A car funeral
Text/Zeng Jia
On July 24, 2003, the fifth anniversary of Southern California's first First Class I smoke warning, people draped a black veil over a car, "to a special friend, to a passing away idea." ”
It was GM's first production electric vehicle, the EV1, which was leased only in limited areas of California and Arizona, and most of which was subsequently recalled by GM and crushed at the car test site in Messa, Arizona.
After 26 years, the development trend of new energy vehicles has become increasingly clear. According to data from the China Automobile Association, the global sales of new energy vehicles in 2021 will reach 6.23 million, and the global penetration rate of new energy vehicles will be 7%, 12% in China and 4% in the United States.
Faced with the needs of the Chinese market and the advantages of the policy environment, Julian Blissett, president of GM China, announced:
"By 2025, GM will launch more than 30 electric vehicles worldwide, of which more than 20 will be introduced to the Chinese market, when China's production capacity is expected to increase to 1 million." SAIC-GM's sales data in 2021 is 1331567 units, down 9.26% year-on-year.
The declaration of increasing the production capacity of electric vehicles to one million units was also mentioned when Ford Motor, which is also the big three in Detroit, announced in early March that the spin-off business was three: electric vehicles, fuel vehicles, and commercial vehicles (Ford Model e, Ford Blue, Ford Pro).
But unlike Ford, GM's electrification strategy does not include business splits.
The oil and electricity business is not split to achieve information sharing
On the morning of March 9, local time, in the online meeting of Jefferies and BNP Paribas at the Spring 2022 Auto Conference, asked if he would consider a business spin-off similar to ford, Tim Grewe, GM's director of electrification strategy, said: "There is nothing wrong with keeping them as they are." ”（We’re not feeling any disadvantage to keeping them common.）
Source: Detroit Free Press
To support the EV program, GM has developed two EV-specific systems: Ultium, an electric platform, and Ultifi, a connected car software platform.
The interconnection of oil and electricity information is mainly realized by Ultifi. For example, Tim Grevey said that the data when GM updates the electric Hummer will go directly to Ultifi's database, which can be easily applied to the Hummer fuel vehicle and share information between the two businesses.
"From a technical point of view, having the same ability to operate in the business would not be a bad thing, on the contrary, it would accelerate progress... For example, it takes half the time to produce an electric car. ”
Tim Grevey, director of electrification strategy at GM
LYRIQ delivered in the third quarter, and GM bet on the high-end market
The Ultium platform is at the heart of GM's EV transformation strategy, and deliveries of cadillac's first model for the Chinese market, cadillac LYRIQ, will begin deliveries in the third quarter of this year.
The pre-priced LYRIQ, which is priced at 400,000-500,000 yuan, is a high-end model with a market guidance price of more than 300,000 yuan according to the definition of the Association. Once released, the opponents will be Tesla Model Y, BMW i4, domestic high-end electric vehicles Weilai ES8, ET7.
Why did Cadillac open up the Chinese electric vehicle market?
In the 2021 mid-to-high-end car brand ceiling ranking, Cadillac ranked fourth with 230,000, and was the only two car brands in the top five to maintain a growth trend.
The table is quoted from the "Passenger Car Sales Inquiry" data from the amount of insurance on the new car traffic insurance
At the same time, according to the data of the Association, the wholesale volume of Cadillac in the whole year was 233117 units, and the difference between the 232822 units of the insurance volume was only 295 units, showing that the market expectations of this model and the actual demand coincided with a high degree.
Coupled with the fierce competition in the current low-end model track in the Chinese market, GM opens the Chinese electric vehicle market with Cadillac, competes for BBA with high cost performance, and uses its long-term accumulated user loyalty and brand effect in the domestic market to compete with high-end brands of local new forces.
At present, the products launched by the Aoteneng platform worldwide cover GMC pure electric Hummer, BrightDrop EV600 pure electric logistics vehicle and Cadillac LYRIQ smart pure electric luxury SUV. Bai Li said that after LYRIQ, its brands will successively launch electric vehicles manufactured on the Ultium platform in China.
In addition to the Aoteneng platform, the GSEV platform developed by SAIC-GM-Wuling will also be used to develop small electric vehicles. The GSEV platform produces nearly 400,000 phenomenal electric vehicles retailed in 2021 – the Hongguang MINIEV.
Restart the high-end import car business to target specific groups of people
Establishing a channel independent of SAIC-GM to sell high-end imported cars is a new path for GM's strategic development in China. Bai Li said that this does not mean the termination of the joint venture business, and the traditional import business and the future import car business will exist at the same time and complement each other.
Plans to introduce more imported models in China are closely linked to GM's global sales.
According to the data, GM Group's global sales fell by 13% to 6.002 million units in 2021, a negative growth for five consecutive years, but in China, GM's cumulative sales exceeded 3.09 million vehicles, accounting for more than 50% of the global total.
Targeting niche markets and specific consumer groups also means greater investment in product design.
"The future import car business will target China's relatively niche market segments to meet the pursuit of different lifestyles by some consumers, the amount will not be very large, but it will have a strong attraction for a certain group of people." Citing the example of humvees and Corvettes, these model muscle cars are fascinating because of the specific lifestyle they represent.
According to GM's exhibition model at the 4th China Global Import Expo, many people speculate that the first imported car to be introduced to China is likely to be a GMC pure electric Hummer pickup truck, which uses an electric four-wheel drive system, equipped with CrabWalk four-wheel steering technology and adaptive air suspension Extend Mode technology, with a range of nearly 600 kilometers and zero hundred acceleration in just 3 seconds.
When asked if he would introduce a pure electric Hummer, Julian Perry replied, "The future import car business will include a series of product portfolios, including pure electric, pickup trucks, SUVs, sports sports cars." ”
LYRIQ is equipped with Super Cruise and enters the autonomous driving market
Super Cruise was first released in 2017, it supports users to drive off the road for a long time, and was used to benchmark Tesla's Auto Pilot.
At the 2020 Chengdu Auto Show, Cadillac announced that it would decentralize Super Cruise from the 3.0T version of the CT6 to the 28T version, and the starting price was reduced to less than 500,000 yuan, which is more suitable for the needs of the Chinese market.
Bai Li bluntly said that the Super Cruise L2 and above driver assistance system is the current development focus in the Chinese market, the system can support the car to complete the command lane change, lane centering, intelligent cruise and other functions, and the follow-up will cover most of cadillac models, including cadillac LYRIQ will be delivered in China in the third quarter of this year.
Cooperation with Chinese companies can help the landing of Super Cruise, and the choice of GM is the self-driving company Momenta.
Last September, GM injected $400 million into Momenta, a Chinese self-driving company. "Combining GM's experience in the field of autonomous driving, the cooperation with Momenta will help GM tailor-made autonomous driving solutions for Chinese consumers and put them into use." Bai Li said.
L4-level autonomous driving has little room for development in China, and Bai Li believes that the main reason is that China has no clear picture at the level of legislation and market supervision, and technical supervision.
Faced with the end of EV1, Daniel of the Los Angeles Times described it this way, "The concept of a small EV1 is super environmentally friendly, and there is no response." Conversely, huge SUVs — which can crush your collar — but attract a huge amount of attention, basically show what the (US) was like in the nineties. ”
The replacement of the car, to some extent, is also a clash of ideas and ideas, in the face of a pluralistic and devious era, the integration of the living space and even the thinking space of the car and people will be carried out to what step?