On February 28, SAIC Motor officially announced that the Zhiji L7 mass production vehicle was officially put into operation at the Lingang Intelligent Plant of SAIC Group. This means that after many rounds of iterative upgrades, the hardware of the Zhiji L7 has been locked. In addition, the first high-end intelligent electric vehicle that carries the SAIC brand upwards and Alibaba Group's personal entry into the automotive field is expected to be officially listed on March 29 and start delivery in April.
Zhiji Automobile was jointly established by SAIC, Alibaba Group and Zhangjiang Hi-Tech on December 25, 2020. If the Zhiji L7 can be delivered as scheduled in April, it will only take 28 months from the establishment of the company to the delivery of the first mass production car.
You know, among the three new car-making forces, the WEILAI ES8 took 2 years and 5 months from the establishment of Nio to the official mass production of the production line, and the FF 91, which burned countless money, has spent 7 years and 10 months since the establishment of Faraday Future, and even the factory has not been assembled so far. It can be seen that the speed of mass production delivery of zhiji L7 is really jaw-dropping.
Zhiji L7 is also the first strategic model of Alibaba Group to officially enter the automotive field, which not only has SAIC Group to endorse the strength of automotive hardware, but also has the technical support of Ali Group in Internet technology, so it can achieve research and development and mass production at such an efficient speed.
As the No. 1 project of SAIC Group's transformation to impact the high-end intelligent electric vehicle market, Zhiji Automobile is personally led by Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Group, and wang Xiaoqiu, president of THE group, serves as the general commander, and the importance that SAIC Attaches to Zhiji Automobile can be imagined. As one of the shareholders of Zhiji Automobile, Alibaba Group has joined hands with Alibaba Cloud Computing, DAMO Academy AI technology and Zebra Zhixing AliOS and other cutting-edge technologies to deeply empower the intelligence of Zhiji L7.
On the other hand, the layout speed of Zhiji Automobile's offline outlets is also very fast. Zhiji Automobile officially said that by the middle of this year, the delivery service centers authorized by Zhiji Automobile will basically cover major provincial capitals across the country, and there will be more than 110 experience and delivery centers this year.
For comparison, as of the end of the third quarter of 2021, Ideal has a total of 153 offline retail centers, Xiaopeng has a total of 271 offline sales stores, and NIO House and NIO Space have 32 and 285 respectively.
However, while the Zhiji car operates efficiently, Xiaolei feels its deep anxiety in layout, both from the perspective of product promotion speed and the situation of offline coverage. Xiao Lei believes that the anxiety of zhiji cars comes from the high-end intelligent car market with fierce competition.
Zhiji Automobile is both a forerunner and a latecomer
In Xiao Lei's view, compared with the forerunners of new car-making forces such as Wei Xiaoli, Zhiji Automobile is both a forerunner and a latecomer.
Xiao Lei always believes that even in the era of intelligent electric vehicles of software-defined cars, the essence of smart electric vehicles is still cars, and the foundation of automobile manufacturing is crucial for a car company, a car brand, and even an automobile product, and the automobile background is Weilai, Xiaopeng, ideal, and even Tesla, which is not possessed by these new car-making forces.
SAIC's earliest involvement in the automotive sector dates back to 1910, earlier than most of the world's automotive brands that are still "surviving". Obviously, Zhiji Automobile has SAIC Group as a technical endorsement, and it does not lack automobile heritage, which is the main reason why Zhiji L7 can achieve mass production and listing in less than 3 years.
In terms of automobile heritage, we will leave aside the most important technology and experience of the automobile manufacturing industry, and discuss the basic threshold for the mass production of a model. If car companies want to mass-produce a model without using the OEM model, they first need to have automobile production qualifications and automobile manufacturing plants, and Zhiji Automobile has SAIC Group as a backer, both of which are ready-made.
However, Zhiji Automobile is positioned as a high-end brand of intelligent new energy vehicles, but whether it is intelligent, new energy, or high-end, it is the missing element of SAIC Motor Group, which has a rich car manufacturing heritage. Making up for the shortcomings of intelligence, new energy, high-end and so on is also the significance of the establishment of Zhiji Automobile.
In order to make up for the shortcomings of intelligence, SAIC Motor found its old friend, Ali Group, a giant in the field of Internet technology, when it established Zhiji Automobile. It should be known that Alibaba Group not only has remarkable achievements in the field of e-commerce, but also the originator of China's Internet of Vehicles, and the Zebra Zhixing Intelligent Vehicle Solution jointly developed with SAIC Has created a precedent for China's Car Networking Technology.
In terms of transformation of high-end and electrification, compared with Tesla, Weilai and other old car-making new forces, SAIC's advantages are not obvious. It should be known that with several years of market layout, Tesla, Weilai and other new forces that focus on high-end intelligent car manufacturing have already had a place in the high-end electric vehicle market, and Zhiji Automobile has just begun to attack this field.
