Produced 丨 Tiger Sniff Car Group
The author 丨 thoughtful
Editor 丨 Zhang Bowen
Head map 丨hammer technology
China's smart cars have quickly completed the whole process from innovation, inner rolling and then "demonizing" in less than 5 years.
At the Changan Auchan OnStyle 5.0 Smart Happy Cockpit Forum held in Chongqing on March 10, a PPT called the "one-click overtaking" scene function caused controversy from the outside world.
According to the introduction, this function will be installed as a selling point on the Changan Auchan Z6 model. But exactly how to use it, and how it will be experienced, we don't yet know. As of the time of writing, although the live broadcast of this forum can still be seen on the official website of Changan Auchan, its playback can no longer be opened.
In this regard, many auto media have said that the emergence of such functions shows that the energy of product managers has nowhere to be placed, which is a proper demonization behavior. However, this view is not exempt from the surface.
In Tiger Sniff's view, the innovation of smart cars, especially smart cockpits, has reached a peak, and the industry has not launched a bright configuration other than "huge screen" for too long. Today's car companies, which seem to be "demonized" smart products, are actually product managers exploring functional boundaries based on the hardware basis of existing vehicles.
However, this kind of innovation should not be too big, and the cost should not be borne by ordinary consumers.
Innovation in the smart cockpit has been "stalled" for 6 years
When the track was not so crowded, the concept of "smart" once helped car companies sell sales soar.
In July 2016, SAIC motor and Alibaba jointly released the "world's first Internet car" Roewe RX5. The car is equipped with the "YunOS Intelligent Interconnection System" developed by Zebra Zhixing, a joint venture between the two companies, and users can realize the "voice interaction" that is still very fresh at that time through real-time online vehicles, and realize functions such as navigation, listening to songs, and controlling vehicles (windows, air conditioners) through voice commands. This is the first truly intelligent cockpit product in the history of Chinese automobiles.
The release of the Roewe RX5 is unique
As soon as the RX5 was released, it became the first blockbuster model of saic motor passenger cars that were tepid at the time, with sales exceeding 10,000 in only three months on the market, reaching a maximum of 28,000 units in a single month. Since then, SAIC has also launched models such as RX3, RX5 MAX and RX8. Finally, by May 2020, the sales of Roewe brand RX models have exceeded one million units.
After getting the proof of sales, major car companies have laid out on the track of smart cars, especially smart cockpits, and Internet companies such as Tencent, Baidu and even Sogou have followed in the footsteps of Alibaba. Nowadays, we can see that the smart cockpit has basically become the standard of the majority of new cars.
At this point, independent brands that are closer to China's Internet giants should do better.
However, nearly 6 years have passed since the internet car was launched, and the market has begun to become uniform again. From a family car of 100,000 yuan to a luxury car of tens or even millions of yuan, the difference between each other in the smart cockpit is nothing more than the specific size and resolution of the screen. The basic functions of different models in map navigation, voice interaction, content ecology and mobile phone control car have been difficult to pick out any difference, nothing more than your map with Gaode, and I use Baidu; or you use QQ music for listening to songs, and I use NetEase or Kugou.
As for the clichéd aftermarket service of "providing users with online and offline access and car scenes", it seems that only the new car-making forces that choose the direct sales model have made a breakthrough. Traditional car companies that generally adopt the dealer agent model, consumers still need to bargain back and forth with 4S stores to maintain cars and repair cars. Other more offline ecological connections still stay on the "dragon slaying skills" such as ordering takeaways and ordering coffee with car machines.
It can be seen that what has happened in the smart cockpit track in the past few years is more like micro-innovation in a framework that has long been defined. An employee who was responsible for the reception of a smart cockpit supplier in 2016 and is now working for a new car company once said to Tiger, "These functions I explained 6 years ago are still talking about it. ”
So the question is, why has the innovation in the smart cockpit "stagnated" in the past six years or so?
Developers are hard to find, and innovation depends on car companies
From the hardware level, the progress in the field of intelligent cockpits in recent years can be described as earth-shaking. Among the smart cars that were product-defined in 2016-2017 and mass-produced in 2018-2019, the Renesas R-Car H3 chip is the mainstay of supporting smart cockpit computing power, especially the central control screen. In 2022, high-end smart cars seem to be embarrassed to release products without using Qualcomm SA8155P chips. In contrast, the latter has 2 times the GPU hash rate, while the GPU hash rate is 4 times that of the former. At the same time, the Qualcomm SA8155P chip also has the NPU computing power that Renesas R-Car H3 lacks, which can be used to assist the processing of driving data.
