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Producer: Electric Planet News
Author: Yu Fei
March 5, Wolfsburg, Germany.
Volkswagen Group spent another 2 billion euros on this day, and the "Trinity" plan to unify MQB, MLB, MEB and other automotive platforms was officially launched, and a new high-end intelligent electric vehicle factory will start construction in 2023 and be put into use in 2026.
March 3, Alborn, USA.
Ford announced the split of its internal combustion engine and electric vehicle divisions, model e will focus on building software-defined electric vehicles, and Ford Blue will continue to make more profitable gasoline cars, the two "completely independent but interdependent."
Within three days, the two giants made their most far-reaching decisions for 2022. The purpose is simple: to preserve the word "giant", or to sum it up more simply: to win.
What to win? Win the showdown with the new car.
Entering 2022, traditional car companies are facing unprecedented and severe product challenges and public opinion environment. If five years ago, the new car was considered by many people to be "not enough", then now the word will even be reversed and used in traditional car companies.
In just a few years, people's expectations and perceptions of cars have changed dramatically.
Brands we once knew, now have abandoned gasoline, even the gasoline "defender" Toyota has issued 30 electric vehicles, this is the appearance. The essence of the interior is that the car companies in the gasoline age are now transforming in various ways, trying to keep up with the pace of new cars.
In the first week of March, Volkswagen Ford's electrification reforms have entered the deep water zone, and we feel it is time to discuss a deeper topic.
For example, why do the giants of the gasoline car era continue to scrape the bones and heal the reforms today? What exactly do they have to do to win?
1. What "Tesla killers" do you remember?
Going back 11 years, back to 2011, when tesla Model S was born, "traditional car companies may lose" sounds like more science fiction.
On February 28, 2011, the BMW Group held a press conference at its headquarters in Munich, featuring BMW's second single-letter named sub-brand, "i".
Unlike the M brand, i was a completely independent brand at the beginning of the launch, and did not depend on the existing BMW models - the first two models of the i brand, the i3 and the i8, two products with only the original generation and no successor.
However, back in 2011, in the environment at that time, you would not feel that the i3 and i8 were inferior to the Yuanzu version of the Model S, whether it was the interior and exterior design, or the same degree of intelligence of Pangu's early opening.
Even, in terms of intelligent exploration, the i brand is more eye-catching.
In this APP, which was launched more than a decade ago and was named "i Remote", you can find remote control air conditioning, scheduled charging, smart trough charging, charging maps and so on - some until recently, it was the standard for smart electric vehicles.
However, in just five years, people's impressions of traditional auto giants have changed dramatically.
Model S has rapidly grown into synonymous with smart + electric in the past 5 years, and the Model 3 released in 2016 is considered to be the "iPhone 4 of smart cars".
It was also at this stage that we began to hear the name "Tesla Killer". It refers to another wave of electrified products released around 2017 from traditional luxury car companies - but also the unexpected "inadequacy" of gasoline car companies under the wave of intelligent electric.
The most well-known are the "2018 Three Killers": the Mercedes-Benz EQC, the Audi E-Tron, and the Jaguar I-Pace.
"Starting with EQC, we will embark on a new journey to electrification," said Zetsche, then CEO of Daimler Group, when the price of the EQC production version was announced in Paris on September 4, 2018.
"The E-Tron is an electric car without compromise, a partner for everyone," said Bram Schot, then CEO of Audi Group, in San Francisco on September 18, 2018.
"Electric cars are advancing much faster than conventional cars, and you need to predict what might happen four years from now," Wolfgang Ziebart, former engineering director at Jaguar Land Rover, said in an interview with Forbes after the launch of the I-Pace in March 2018.
Oh, a cold knowledge: "Tesla killer" was invented by Wolfgang Ziebart - at the 2017 Taipei International Electronics Show, he said this sentence: "I-Pace is not Tesla's opponent, it is Tesla's killer."
Taking the launch of the pure electric SUVs of the three traditional car companies in 2018 as the demarcation point, the first round of their matches with Tesla officially kicked off.
What are the results?
According to the financial report, Mercedes-Benz delivered a total of "about 20,000" EQCs worldwide in 2020; the worldwide sales of the Audi E-Tron model in 2020 were 47,324; and the global sales of jaguar I-Pace in the same year were 16,457.
Also in 2020, Tesla Model 3+Y deliveries were 442511 units, and S+X deliveries were 57,039 units.
It is also from around 2020 that we have witnessed a sharp turn in public opinion - for traditional car companies. The term "Tesla killer" has gradually become obsolete and even become the subject of "ridicule". Maybe Mercedes-Benz Audi Jaguar really worked hard, but the decision is always in the hands of the user.
But what really makes us realize that traditional car companies have shown a trend of slowly sliding from "turning" to "surviving" is the second round of their product battle with new cars.
On September 4, 2019, Porsche officially unveiled the Taycan Pure Electric Coupe on the eve of the Frankfurt Motor Show in Germany, the first production car of the Volkswagen J1 high-end pure electric platform – at that time, the title of "Car and Driver" was "Tesla's first real threat".
