[Aika Car Deep Observation Original]
According to the information released by the Association of Passenger Vehicles, the cumulative sales of new energy passenger vehicles in 2021 will be 2.989 million units, an increase of 169.1% year-on-year. The electrification rate of passenger cars increased from 8.3% penetration in January 2021 to 21% in December, crossing the 20% penetration threshold for the first time, while the annual market penetration rate of new energy vehicles reached 13.4%, which means that the development of domestic electric vehicles is accelerating. Not only in China, but also in overseas markets, the development of new energy models is also developing towards a higher proportion, with an electrification rate of 15% in Europe in 2021, an increase of 6% year-on-year.
In such an environment, the new forces not only survived strongly, but even slowly began to lead the trend and wind direction. The traditional car companies that are accustomed to staying in the comfort zone have finally realized the crisis, but they have encountered various problems and challenges after doing their best. Driven by the wave of new energy, these car companies in the comfort zone have finally realized that it is obviously impossible to cope with today's market by single-handedly, and it is precisely because of this that various unexpected strong combinations have emerged.
Bugatti & Rimac: The combination of the fastest fuel supercar and the fastest electric supercar
Bugatti has always been known as the ceiling of the supercar world, it not only has a long and glorious history, but also has always adhered to the ultimate pursuit of speed and art, it shows the world the unique exquisite charm of machinery, each product is made to break the limit. But it was this arrogant and invincible Bugatti that partnered with electric supercar maker Rimac last year and formed a joint venture, Bugatti-Rimac.
While the limited edition Bugatti sells for more than $10 million, the brand has actually been losing money. In the end, Volkswagen chose to transfer the Bugatti brand to Porsche and establish a joint venture with Rimac, so that the Bugatti brand could reverse the loss situation. Bugatti-Rimac was officially inaugurated in the fourth quarter of 2021 and will be headquartered in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Rimac will hold a 55 percent stake in the Bugatti-Rimac joint venture, while Porsche will hold a 45 percent stake. In addition, Porsche directly holds a 24% stake in Rimac.
The Bugatti brand has been subsisted under Porsche. So the Bugatti-Rimac joint venture, Porsche 45% of the shares, Rimac of 55% of the shares.
But what exactly is rimac's attraction to Bugatti, the Croatian electric supercar brand, and perhaps Porsche executives have given the answer, as Lutz Meschke, vice chairman of porsche's board of executive directors, has said: "Porsche is most interested in the development of rimac components, and Rimac is in a superior position in prototyping solutions and small batch production." ”
Perhaps, your main understanding of Rimac is through the Three show The Grand Tour, in the first episode of the second season Richard Hammond drove the Rimac Concept One had a tragic car accident, fortunately not seriously injured, but also spawned the car bottom advertising meme. What impressed me most, though, wasn't the crash, but the moment Hammond drove the Rimac Concept One to beat the Lamborghini Aventador S and Honda NSX in a straight-line acceleration, compared to the other supercars that were as slow as they were from the last century. What makes people wonder, what kind of company can create such a monster?
Although the Shape of the Rimac Concept One is not as good as the two cars on the side, if it is about acceleration performance, the Rimac Concept One can press them to the ground and rub them, and it is repeated friction.
Perhaps in your opinion, Porsche is in line with their technology, bought and made its own sports car, after all, even Porsche executives have recognized Rimac's ability to develop parts. But it's not just about buying and selling technology, or porsche is actually the founder of Mate Rimac, who has an innovative gene flowing through his body. Lutz Meschke says: "Mate Rimac's innovative ideas inspire us. Mate Rimac and its team are important partners, especially in supporting us in developing components.
Mate Rimae can be said to be the soul of the Rimac brand, and Porsche is also interested in the innovative thinking of Mate Rimae.