At the same time, the brightness, viewing angle and resolution of display devices such as large screens and HUD heads-up displays have been greatly improved. In addition, configurations such as the color-changing skylight and the physical intelligent assistant in the car have also begun to appear in the car.
"The changes and development of smart cockpit hardware in recent years can be described as a thousand miles." An employee in charge of smart cockpit products in the new car-making forces told Tiger Sniff, "But because car companies have not figured out how to use the configuration in the car to undertake user needs, we have not seen more explosive products in the field of smart cockpits so far." ”
Through this logic, we can analyze why the function of "one-click overtaking" appears to be "demon". It can be speculated that when the product manager of Changan Auchan defines the function, he thinks about how to solve the problem of car owners to achieve fast overtaking in urban driving, and ultimately improve travel efficiency. But it only focuses on how to solve the problem of overtaking, rather than improving the travel efficiency of car owners. Or the product manager can think from the opposite direction, how to reduce the owner's anxiety about traffic jams on the road and improve the safety of driving.
After all, if 10 of Changan Auchan's cars activate the "one-click overtaking" function on the road at the same time, who is being overtaken? Isn't that a straight-line acceleration race?
In the final analysis, the thinking of product managers of car companies is still only around the car and driving itself, and the insight and research on user needs are not enough. In fact, car companies have also seen such problems. So everyone wants to apply the logic of the smartphone industry and use "atomization capabilities" and "developer ecology" to solve. However, on the one hand, the electronic and electrical architecture of the car has not yet formed a standardization, and the car companies of different brands, and even different models under the same brand, are different, and the software adaptation is difficult. On the other hand, the complexity of sensors and communication protocols in the car is much higher than that of mobile phones, which is not a small threshold for developers themselves.
What's more, the number of cars is too small compared to mobile phones. The Roewe RX series sold 1 million units in 4 years is already a proud achievement for SAIC, but the absolute niche mobile phone category such as folding screens will sell 1.1 million units in China in 2021. For developers, there is no doubt about which track to invest their resources on.
So maybe the smart car industry will one day really form a developer ecosystem that thrives like smartphones. But before that, car companies still need to rely on their own product managers to shine and define their own explosive products.
Innovative Business Unit: We specialize in "demonizing"
In the face of the dilemma of homogenization of intelligent cockpit products of various car companies, some car companies and suppliers have begun to take action and began to form a special working group for "intelligent scene innovation" internally in order to find a breakthrough at the application level. A female product manager under the pseudonym "Raccoon" in the communication was responsible for discovering the new features of the smart cockpit in a supplier's innovation team.
She told Tiger Sniff that her group is not focused on a basic function and has specific tasks and metrics, as the company's product department for map navigation and voice interaction. The daily job of Raccoon and the team is to brainstorm and innovate beyond functional products based on the low-frequency but unmet needs of users.
"The people in our team have a different style of painting from the automotive industry or even the Internet industry, and their brain holes are very large." She revealed to Tiger Sniff that the team has developed smart cockpit products such as concert mode, love mode, and bungee mode internally. This may seem to the outside world to be a "novel" pseudo-demand, and the goal may not be to pursue "useful", but "interesting".
"Some of the strange and demon functions that everyone sees are based on the idea of 'what if it is useful', which is likely to cause ridicule." Raccoon said to Tiger Sniff, "But ridicule itself is actually a means for product managers to attract users' attention." In the midst of the spitting, we will collect really meaningful user feedback to further improve the product. It is also a means of user co-creation. ”
She also gave an example to Tiger Sniff that car company customers have put forward the need for them to add "male workplace stress care" to cockpit products. To this end, she and her team specially created a "love cultivation game" in the car machine. The user sitting in the main co-pilot can interact with the two and enhance their feelings during the game. "If some girls cheer up boys, it seems less numb to say it through the mouth of the female character in the game." We are trying to make the product plump up on the basis of customer needs and improve the user experience. ”
In fact, there is a precedent for discovering user needs through seemingly unreliable features, and ultimately successfully creating low-frequency demand as a product selling point. For example, tesla game functions, at first, were just Easter eggs like "fart mat" and "Christmas mode" in the car. When product managers find out that users really have needs through data feedback, they begin to invest more resources in the computing power of the car. At the beginning of this year, Tesla's Model 3, Model Y and Model S were equipped with AMD's Ryzen chip, which has a comprehensive performance equivalent to the PS5 and can directly run 3A masterpieces such as The Witcher 3. Today, gaming has become an important part of Tesla's "intelligent" label.
