Text/Yang Zheng
Actually, this is not me.
Because I really took the kids to a picnic last weekend. Blue sky, white clouds, green trees and grass, a group of people blowing a small wind grilling meat skewers.
Then sitting in the car playing games was the dad named "Li Xiang" because he had a new car called the L9.
■ What does the Switch prove?
Back to the point. Ideal's most recent official update to L9 was a collaboration with the Nintendo Switch released earlier this month. Ideally, the L9's center control screen, co-pilot entertainment screen and rear cabin entertainment screen can all realize the Nintendo Switch direct connection to the screen projection screen through the Type-C interface.
Sounds good.
But when the author who happens to have a baby with a Switch sees the poster that is ideally equipped for this, he can't sit still: the blue sky and white clouds in front of you, the green trees and grass around you, you take the child to the car to play the game console?
Living room sofa TV air conditioning, with Switch, is it not fragrant?
Under the blue sky and white clouds, among the green trees and grass, the family sits in the car to play the game console?
"Game on the car", the ideal is not the first. The maverick Tesla was the initiator. But playing games on a car machine, is it really for the game?
This move obviously does not prove how strong the ideal car is. The ideal L9 is equipped with a car machine processor is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8155, although the performance is not bad, it is not unusual in the industry, from 100,000 to 500,000 cars are equipped. The ideal L9 is probably commendable for its dual processor high configuration, but although this is enough to support the high price of the ideal L9, it is not enough to achieve a performance leap.
According to the information released by the ideal, the L9 actually acts as a power supply and screen, providing power to the Switch through a charging power of 60W, and realizing the projection of the game console to the car machine through the Type-C interface. It's the Switch console that really runs the game, not the ideal car.
"Screen projection" - this is the key word for the ideal L9 access to Swtich.
To use a less appropriate analogy, this is no more difficult than using Carplay on a car machine by casting screens from a mobile phone, after all, I have recently been playing Switch on the TV I bought at home 5 years ago.
Tesla's demo of "The Witcher 3" and access to the Steam platform, in order to prove the performance of its car processor, further endorse advanced driver assistance features.
What the ideal L9 can prove is that it has good compatibility. This is also ideal for mentioning in the relevant press release that "multiple devices can be screen-cast via the Type-C interface." ”
■ What can be gained from the niche market of "raw bumps"?
I don't actually know "Li Xiang", but this Li Xiang, who is known to more people, is indeed a great product manager. Not only the concept of "game on the car", the ideal L9 from various channels of information, can step on the market ideas, just like the previous ideal ONE. However, as the ideal first new car in three years, the L9 has not been able to evolve with the industry trend in terms of core technology, and there are also hidden worries in addition to "highlights".
The latest news of ideal L9 is that it has disclosed information such as size through the ministry of industry and information technology declaration directory. The new car was bigger than expected. With a body length of 5218mm and a wheelbase of 3105mm, it has reached the level of a large SUV.
The Ideal L9 is a circle larger than the Ideal ONE
This is almost the largest SUV that a Chinese brand can build, but in this regard, the ideal is commendable. But the capacity of this segment is really too small. The author tried to find a product that can be compared with the ideal L9 horizontally, but found that there are few products in this market, Mercedes-Benz GLS and BMW X7, two mass-produced large SUVs or comparable, but the sales of the two last year were only more than 15,000 and 11,000 units, respectively. There is also a pure electric Hongqi E-HS9, which sells less than 5,000 vehicles in the whole year.
That's pretty much the ideal L9 faces. The market position of the former two does not intersect with ideals, and the market data of the latter does not seem to have reference value.
There's a reason the market for large SUVs is calm. Not only because the threshold is too high, but also because of insufficient demand. From the perspective of L9's product positioning, the ideal seems to be to provide an upgraded choice for the "daddy" group targeted by the ideal ONE before. However, in the face of the same demand, a popular home MPV is not at all attractive to the dad community.
Ideal "bigger and bigger"
In the medium and large SUV market, the ideal ONE is undoubtedly a success. In 2021, the sales volume of more than 90,000 vehicles ranked first in the market segment. However, even if the ideal L9 can reproduce the success of the ideal ONE to a certain extent and earn reputation for the ideal, it is difficult to gain a larger market share. It should be noted that at the moment when the scale of the new energy vehicle market is expanding rapidly, competitors are working hard to divide the market share. NIO's ET5 and Xiaopeng's P5 are all the same. The ideal L9 for the large SUV market can only be seen from the sidelines.
■ Behind the highlight, the technology "fat"
The car is getting bigger and bigger, and the game is having fun, but it can't hide the biggest shortcoming of the ideal L9: the lack of breakthroughs in core technology.
As the first new car in the past three years, the ideal L9 has not brought more surprises to people.
The new car, which is expected to cost up to 500,000 yuan, has replaced the new gasoline range extender, which increases the battery capacity and fuel tank volume, but still uses the extender hybrid technology.
There has been a lot of heated debate in the industry about the advantages and disadvantages of extended range hybrid technology, and there is no need to repeat it here. However, some vane-like regional markets have already ruled on this: Shanghai will cancel the supply of green cards for range-extended hybrid models from January 2023. It should be noted that in 2021, Shanghai is the city with the highest ideal sales. In Beijing, range-extended hybrid models have not been associated with the preferential policies for electric vehicle licenses.
There has been no significant progress in electrification, and the ideal L9's progress in intelligence is not like a new car with more than three years of power.
As mentioned earlier, the core processor of the ideal L9 car machine is two Snapdragon 8155, one more than its peers, but it is not enough to bring about a breakthrough in performance; in terms of advanced driving assistance, the industry's evaluation of the ideal L9 lidar is "relatively mature, slightly weaker performance"; providing computing power support is two NVIDIA Orin X chips, and competitors' new cars will be equipped with four.
Intelligent driver assistance is one of the themes of the ideal L9 "spoilers"
Therefore, after the ideal of many spoilers, people found that the ideal new car is bigger, more screens, higher configurations, and richer gameplay, but in the most core electrification and intelligent breakthrough, the ideal L9 failed to come up with eye-catching features. And this is the ideal of competitors' new products, increasingly unfavorable policy environment, and gradually obsolete single models, which can not be solved by enlarging the size and casting a screen on the Switch.