When you think of deep blue, what comes to mind?
Is it IBM's 1270-kilogram supercomputer? Is it the color that catches the eye when overlooking the earth from the porthole of Tiangong No. 1? Or the depth of what you see when you look up at the surface of the sea in the Mariana Trench?
I think that for Deep Blue, a new digital pure electric brand under Changan Automobile, they must hope that in the near future, when people talk about the word "deep blue", they will think of them.
Recently, at a technology sharing meeting called "Foreseeing Deep Blue and Reaching the Future", Changan Deep Blue depicted a future full of digitalization, intelligence, personalization and green and low carbon, and showed their path to this future.
Who is Chang'an Deep Blue?
The advent of the era of electrification has made many traditional car companies smell the danger, and Tesla and Wei Xiaoli, who are one step ahead on the track, have also formulated the gameplay of the electric vehicle era. Therefore, in order to distinguish from their own fuel vehicle brand lines, from marketing to channels to achieve renewal, with a pure electric attitude into the game, traditional car companies have also come up with their own response plans, launched independent of the fuel vehicle brand new energy brands, such as Aian, Extreme Krypton, Salon, Zhiji, Geometry, Polar Fox, Lantu and so on.
Changan Deep Blue is a new digital pure electric brand launched by Changan Automobile under this trend. The difference is that Changan Deep Blue is just a simple brand, behind which is an all-electric digital platform called Deep Blue, which is operated by Changan New Energy Automobile Technology Co., Ltd., which completed the B round of financing at the beginning of the year.
The advantage of this move is that Changan Deep Blue is independent of Changan Automobile from the brand, and the operating company can use this to introduce a new operating system, a new incentive mechanism, a new marketing method, bring new products and new experiences to users, and can legitimately rely on the background of Changan Automobile's major shareholders, make full use of its global R&D and production resources, and enjoy the results of its "Shangri-La Plan" and "Beidou Tianshu Plan".
In addition, from the perspective of brand positioning, the relationship between Changan Deep Blue and Avita, another pure electric brand in which Changan Automobile is involved, is also like a relationship of inheritance and downward, and there will be no internal friction. Avita's goal is high-end pure electricity, the target is 300,000 or even 400,000 upward markets, Andan Deep Blue's goal is the mainstream of the public, the target is 150,000-300,000 markets.
However, the mass mainstream market of 150,000-300,000 yuan is currently the most competitive market segment. This includes not only new forces such as Tesla and Wei Xiaoli, but also joint venture brands that have begun a comprehensive electrification transformation, as well as independent brands such as BYD that have mastered the core technology of electrification. If Changan Deep Blue wants to gain a foothold in this market, it needs to come up with a killer skill.
EPA1, the killer of deep blue
C385 is the first product released by Changan Deep Blue, based on the EPA1 platform. This platform is a digital pure electric platform built by Changan New Energy in five years, and the official summary has summarized four characteristics: high efficiency, high performance, high intelligence and high security. This platform is the killer weapon of Changan Deep Blue Killing to the mass mainstream market.
Among the four characteristics, the most important is high efficiency. The EPA1 platform adopts Changan's new generation of super collector electric drive system, has 163 patents, and cooperates with micro-core high-frequency pulse heating technology, and the maximum system work efficiency exceeds 95%. According to the official account, the maximum efficiency and average efficiency of this electric drive system exceed the industry benchmark, but they are still 0.4% away from their target.
In addition, the EPA1 platform also supports two systems of range extender and hydrogen fuel cell in addition to pure electric. In other words, the C385, which is about to be mass-produced, will be the first electric vehicle in the industry to provide pure electric, extended range and hydrogen fuel cell systems at the same time. And officials said that the three sets of power will be listed together, C385 will be the first hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle that can be purchased in the Chinese market.
The EPA1 platform is also a high-performance pure electric platform based on the rear drive and taking into account the four-wheel drive, which supports the expansion of dual motors + four-wheel drive at most.