In terms of brands, in addition to Tesla, Weilai, and Ideal, which have established new car-making forces in the high-end automobile market, there are not a few competitors such as Zhiji Automobile, which are dominated by traditional car companies and transformed into high-end intelligent electric vehicle markets. For example, bydIR, the domestic new energy vehicle giant, has two electric intelligent electric vehicle brands that are used to impact the high-end new energy vehicle market.
In terms of models, high-end intelligent electric vehicles such as WEILAI ET7, ET5, Nezha S, and FF 91 will be concentrated in 2022. In Xiao Lei's view, 2022 will be a year of high-end intelligent electric vehicles, whether it is a car company that has been based on the high-end intelligent electric vehicle market, or a car company that actively transforms the market will decide the first round of victory and defeat in this year.
So the question is, why do major car companies choose to transform in 2022 and impact the high-end intelligent new energy vehicle market?
The general environment has forced the high-end transformation of car companies
In Xiao Lei's view, in the era of software-defined cars, car companies can be said to be the trend of the times to electrify, network, intelligentize, and share, but the reason why major car companies, including Zhiji Automobile, want to get together in 2022 is forced by the general environment. For new energy vehicle companies, the environment for new energy vehicles, especially pure electric vehicles, is not good, and with the decline of subsidies, the mainland's electric vehicle field is even worse.
As we all know, the subsidy standard for new energy vehicles in 2022 will be reduced by 30% on the basis of 2021, and from 2023, the mainland will completely cancel subsidies for new energy vehicles. From the perspective of China's new energy vehicle market, China's new energy vehicle market share is steadily increasing, but from the perspective of new energy vehicle companies, new energy vehicles without subsidies are real loss-making transactions.
So far, the only new energy vehicle companies that can achieve profitability without relying on subsidies are Tesla, which has exerted cost control to the extreme, and Tesla is also the only new energy vehicle company in the world to wave the flag for the cancellation of subsidies. In addition to Tesla, even if it is as powerful as BYD, it is difficult to achieve profitability after canceling subsidies for new energy vehicles.
After talking about the domestic situation, we will enlarge the pattern a little more and look at the quagmire in the global new energy vehicle field. As we all know, today's global new energy vehicle companies are struggling to survive in two major swamps, one of which is the "battery crisis" and the other is the "chip crisis".
In terms of batteries, with the global sales of new energy vehicles soaring, pure electric vehicles have fallen into a vicious circle because of radical development. In this cycle, the rapid development of pure electric vehicles directly leads to the shortage of battery raw materials; scarce things are expensive, and in the case of short supply, the price of battery raw materials will naturally soar.
In terms of chips, as the global chip shortage continues to intensify, nearly 3 million cars have been shut down so far. In order to cope with the "chip crisis", some car companies that were originally positioned as high-end have adopted a strategy of reducing the demand for chips, such as BMW; and some car companies have directly discontinued some low-end models that are difficult to make profits, such as Euler.
Subsidy decline is already the trend of the times, and the two major problems of "battery capacity crisis" and "chip crisis" cannot be solved in a short period of time. Therefore, car companies can only transform into high-end cars with higher profit margins. Compared with low-end electric vehicles, high-end intelligent electric vehicles that do not pay too much attention to cost have more room to play, which can be said to be an excellent stage for the development of intelligent electric vehicles.
However, Tesla, which was founded in 2003, has been working in the field of high-end intelligent cars for nearly 20 years, and Wei Xiaoli and other new Chinese car-making forces have also experienced several years of development since its establishment, and it was only established in 2020.
In Xiao Lei's view, Weilai and Tesla started from high-end intelligent electric vehicles and have gained a foothold in this field, so their current strategic goals are downward development, with price advantages in exchange for greater market space, and will be neglected to prevent the high-end market.
Although Tesla is a high-end intelligent new energy vehicle market that has been pried open with the Model S, its Model S and Model X sales last year were less than 3% of the total deliveries in 2021. Although Niolai's flagship model ES8 is not as miserable as Tesla Model S and Model X in terms of sales share, it can be seen from Weilai's product layout that it is also more inclined to develop relatively low-end models.
On the other hand, because most of the traditional car-making thinking has not yet undergone a complete transformation, they are far less flexible in developing products than new car-making forces such as Weilai and Xiaopeng. Taking BYD as an example, although BYD is also launching an impact on the high-end market, Xiao Lei believes that intelligence will still be its biggest shortcoming.
Compared with the pioneers in the field of high-end intelligent cars such as Weilai and Tesla, as well as other traditional car companies that are busy with transformation, the two trump cards of SAIC Automobile's car manufacturing heritage and Ali Group's Internet technology genes are the right time to enter the game.
Note: The material for this article comes from the Internet