Under the leadership of Mate Rimac, Rimac has the ability to independently develop supercars in just a few years of its establishment, and has also mastered extremely advanced technologies and production processes, including the application of various materials, software development, autonomous driving, system integration and other key technologies, as well as the development of electric powertrain and wiring systems. It is with such strong technology that Rimac launched the Concept One, the top electric supercar.
The Concept One is powered by four liquid-cooled permanent magnet synchronous motors developed in-house by Rimac, meaning that each wheel is controlled by a separate motor, which is completely different in terms of power structure compared to traditional internal combustion engines. The Concept One also uses Rimac's specially developed all-wheel torque vectoring (R-AWTV) system, which can accurately control the maximum combined power of 800kW (1088 hp) and the peak torque of 1600Nm.
The R-AWTV controls each motor individually a hundred times per second through sensors distributed across the wheels and body, which allows the Concept One to accelerate from a standstill to 100 km/h in 2.6 seconds, to 200 km/h in 6.2 seconds, and to 300 km/h in 14.2 seconds. Almost all the key components of the car, such as electric motors and wires, are produced and assembled in-house by Rimac, that is, the most core parts are developed and produced by Rimac in-house.
But Rimac has been established so far, full of calculations have sold more than a hundred cars, obviously sold this bit of car is not enough to support the company's operation, Rimac in order to survive, in order to be an electric supercar manufacturer at the same time, is also a technical solution provider. In fact, Rimac has technical cooperation with Porsche, Ferrari, Königseg, Aston Martin and many other companies, providing them with high-performance battery, motor, electronic control design solutions, as well as manufacturing and developing prototypes.
The Königseec Regeera is a plug-in hybrid supercar that uses a 5.0-liter twin-turbo V8 engine with three electric motors, and the battery pack and power distribution system used on the Regera were jointly developed by Rimac and König.
In fact, for the Rimac, not only Porsche attaches great importance to it, but also made several rounds of additional investments, other bigwigs have also aligned their favor, and in May 2019, Hyundai and Kia jointly invested 80 million euros in the Rimac. In April 2017, China's Camel Group (a high-tech enterprise specializing in battery research, development, production and sales) invested 27 million euros in Rimac, with a 19% stake. Earlier, when Rimac raised Series A financing in 2014, China Power Holdings had invested 10% in Rimac. And many big car brands are naturally looking at their outstanding technology and research and development capabilities.
As for why Bugatti eventually chose rimac, this is also a very obvious thing, the combination of the fastest fuel car + the fastest electric car, think about it is exciting. According to the plan, the new company will initially produce two supercars, the Bugatti Chiron and the pure electric Rimac Nevera. In addition, the joint development of bugatti models has also been included in the future development plan of the new company. Mate Rimac also said that within a decade, we can see the advent of pure electric Bugatti.
The fastest combination between Bugatti & Rimac
Ford & Rivian: From co-operation to breakup
Rivian is arguably the hottest car brand in North America after Tesla, Rivian was founded in 2009, and now Rivian has three models, namely the electric pickup R1T, the electric SUV R1S and the EDV that won Amazon's 100,000 orders. After the IPO, Rivian's market capitalization reached a maximum of more than $140 billion, once surpassing Volkswagen to become the world's third-largest car company after Tesla and Toyota.
The hottest car brand in North America in 2021 is Rivian, and Ford invested and won a big order from Amazon, making its brand famous. The market value once surpassed Volkswagen, reaching more than $140 billion, becoming the world's third largest car company.
Ford, one of Rivian's early investors, announced a $500 million investment in Rivian in 2019 and gradually increased to $1.2 billion. In fact, Ford was also involved in the engineering development of Rivian's electric pickup truck R1T and electric SUV R1S. In addition, when Ford announced a $500 million investment in Rivian, the two sides announced a cooperation, and Ford Motor will use The Rivian's electric vehicle platform code-named SkateBoard to jointly develop Lincoln's electric model with Ford and fill its electric vehicle product lineup.