On September 9, 2019, Volkswagen officially released the ID.3 production version at the Frankfurt Motor Show in Germany, which is the first production car of the Volkswagen MEB pure electric platform.
On September 10, 2019, Mercedes-Benz officially unveiled the VISION EQS concept at the Frankfurt Motor Show in Germany, which is also the first production car of the Mercedes-Benz EVA pure electric platform.
In 2019, the second round of the new and old car companies officially began.
Entering the second round, traditional car companies finally realized that they were trying to use the engineering advantages of the past to create "oil to electricity", and they could not surpass the new cars, so they finally entered the era of "pure electric platform".
No one can deny the mechanical quality of the Taycan, the MEB platform has successfully hit the cost of Volkswagen electrification, and the EQS has achieved a long endurance with the size and weight of the D-class car.
But did the traditional car company really win the second round?
We think it's more of a "misconception debate": in the third decade of the 21st century, consumers no longer need an "electric car" but a "smart car", and electric is only the most suitable energy carrier for intelligence.
The core of the smart car lies in the "software".
Also in 2019, Tesla opened its shortest car launch, because the Model Y did not have many upgrades to the Model 3. But what really changed the world was the 2019 technology conference called "Autonomous Day", which officially entered the chip field.
Chips, software, and data have become compulsory courses for car manufacturing in the new decade. Pilot assistance functions such as NOA, NOP, NGP, and even the in-car karaoke and in-car audio and video entertainment known as "bells and whistles" in the previous two years have become increasingly important factors in car purchase decisions.
As for traditional car companies, since 2020, we have also seen Volkswagen's Power Day and Volvo's Tech Moment, although the form is good, but it has never tasted that way.
The era of the "Tesla Killer" has officially passed.
Reformers and conservatives
Traditional car companies don't want to lose, really.
Volkswagen headquarters, Wolfsburg, Germany, November 6, 2020. Herbert Diess, CEO of Volkswagen Group, who had just celebrated his 62nd birthday, said this in an interview with Bloomberg:
"Nokia may be a great example of change, if you don't do it fast enough, you can't live."
In just one sentence, the situation of the public and the determination of Dees himself to change are revealed.
When huge corporate organizations are threatened, some staunch reformers will be pushed to the forefront, and some leaders who make bad choices will be remembered in the history of the automobile.
In addition to the product war between new and old cars, in the era of social media, a more vivid and three-dimensional new generation of CEOs also affects the possibility of traditional car companies "winning" - some do not want to lose, some do not know how to win.
1. Dees, the reformer with more than enough heart
On February 14, 2022, Diess entered the overseas social media reddit, and he also became the first car company CEO to have an official private account in Reddit.
Love of social networking, this is the most vivid impression that Diess gives us besides the "Volkswagen CEO".
A year ago, on January 22, Dies officially signed up for a personal Twitter account. Previously, even in more serious, professional LinkedIn, Dies had been active — taking her daughter with her, driving an ID.3 across Europe to Italy on vacation, and then broadcasting it globally.
Socialization is the side of Diess that is not "Volkswagen CEO", and so is the way it reforms within Volkswagen.
On October 14, 2021, Volkswagen held an internal executive meeting in Alpbach, Austria. Dees invited a "special guest" to teach Volkswagen executives , Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Des then said on his personal LinkedIn account that he was "happy to hear from competitors that if we go all out for the transformation, we will succeed".
Interacting over the air and breaking the dimensional wall is something that the melon-eating masses like to see, but not necessarily within the public.
In the past two years, Diess has tried to fully promote the electrification and softwareization within Volkswagen, but it has faced the test of product to organization everywhere – or rather, the problem on the product side is derived from the old organization with huge resistance.
In August 2020, the Lower Saxony daily in Germany said that 11,500 ID.3s suffered from software problems, and workers needed to work in three shifts, and each car took 6-7 hours to "brush the machine".
This crisis, in a sense, began a two-year struggle between Diess and volkswagen gasoline-era organizational structures.
Diess has made it clear in an internal meeting that Volkswagen needs to lay off employees and restructure to complete the reform of intelligent electrification – but Volkswagen has the most entangled corporate unions in the entire state of Lower Saxony and even in Germany.
As of today, Dies has still not won, and it can even be said that this highly personal CAR CEO is struggling to support in the face of pressure.
On December 9, 2021, Diess remained CEO of volkswagen group, but was directly responsible for the software department only in the supervisory board.
2. One term lays the foundation, two terms destroy the family business?
On July 5, 2019, Harald Kruger resigned as GLOBAL CEO of BMW.
Despite proposing a strategy of 25 electrified models during his tenure, Kruger is not considered a true "electric CEO" for the simple reason that the pure-blood i brand came to an end in his hands.
On June 11, 2018, the last i8 officially left the Leipzig plant. This former pioneer of the times did not wait for a formal replacement until it was discontinued - the same encounter, and the i3, which will be discontinued in July this year.
Of course, Kruger's tenure was not without topics, such as the 12-cylinder M760 listed under emission pressure.