In fact, the function of K songs on the car is also similar. When the Xiaopeng G3 was launched in 2018, the K-song function in the car was used as a product selling point, and when the author experienced it as a media, I also felt that this function was just a gimmick. However, contrary to industry perception, this feature has been greatly praised on the user side. Nowadays, companies such as Weilai and Ideal have also followed up with relevant functions, and companies such as the Great Wall have also developed "the function of K songs without holding a microphone" on their cars based on the on-board microphone.
It can be seen that at a time when the competition in the intelligent car track is becoming increasingly fierce, the product managers of car companies exert their creativity to achieve various functions that seem to be "demonized", but in fact, they may contain immeasurable value at present.
Therefore, consumers need to have a stronger heart next and welcome more innovation from product managers of car companies.
The intelligent automotive industry calls for "Luo Yonghao" innovation
However, we also need to realize that these innovations that are not sure whether they are useful or simply demonized, whether it is defects in the product or the costs brought by various aspects, are essentially paid by consumers.
To use the phrase "Your grandfather made a mistake, my grandfather had to ask for food" in "I Love My Home" is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is essentially true.
After all, if you refer to the salary of the Internet industry, the product manager income of the smart cockpit should refer to the middle and senior engineers in the traditional manufacturing industry. If this cost is to be added to the price of each car, it will inevitably lead to further price increases for new cars that are now priced due to supply chain problems. Not to mention the hidden costs that features such as "one-click overtaking" that involve driving safety may bring to users.
At this time, if we look back on the past, we will suddenly remember that the price of the "personal computer that defines the next decade" TNT has suddenly been pulled to 9999 yuan, and Luo Yonghao is indeed a real person.
In May 2018, at a point more than a year before he left Hammer Technology, Luo Yonghao held an unprecedented grand press conference at the "Bird's Nest" at the National Stadium. In addition to the nut mobile phone, Luo Yonghao's "cross-era" product, which he has warmed up for nearly a month on weibo, has finally come out.
At that time, the product, which tried to transform the way users interact with personal computers from keyboards and mice to voice and touch, caused widespread skepticism among the media and viewers. However, in view of the price of this product of nearly 10,000 yuan, it has little relationship with ordinary users. After all, placing new technologies and new interaction models on more niche and higher-priced product lines has been a fine tradition in the consumer electronics market. Users who will buy these products are often geeks who have a certain understanding and love of technology.
They are willing to pay for a starter that may not be mature but is absolutely fresh, and are happy to feedback to manufacturers on deficiencies or suggestions for improvement.
What's more, even if it is only from the perspective of differentiating and labeling one's own brand, this approach is not only desirable, but also harmless.
When Hammer Technology held the Bird's Nest Conference, the company's capital chain was already very tight, and it was unable to carry out large-scale brand launch. Through the release of a "niche product", everyone has set their sights on hammer technology, and the nut mobile phone that the company is responsible for the amount of travel has also been smeared.
Of course, this does not mean that Luo Yonghao's approach can be accepted by the car circle.
Consumer expectations for automotive and consumer electronics products are different. Compared with the innocuous latter, users' expectations for the former to be "reliable" are higher. No car company will hope that some "small innovations" that are not valued within the enterprise are not valued, because in the social network out of the circle, causing negative public opinion to affect the brand reputation and lose potential consumers.
When innovation has to be done, car companies will gradually realize the importance of user operation for product innovation. The user operation mentioned here is not simply to maintain the relationship between car owners, do social network marketing, and play the "user enterprise" label. Instead, it is a real deep connection with existing car owners, providing safe, reliable and attractive internal testing functions to deliver the car owner experience, and then adjusting their own functions and products.
Therefore, the automotive industry's next innovation in niche areas is not as good as taking a geek-oriented or user-specific approach. This not only reduces risk, but also yields more valuable user feedback.
After all, it is really inappropriate, and you can also delete it by OTA.