Ford is looking at Rivian's skateboard chassis platform, which is the SkateBoard electric vehicle platform mentioned above. Based on the platform, the Skateboard Chassis is an all-in-one chassis architecture designed specifically for electric vehicles that integrates components such as batteries, electric drivetrains, suspensions, brakes, etc. into the chassis in advance, based on which Rivian can quickly create different models and license them openly to third-party manufacturers.
At present, three models of Rivian are based on the SkateBoard electric vehicle platform, equipped with a four-motor system, with considerable flexibility. At the same time, it is also equipped with air suspension. The battery pack or battery peripheral design is basically Rivian's own research, and Rivian puts the battery cell in the self-developed battery pack, and then encapsulates it into the chassis of carbon fiber material, focusing on waterproofing and weight reduction.
Rivian has mastered a large number of patents for skateboard chassis, with Rivian filing a total of 315 patents since 2011. Of these, more than 200 patents are closely related to its core skateboard chassis platform. This also makes Rivian the first company in the world to apply a skateboard chassis to passenger cars and achieve mass production and delivery, and Rivian's pure electric SUV R1S, pure electric pickup R1T and pure electric logistics truck EDV are all based on this platform.
The skateboard chassis has naturally also been favored by traditional car companies, which can enable car companies to significantly reduce the cost of research and development and testing in the early stage, while quickly responding to market demand and achieving mass production of new models, thereby accelerating the realization of breakeven. Nowadays, it is becoming more and more difficult to create a blockbuster model with an annual sales volume of 200,000 units, so in the long run, the skateboard chassis with "low development cost, short cycle and high interoperability" can respond to diversified market demand and have more competitive advantages in the future market.
In September last year, the R1T electric pickup truck was officially rolled off the production line and began to be delivered. In the full year of 2021, Rivian produced a total of 1,015 units and delivered 920 vehicles.
However, at the end of last year, Ford announced that it had canceled plans to jointly develop electric vehicles with Rivian. But Ford still holds a 12 percent stake in Rivian and is its major shareholder. There are two main reasons for abandoning the cooperation with Rivian, one is that with the development of Ford in electrification in recent years, it already has major models such as the Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning and E-Transit, which obviously coincides with the Rivian product matrix.
From the product matrix, Ford already owns the Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning and E-Transit, which highly coincide with the Rivian product line.
While Rivian's technology in skateboard chassis is excellent, it is not irreplaceable. Tesla, on the other hand, has always remained in the first echelon in the three-electric system and automatic driving, and the cooperation between the two sides is more out of the need for complementary interests. For Ford now, if the cooperation continues, it is bound to share more technology with Rivian.
The second is that another investor, Amazon, proposed that the 100,000 pure electric logistics trucks ordered by EDV must all be on the road by 2030 to ensure that Amazon achieves its goal of carbon neutrality. Amazon even proposed in the prospectus that "from the time Rivian delivers the first truck, it will enjoy the right of first refusal for all trucks for 6 years." This forces Rivian to focus on commercial vehicles.
And under the pressure of Amazon, Rivian had to focus on this electric van first, otherwise Amazon has the right to withdraw at any time, which also compresses The energy of Rivian research and development from the side.
The hustle and bustle of the world is all profit, and the world is all profitable. Today, the fact that Ford and Rivian have abandoned their cooperation does not mean that it is impossible to continue the frontier in the future, after all, Ford is still one of The important shareholders of Rivian.
Ford & Rivian
Honda & Sony: A win-win collaboration
On March 4, 2022, Honda Giken Kogyo Co., Ltd. announced the establishment of a joint venture with Sony Group to jointly develop and sell high-value-added pure electric vehicles through the new company, while also commercializing the provision of mobility services. It is a bit surprising that these two Japanese business giants can come together, but if you analyze them carefully, it seems reasonable for the two of them to cooperate.
The cooperation between "Sony Dafa" and "Honda Dafa" can be seen as a strong combination, after all, these two companies belong to the level of the pyramid tip in their respective fields.