The first product C385 single motor version has a maximum power of 190kW, 5.9s acceleration per 100 kilometers, a golden body counterweight ratio of 50:50, and adopts a brake dual redundancy system and an H-arm multi-link independent suspension system, which is very rare in the price point of 15-300,000. The tuning style is also biased towards driving performance, and the official said that its performance and operating pleasure will not damage the positioning of the coupe.
In terms of intelligence, EPA1 adopts a new generation of domain control electronic and electrical architecture, equipped with Changan Automobile's self-developed intelligent vehicle domain controller "Changan Smart Core", with three domain control functions of vehicle control domain, cockpit domain and self-driving domain, and supports global speed OTA, which can realize the OTA upgrade of all node controllers in the whole vehicle and meet the commonly used and new functional requirements.
Changan New Energy Vehicle Technology has also developed iBC digital battery butler on the EPA1 platform based on battery safety. Through 2 digital pre-control and 7 digital temperature control management technologies, this set of iBC digital battery housekeepers can effectively avoid battery thermal runaway and improve the safety of the car.
In addition, the EPA1 platform architecture also adopts a five-horizontal and nine-vertical surround body design, with more than 45% of the high-strength steel ratio, ensuring that it can meet the C-NCAP five-star safety standard and providing a full range of perimeter security protection for the battery. At the same time, in terms of information security, 5+1 network security and privacy protection policies are adopted to protect user information.
A quick foothold in the mass mainstream market is key
Although the EPA1 platform and the first model, the C385, have left a deep impression, we also have to say that the market that Changan Deep Blue is ready to cut into will be the most competitive and cruel market in the future.
At present, the pattern of the entire new energy vehicle market is dumbbell-shaped. On the one hand, the A00 electric car with less than 100,000 yuan constitutes a large-scale low-end market, and Changan Automobile itself is actively participating. On the other hand, with about 300,000 as the dividing line, the high-end market has been occupied by Tesla and Wei Xiaoli.
What about the mass mainstream market of 15-300,000? At present, pure fuel vehicles are the mainstay, supplemented by hybrid models, and both joint ventures and autonomy have been developed to be deeply rooted. For Changan Deep Blue, if you want to quickly gain a foothold in this market, you need to quickly enhance your brand influence. How to quickly increase your brand influence? Strive to let more users know through rapidly rolling out channels.
The sales model Changan Deep Blue has uncontroversially chosen the direct operation model commonly used by electric vehicle companies, which they call direct operation. The difference is that after the electric vehicle company adopted the direct operation model, it abandoned the middleman 4S store. But Changan Deep Blue does not want to waste Changan Automobile's developed channel network.
According to the official introduction, Changan Deep Blue currently deconstructs the traditional functions of 4S stores into 5 centers: order center, delivery center, maintenance center, warehousing center and butler center.
Among them, the butler center is designed for the service of users, to solve the service problems after the future users have been electrocuted, to provide them with multi-functional scenes and personalized customized smart services, to help broaden the boundaries of the car experience. Order centers and delivery centers can be invested by social investors, which is different from the new forces of car manufacturing.
Changan Deep Blue also said that their channels will not be like the progressive development of new car-making forces, but will rely on Changan Automobile's channel network to strive to form a scale effect in the country at the first time.
In order to better directly connect, the marketing structure of Changan Deep Blue has also been reformed, divided into front desk, middle office, and back office, supported by digital technology, all around customers and product terminals.
According to the plan, Changan Deep Blue will strive to open the pre-sale of C385 around May, list it in June and July, and achieve delivery in the third quarter of this year.
At the same time, they also set up two flags. First, the number of first deliveries should reach 10,000 vehicles, and second, the delivery target for the next month should be more than 20,000 units. Judging from the positioning and product strength of C385, the realization of the first flag is very promising. However, considering that the current monthly delivery volume of the mainstream car-making new forces is also around 10,000, the ambition of the second flag of Changan Deep Blue is not small.
However, the so-called soldiers who do not want to be generals are not good soldiers, whether they are people or enterprises, they always need some dreams, what if they are realized?