is a network application or a technology application. For example, 4G, 5G networks, mobile phones have been popular for many years, cars began to apply, but also caused the past two years of fuel vehicles began to have OTA function. The technology itself is not a barrier, the real barrier is to apply it safely and ensure that it will not have major problems for 5 or even 10 years.
German car companies, known for their "prudence", have become representatives of this phenomenon. Even when we find that when independent brands are strengthening their various technological configurations, joint venture cars and even luxury cars seem to be "stubborn" and adhere to tradition, so that they have evolved the "bells and whistles" of independent brands.
This is not the case. For independent brands, if the product competitiveness wants to be closer to the joint venture brand, it is necessary to find a breakthrough, compared with the core technology such as "three major pieces", it is undoubtedly easier to create a sense of science and technology. The technical accumulation and car-making strength of the joint venture brand are beyond doubt, and the layout of new technologies such as intelligence is also far-reaching, but considering the differences in the automotive application environment in the global market, a more conservative car-making strategy has been selected. Two different development paths, it does not matter whether it is good or bad, but the plan is not as fast as the change, the rapid rise of the new car-making forces represented by Tesla, including Baidu, Huawei, Xiaomi and many other Internet technology companies have also entered the automotive industry, the impact on traditional car companies is not small. The various forces entered, the competition became more and more fierce, and the elephants began to dance. For joint venture brands such as Jiangling Ford, how to continue the advantages of car manufacturing through "changing the law" to adapt to changes in the market and environment has become a top priority at present.
The beginning of the "change" of Jiangling Ford Technology
In fact, regarding the changes in the automotive market environment, Ford China has already sensed and put into action. In April 2019, Ford released the "Ford China 2.0" strategy and put forward a new development concept of "More Ford, More China", which is committed to reshaping consumers' perception of the Ford brand from multiple dimensions such as products, intelligence, localization cooperation and innovation. In the following two years, the launch of new products such as EVOS and Mondeo has indeed broken people's inherent impression of Ford's "old and traditional" from the product side, but this is far from enough, and the breakthrough and possibility brought by Jiangling Ford Technology may be greater, and the establishment of Jiangling Ford Technology on January 26 also fully proves this. "Jiangling Ford" represents a kind of inheritance, and the word "technology" conveys the determination of this veteran car company to "challenge" and "change the law".
Of course, challenges are not slogans, and technology is not all. In Xiang Dongping's view, "professional SUV products, differentiated experience upgrades, personalized exploration of users and the attitude of a young new Ford" are the paths for this new joint venture company born under the "Ford China 2.0" strategy. From user operation to product layout, Jiangling Ford Technology behaves less like the "Ford" that everyone used to know, but understands the Chinese market and consumers better.
The first is the user dimension. User operation has become a topic that every car company has been talking about in the past two years, from Tesla's 2S supermarket operation model to Weilai's customized user service, car companies have seen the effect of user operation, upgrading user service and user experience, which is definitely a win-win choice.
What Jiangling Ford Technology has to do is not to simply copy the Tesla or Weilai model, user attributes, user habits are different, how to keep up with the times, innovative operation? The Family Space Home Space Ford Experience store is the best answer it gives. Up to now, 181 stores have spread to more than 150 cities across the country, which not only creates industry records, but more importantly, with a new standard service experience process, so that users feel the warmth of home. In addition, Jiangling Ford Technology has also comprehensively upgraded the Always-on user experience plan, and continuously refreshed the upper limit of "better service" by building full-time, panoramic and all-round user relationships. For the users of Jiangling Ford Technology, user operation may not have to be too advanced, but it must be pragmatic and comprehensive, and how to make users feel better on the basis of not affecting the user experience and service habits is the focus of the current brand.
Second, look at the product layout. On February 14 this year, the new wide-body high-energy pioneer SUV Ford Lingrui opened a full pre-sale. For Jiangling Ford Technology, which already has three SUV products, Roadbreaker, Collar S and Lingyu, the launch of Ford Lingrui is not only a supplement and improvement, but also an exploration and change.
Inheritance and innovation are the keywords of Ford Lingrui. Ford Lingrui adopts Ford's high-performance EcoBoost170 engine, the maximum power is 125kW, the peak torque is 260N·m, matching the 7-speed wet dual-clutch transmission, with the strongest power output of the same level of 1.5T, while the chassis is still excellent, which is the traditional advantage of the century-old Ford. The innovation is more manifested in the wide-body design under the "potential energy aesthetics" to create a more atmospheric appearance and more comfortable space, and the tencent TAI 4.0 smart cockpit solution is equipped with a human-computer interaction experience that ranks at the forefront of the Chinese market. The standard for the whole system is equipped with Ford Co-Pilot360 Intelligent Driving Assistance System, all-round coverage of 6 airbags, CN95 air filters and negative ion air purifiers, etc., which makes Ford Lingrui use the "full blood" configuration of the same level of products, subverting the market's traditional cognition and prejudice against the high price and low allocation of the joint venture brand.
The Family Space home space is like an artillery piece, and the Ford Lingrui is like a cannonball, and the appearance of the two at the beginning of 2022 forms a synergy to challenge the "comfort zone". Now that the joint venture SUV market has been dominated by Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen and other companies for a long time, it is time to move, and Jiangling Ford Technology is ready.
The comfort zone is challenged because the comfort zone is no longer comfortable
With the continuous changes in the market, there is no such thing as a comfort zone, and no brand will be a regular customer of the comfort zone. The brand of flowing water, the strength of the iron strike, even if it is well known to everyone, Honda, Toyota, and Volkswagen, it was also among the first-line camps by virtue of its product strength. But now users want more than just products, and it is not so simple to continue to stay in the comfort zone.
Young is supreme, the market is no longer traditional, and challengers need to constantly stimulate vitality. On the product side, in the case of convergence of price allocation, in addition to the most core technical segmentation, the gap is actually limited. Chinese auto market users have also begun to pay attention to some different things, to put it bluntly, the sense of brand belonging, the construction of the user system, the optimization of service experience, the linkage of product use, etc., is the decisive factor for whether a brand can impact the high level. From the creation of Family Space home space to the product planning of the SUV family camp, we can see that Jiangling Ford Technology has made designs in multiple dimensions such as user car viewing, car selection, car buying, and car use, and such an all-round user experience is not available to many traditional car companies, and as a "challenger", it should be optimistic.
Every change is destined to be an overlap between continuation and subversion, and the so-called market tradition is constantly subverting the old tradition. In this context, Jiangling Ford Technology allows us to see the different side of the joint venture brand, and the courage to innovate is not only the innovation of a certain field or product, but the innovation of the entire system and model. I believe that from now on, we will continue to see this change, and the 2.0 era of China's auto market is quietly coming.