For a long time, Japanese automakers have always been known for being conservative, although the steady pace of development can bring better fault tolerance, but such a rhythm in the face of the new energy wave, but has become not active to change means backward performance. This makes even Toyota Akio so opposed to electric vehicles, he also had to compromise with the market and directly release 17 electric vehicles in one go.
Honda, on the other hand, the development in the field of pure electric is obviously lagging behind competitors, although the iMMD hybrid series parallel route is efficient, but this is only a stopgap measure for Honda's electrification development. While other manufacturers have begun to release pure electric platforms and have begun mass production, Honda is still in the "oil to electricity" stage. Although in North America, Honda found that GM will use the Aoteneng platform, but in the final analysis, it is someone else's technology, and it is obviously not so hard to use it. However, its own pure electric architecture has not progressed for a long time.
Even Honda's newly released electric vehicle is still the "oil to electricity" of Honda's Binzhi (XR-V) model, and it is still unknown when Honda's electric vehicle platform will be officially applied.
In this case, Honda still has to make the sales of pure electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles in China account for 40% in 2030, reach 80% in 2035, and completely ban the sale of internal combustion engines in 2040. To be honest, I don't want to point out any other way out, what Honda wants to achieve is indeed a bit difficult.
Honda's "e:N" series offers "e:N Architecture F" and "e:N Architecture W" two intelligent and efficient pure electric architectures with different drive modes. Among them, those with the suffix "F" will be installed in small and medium-sized cars, while those ending with "W" will be applied on medium and large vehicles.
At this time, Sony stretched out an olive branch, and Honda naturally accepted it gladly. Don't think that Sony has no experience in car building, Sony has launched two pure electric concept cars at the CES shows in 2020 and 2022, respectively, VISION-S and VISION-S 02, the degree of completion has been very high, and has a very prominent performance in in-car entertainment and intelligent driving.
Vision-S and VISION-S 02 are still concept cars, but the degree of completion is already quite high, and public road driving tests have begun in Europe.
According to the official announcement of both sides, Sony will be responsible for developing entertainment, network and other mobile service functions, while Honda will be responsible for performance tuning, manufacturing technology and after-sales service management. It can be said that both sides have what the other wants, and after cooperation, they have also made up for their own shortcomings. Moreover, in terms of electrification, Sony is the well-deserved originator of the 18650 battery. Therefore, Sony does not need to worry too much about battery technology, as long as the funds are invested in place, it can form a self-sufficient supply relationship, and there is no need to suffer from the face of other battery giants.
On the other hand, Sony also has a product line length that Honda does not have, of which CMOS image sensors, liquid crystal displays, audio, and robotic AI technology are in a leading position in the world, and these technologies can actually be transplanted to cars. In the VISION-S 02 released last year, there are 40 different sensors. Whether it is used in in-car driver monitoring, or the sensors of the driver assistance system, almost all of them come from Sony itself, including 3 lidars.
Almost all the electronic components in the car are derived from Sony's own technology, especially in the hardware equipment of driving assistance, which is Sony's strength.
Moreover, Sony also has a very rich ecological chain, and the massive copyrights held by Sony Music and Sony Pictures can also be transplanted into the car. Moreover, as long as Sony wants, it can even directly put the exclusive game masterpieces in the PlayStation platform into the car, further strengthening the competitiveness of future Sony and Honda development cars.
Therefore, the cooperation between Honda and Sony is simply a win-win model, that is, I don't know whether the cooperation between "Sony Dafa" + "Honda Dafa" can have such an effect as "Dafa".
Honda & Sony
Stellantis & Foxconn: Both sides work together to get what they need
In May of last year, Stellantis and Foxconn announced that they would each invest 50% in the establishment of a joint venture, Mobile Drive, and that they would develop technologies such as digital cockpits and connected cars. And the new company will operate as an independent automotive supplier, participating in tenders in the market to solve the problem of Stellantis and other automakers providing software solutions and related hardware.
