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The covid-19 storm, centered in Shanghai, continues.
Zhiji Automobile has just finished a listing conference with difficulty. Although it was recorded, the sense of presence was extremely strong, more vivid and direct than any previous one.
Wei Pengda, an automotive engineer who drives an L7 at the Shanghai Tianma Mountain Circuit, sets a new Guinness Book of Records for "the longest drift distance for electric vehicles on slippery roads." When he drifted 250 laps and 42.1 kilometers continuously, the video heard the excited voiceover of Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile: "It is not overtaking in curves, it is directly killing Porsche."
This transcendence has received a lot of attention in the industry, and this is the first time I have seen this form.
More than 1 hour, the same background, in this way, tells the story of the rise of a Chinese car brand.
Liu Tao said: "What we really want to challenge is that the fuel car spent 135 years to build, seemingly unbreakable, seemingly unsurpassable performance standards in terms of power and handling. ”
This sentence touched me in particular.
At the beginning of the setting, Zhiji decided to take the road that few people took.
Difficult roads, never crowded. Now it waited for the opportunity to flap its wings and start to break through like an eagle.
Early warning
"We can't predict disasters, but we can prevent disasters"
At the end of February, the epidemic situation in Shanghai was just emerging, and Zhiji's team brushed the epidemic information day by day, meeting day by day, setting processes, and grinding plans.
They had planned to invite Angel Wheel & A Wheel users and media to experience the Zhiji L7 Snake Move super sense driving control at the Pegasus Circuit on March 29, witness the peak moment of the L7 challenge to the Guinness Book of Records for "Longest Electric Drift", and announce its launch in a colorful light show.
For this highlight moment, everyone was excited.
The epidemic situation changes at any time, and Zhiji's plan for the epidemic situation has also begun to be enriched at the same time, from site selection to conference plans, walking on two legs online and offline every day.
Liu Tao said: "Be sure to be flexible for change. ”
However, if it is changed to a recorded broadcast release, can it bear the weight of L7 release? He himself said that "the challenge is very big. ”
In any case, Zhiji quickly built a set of wheel relay "wartime organizations".
At the end of February, part of the venue construction was completed, and in early March, under the condition of meeting the requirements of epidemic prevention, the official recording was entered at the Tianma Mountain Circuit.
It's just that the staff involved in the recording is decreasing every day, such as "Last night was fine, I can't come out in the morning", "Our community is blocked, who can connect with me online?" ”...... Every morning at about 6 o'clock in the work group, you can see everyone's sudden help text messages.
In the last few days, the front-line personnel were particularly scarce, and Xu Ji, the public relations manager of Zhiji Automobile, said that he and his colleagues always flew all over the Tianma Track with walkie-talkie in one hand and horn in the other. For a few days, the temperature was close to 30 degrees, and after a few rounds, the clothes were soaked and the "mask face" was sunburned.
In the recording, there is also a difficulty is the presentation of the drift light show, on the one hand, we must take into account the perfect lighting effect, on the other hand, we cannot let the light interfere with the drift of the two cars.
"We can only optimize the lighting effect in the shooting through software simulation and test adjustments while building, and work with the driver to evaluate the effect of the light on drift, which is a very challenging process, and we are racing against time." Nick, public relations manager of Zhiji Automobile, said.
After the initial recording is complete, the questions are still one after another.
The Jiading District, where Zhiji Automobile is located, has become the hardest hit area of the epidemic, the office building has been sealed, the editing studio has also been blocked, and the IM STUDIO team responsible for post-editing has completed the preliminary editing of the video of the press conference in a "guerrilla war" before the large-scale outbreak of the epidemic. The follow-up modifications, live broadcasts, etc., are all done by the team at home online.
From another point of view, this is a full-staff training of Zhiji Automobile. What particularly appeals to me about them is that they are problem solvers who want to try everything they can to be the best they think they can be.
Everyone who has carried the pressure and moved forward firmly deserves a tribute.
Original intention
"Difficult road, never crowded"
Zhiji Automobile has been saying "what a car should look like in the intelligent era".
L7 warm-up for more than a year, said the art masters at home and abroad, said the rough stone valley user data rights plan, said the "0" take over the intelligent driving, said the Lake Como wood, but also said the ultra-low wind resistance streamline value and Williams special tuning.
But I've been wondering, what will it ultimately be at its core?
The answer sheet handed over by L7 far exceeded most people's expectations: driving control.
A very old, not trendy concept. The era of science fiction and intelligence is at hand, and everything related to driving rather than intelligence should not be swept into the garbage heap of history?
It was precisely this most simple value that struck me in a way.
For the automotive industry, technology can be subverted and innovated, but the most original and essential value of the automotive industry since its development over the past century should never be subverted because of the transformation of vehicle driving forms.
"Luxury brands talk about driving control, which is originally a convention, and it is also in line with the logic of the core value of the car." Liu Tao said, "More importantly, good driving control is also the core demand of the electrification era." Trams can easily enter the three-second club, but for faster speeds, there must be chassis controls that match it. If there is no good control, it is equivalent to a high-horsepower car engine mounted on the carriage, and the result is bound to overturn.
Therefore, when we planned this car three years ago, the ultimate handling and sports car experience was the most important of our three core product highlights. ”
Building a good electric car is valuable, but it is also difficult.
Liu Tao said, "You can pile together the best steering machines, suspensions, electronically controlled suspensions, and rear steering in the world, if you are rich enough." But what you can't do is tune."
In a sense, this is also the starting point for why Zhiji should have technical cooperation with williams' forward-looking engineering team with an F1 background.
It is said that at first the British had no interest in tuning the L7 until Zhiji shipped the L7 to the UK, and after the Williams team director personally felt it, a consensus was reached: "IM L7 is one of the greatest performance cars we have worked on."