Krueger was succeeded by Oliver Zipse as BMW CEO – but as CEO in the era of full electric power, Chiptze did not show a strong enough desire for reform.
On November 10, 2021, Chiptzer said at the German "Business Daily" conference that Tesla's leading position will not last long, because traditional car companies such as BMW have "quality advantages".
Similar remarks included a statement on February 7, 2020, in an interview with Automotive News Europe shortly after taking office, that "BMW does not need to develop a pure electric platform, and a flexible platform that supports both fuel vehicles and trams can enable us to respond quickly to market demand."
In stark contrast to the two most recent BMW CEOs is CEO Norbert Reithofer from 2006 to 2015, the founder of the i brand and bmw's official "group's most outstanding CEOs".
At BMW's annual general meeting on February 7, 2013, Norbert Reithofer said that the i brand "will offer new options for mobility", another sentence was:
"When Germans talk about opening up new possibilities, they involuntarily get caught up in long-term and anxious discussions, and Germans see problems rather than opportunities, which is exactly what happens when it comes to electric vehicles."
Again, this quote comes from February 7, 2013.
What would happen to BMW now if Norbert Reithofer had not stepped down from the Supervisory Board for health reasons?
Third, the separation of oil and electricity, the connection of people and vehicles
There are enthusiastic but isolated CEOs, and there are also CEOs with solid foundations but conservative risk avoidance. And when smart electric is imminent, we finally see a CEO who has the full support of the board of directors and has enough ambitions in his own right.
"What's the one thing you most want to change about Ford?"
After taking over as CEO of Ford in September 2019, this was the question Jim Farley asked the most, from employees in 4S stores to old blue-collar workers on the production line to mid-level cadres in management positions.
"Reverse Mentor", Jim's new position at Ford, hires employees who are 6 grades or higher below him to teach him how to do things.
Passion, appeal, this is the image jim Farley has conveyed to the outside world since taking office. After March 3 this year, maybe add a "decisive" one.
Ford's split of gasoline and electric vehicle divisions will require tremendous pressure, which is not a matter of fact, our first impression of this decision is that there is finally a traditional car company, willing to do organizational reform for electrification.
At this point in the article, we have mentioned all the attempts made by gasoline car companies in the process of electrification: oil to electricity, pure electric platforms, sub-brands, and the separation of oil and electricity business.
Ford is not yet a beneficiary of the electric age, and the Mach-E was once pinned on the high hopes of a "Model Y native sniper", with global production of only 63,683 tepid units in 2021.
More importantly, Ford does not yet have a universal pure electric platform - Ford, which has taken the lead in reforming its organizational structure, has not yet come up with works such as MEB and PPE on the product side.
This is also the epitome of gasoline car companies at present: either clinging to the engineering capabilities accumulated over the past hundred years, or not being limited to the organizational resistance of traditional manufacturing companies.
On December 23 last year, on Toyota's third-quarter earnings conference call, Akio Toyoda described Tesla as follows: "They haven't created a real business yet, but they're selling recipes." Chefs say ' Our recipes are going to be the world of tomorrow' and I think that's their business."
Akio Toyoda thinks they have kitchens and cooks, and that's right, engineering and manufacturing capabilities have never been Toyota's weakness — even in the past hundred years, traditional car companies have defined the commanding heights of "automotive" technology.
But they are losing the right to define "recipes.".
If we were to buy a smart electric car now, what would be the points of attention? Endurance, energy consumption, battery capacity, charging speed, power exchange speed, assisted driving, smart cockpit, or OTA, all-scene voice, in-car game hall?
In the above terms, which definition right, or most of the definition weight, belongs to gasoline car companies?
Losing the right to define the technology means losing the user's right to connect. Of course, this sentence can also be said in reverse, if you can't understand that car intelligence can help car companies connect users, naturally lose the right to define technology.
So what is a connection?
Musk's 77 million Twitter followers are Connected, FSD Beta's 99-point internal beta plan is Connected, NIO Life, NIO APP, NOMI is Connected, Xiaopeng's P and Lamp Language are Connected.
However, the ID.Light ambience light is not connected, the MBUX Hyperscreen is not, and neither is "Hello Ford".
Why can connectivity bring the ability to define technology? Because the connection itself is a capability, it exists in global OTA, hardware embedding; it exists in human-computer interaction and data perception; and even exists in the user community and official direct sales.
Connection is the embodiment of software capabilities, and connections are software capabilities themselves. Only the pure electric platform / only the flat architecture / only the official direct operation is not enough to claim that they have the ability to "connect".
Back to the key proposition of this article: what can gasoline companies do to win?
I think the answer to this question is not "Ford built a pure electric platform", not "Dis is in power", not "BMW M brand only builds electric vehicles", but more likely to be a car company announcing that it has "global self-developed autonomous driving", "data processing center", and "open online user community".
The question is, when will we witness the ability of gasoline companies to "connect"?
No one wants to lose, but unfortunately, there are always people who don't know how to win.
(End)
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