This cooperation between the two sides is obviously also a mutual preference for each other's body has something that they do not have. FCA said as early as 2020 that it planned to set up a joint venture with Foxconn's parent company Hon Hai Precision to produce electric vehicles and develop smart connected cars in China, but since then the cooperation between the two sides has not met market expectations. After FCA and PSA began merger negotiations, the progress of its cooperation with Hon Hai Precision was postponed.
Like Honda and Sony, the cooperation between Stellantis and Foxconn is also a win-win situation, and Foxconn's electronic technology advantages in hardware and software are very obvious. Provide vertically integrated, end-to-end design, development, and manufacturing services across handsets, mobile and wireless communication devices, and consumer electronics. Entering the Internet era, Foxconn uses its core advantages in hardware and software to enter the fields of 5G, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and Internet of Vehicles, which can create a complete Internet and mobile ecosystem.
Foxconn and The Stellantis Group have previously collaborated to develop the Airflow Vision design concept car, which was featured at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
In addition to having the advantages of electronic technology, Foxconn has also maintained long-term cooperative relations with many automobile companies, and has become a supplier of BMW, Tesla, Mercedes-Benz and other car companies, in 2015 with Tencent Holdings, Harmony Automobile established Harmony Futeng, and in 2016, Foxconn invested in Didi to officially enter the online car industry. In 2017, Foxconn invested in Ningde Times, and in 2021, Foxconn signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Geely, and the two sides established a joint venture company.
The Stellantis Group was formed in January 2021 by the merger of the former Fiat Chrysler Group (FCA) and the former Peugeot Citroen Group (PSA) with 14 vehicle brands. But Stellantis' position in the Chinese market is now increasingly weak, with Stellantis earning less than 3% of its total revenue in the Asia-Pacific region last year. The cooperation with Foxconn will also help reverse the decline in the Chinese market.
The Stellantis Group is formed by the merger of PSA Group and Fiat Chrysler Group (FCA) in a 50:50 share ratio, with 14 vehicle brands. But in the Chinese market, Stellantis Group can hardly hide its decline.
For Foxconn, which previously relied on Apple for most of its business, the partnership with Stellantis will expand its business diversity. And it has been determined in the agreement between the two parties that Stellantis Group and Foxconn will jointly own all the development results of the Mobile Drive joint venture. Foxconn has also entered the car industry and has launched three models: Model T, Model C and Model E. The results of the collaboration with Stellantis can also be used directly in their own models.
Foxconn's parent company Hon Hai Technology Yulon Group jointly established Hon Hwa Advanced Company, and at the 2021 Hon Hai Technology Day, it released three self-developed electric vehicles in one go, namely the Model C SUV, the Model E sedan and the Model T electric bus.
Moreover, these three models are from the MIH pure electric platform developed by Foxconn, so it is not even ruled out that the two sides will use Foxconn's independent pure electric platform to build cars later. After all, with ready-made technology and Stellantis' skills in the field of car building, it is not difficult to build a new car, and there can be a lot of research and development time and research and development costs.
But did Stellantis press all the treasure on Foxconn? Apparently not, by the end of 2025, the Stellantis Group plans to invest more than 30 billion euros in the group's electrification and software development sectors, with special mention of Internet and software services in terms of new revenue sources. Mobile Drive, which is a joint venture with Hon Hai and Fu Chi Kang, may be a small part of its electrification strategy.
Editor's summary: Today's cars are more and more like electronic products, which has led to even electronics manufacturers and technology companies have begun to build cars. Compared with the "new forces", when traditional car companies deal with the wave of new energy, they obviously stay in the traditional car in their thinking, which is obviously not in line with the development of the current era. But because of this, these unexpected cooperation will be born, and future cooperation will no longer be limited to car companies and car companies, and cooperation between car companies and technology companies will become more and more common.
Stellantis & Foxconn