Over the next year, the L7 underwent two rounds of tuning. In the second round of adjustment, Liu Tao even personally went into battle and led the team to set up a chassis attack team to participate in chassis upgrade and adjustment.
Even the smallest light is a flashpoint, as long as it is bent over.
Breaking the ice
"We will eventually cross over here and in the name of warriors"
The performance is in place, and the next step is the actual battle.
For a long time, the users of China's smart electric vehicles have not been fully respected and understood, and Zhiji hopes to use a challenge to the old car brand to let users know that the car that purchased Zhiji can be proudly driven. As one of their users said, "My car, the king of the new world of driving control, feels handsome when he says it." ”
Those who have seen the conference remember that most of the time in the picture, there will be a white Zhiji L7 in the small frame in the lower right corner, drifting around alone on the wet and slippery field. Finally, it drifted for 1 hour and 6 minutes, 258 laps, and 43.646 kilometers, successfully breaking the Guinness World Record for the "longest drift distance" for electric vehicles.
Completing the challenge was Wei Pengda, the manager of zhiji high-performance motorsports, who was called "Driver 0" internally.
"After my first encounter with a real car, the powerful power and chassis balance of the Zhiji L7 really shocked me, when I, as a car player and enthusiast, was pleasantly surprised to find that the era of driving pleasure belonging to electric vehicles has arrived." That night, he wrote a PPT, applying to drive the Zhiji L7 to challenge the World Record held by the Porsche Taycan in the field of drift for 1 year and 5 months.
How hard is this operation?
The first is experience. No team in China has achieved a continuous and long-term fixed circle drift challenge, and the core technical experience in this field in the past has been in the hands of international auto giants such as Porsche, BMW and Toyota, who have world-class employee drivers, professional fixed circle wetland drift sites, and practical experience.
The second is the venue. Continuous fixed-circle drift requires a high degree of flatness and water film thickness of the venue, and even if the ground of the Pegasus Circuit reaches the track level, it still cannot provide the required flatness. We can see that there is a deeper accumulation of water in the local area during the drift challenge, and these factors will undoubtedly destroy the dynamic balance of the vehicle during the drift process.
The third is temperature. The temperature in Shanghai was around 10 degrees Celsius in February and March, and compared with the challenge that Taycan completed in August, the endurance brought by low temperatures is very large.
The fourth is certification. Because of the epidemic situation, this time it is a remote online certification, and the conditions are particularly stringent. Finally, a total of 6 synchronous one-shot camera positions were added from the car, outside the car, and sky perspective, and 4 experts in the field of drift who held Guinness recognized valid qualifications in Shanghai as on-site judges.
Wei Pengda is not a professional drift driver, which is a new challenge for his skills and physical fitness. Even if there was fog in front and cliffs in the back, he said, "I want to try it too." In a race for every 0.1 second, he laughed and said, "My team and I have seen countless Pegasus tracks look like at 4 a.m. ”
steady
"There is no victory to speak of, stability is everything"
The wave of disasters of the epidemic has poured water on the real economy, and the impact is very large.
Schrödinger's new energy trend, once the spread behind the suspension of production, production delays, and the ensuing difficulties in sales and cash flow return, such a butterfly effect is enough to make the already fragile new car-making forces fall in any link.
It's a war for all, but there's always someone on the front lines.
"We have a batch of production plans for the Zhiji L7." Jin Weifeng, director of the quality and delivery department of Zhiji Automobile, said, "These cars are mainly delivered to dealers for showroom display and new car test drives. ”
In the final sprint stage, 13 employees on the front line took the initiative to ask for help and formed a "commando team" of production and supply. They hurried to close their own communities and quickly packed up their luggage and rushed back to the Lingang factory. Immediately after, various departments rushed to the rescue, including quality delivery, engineering team, logistics team, SQE... Soon it was expanded to 28.
These people's small "sleepy talks" before going to bed every day have even become "brainstorming" for product quality improvement time and again. Everyone discussed how to make the car more perfect, and to this end, they paid attention to the subtle perception of each vehicle during the day's debugging, and made a list of more than 100 details. For example, the vehicle tailgate switch and steering wheel button feedback and operating feel, commandos have been further optimized.
Data experts Cai Xiang and Xia Yu also took the initiative to ask Miao to stay on duty at the Innovation Harbor.
Fortunately, the team carried out the "main disaster backup" plan in advance to ensure the integrity and operation of the data and system. The "main disaster backup" cloud model has played a miraculous role in the epidemic, the software integration platform is running normally, and all automated development and software version update releases are delivered on time as originally planned.
Li Weimeng, the user contact manager, and Yan Zhiming, the project manager, drove a test vehicle back to their home before sealing, and they completed the test of the entire vehicle in the underground garage of the community.
"The first thing we do when we wake up every morning is to ask in the group, do you have anything you need me to test?" Then, the product and design colleagues put forward the requirements one by one, and then test. Li Weimeng said.
Nowadays, the battle to resume work of Zhiji Automobile is starting, but the battle to resume production has never stopped.
Prologue
"You ask me where I'm going, and I point in the direction of the sea."
Maybe 2022 is another river for Zhiji that has never been crossed.
The current situation is like everyone being thrown into a river, and it is important that everyone start swimming immediately. No one knows where the river will flow, but at least it is clear that it must believe in its ability to swim as part of its resilience in the face of crisis.
This must be a protracted battle, starting with inspiration, bravery and luck, followed by stoicism, pattern and rationality. In any case, you should be the most trusted partner of that customer.
Liu Tao said: "This is the long-term doctrine we must adhere to, to give customers certainty. ”
I think that one day, these trusts will gather in the sand and become an important force to lift up Chinese brands such as Zhiji.