Text | Joey
Truth be told, within this year, Honda's pace of electrification was as if the Type-R had stepped on floor oil.
Just last night, Honda China launched two models in one go- e:NS1 and e:NP1, and localized production for Dongfeng Honda and Guangqi Honda. This means that Honda has officially begun to rapidly promote its own electrification product strategy.
How fast is this advance? In fact, from the beginning of the launch of long-term planning, to the two cars really come to us, it is exactly one year.
In April last year, Honda officially set a long-term plan for its electrification strategy. In this plan, Honda plans to achieve electrification coverage of all its models by 2040. That is, EV and FCV (fuel cell vehicle) models reached 100% of sales in the global market, which in turn contributed to the brand's goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.
It seems that this is a relatively long-term strategic overall goal, and usually if you want to achieve it, you have to adhere to a step-by-step and robust product strategy. But who would have thought that half a year later, in October 2021, Honda would bring Dongfeng and Guangqi Honda, two joint ventures in the Chinese market, to hold a press conference together and launch the e:N pure electric brand.
At this conference, in addition to promoting the "tactical planning" of its own new energy vehicles to 2030 (40% in 2030 and 80% in 2035), Honda also made it clear that it will introduce 10 electrification products in the Chinese market in 2027.
Half a year later, as Honda increases its investment in new energy, it plans to increase its R&D expenses by US$63 billion to further accelerate product research and development, and simultaneously promote batteries, fuel cells, electric product services and many other fields.
How amazing is this investment by Honda? If you compare the investment of several giants in the field of electrification in fiscal 2021, you can see the clues. For example, BMW has previously reported that it will continue to invest 30 billion euros (more than 200 billion yuan) for research and development and technological innovation by 2025.
Similarly, GM said that in the five years from 2020 to 2025, R&D spending in electrification and autonomous driving will increase to $35 billion (also more than 20 million yuan); the only thing that may surpass Honda is Mercedes-Benz, which plans to invest more than 60 billion euros in research and development between 2022 and 2026 (this investment is designed to help Mercedes-Benz achieve its goal of full electrification by 2030).
Apparently, at least in terms of R&D investment, Honda has almost equaled the inventor of the car. After all, the direction of electrification is very clear, and if it is not caught up, the glory that Honda has earned in the era of the internal combustion engine for more than seventy years will dissipate in the long river of history with the passage of time.
Fortunately, Honda, whether it is brand power or product power word of mouth, has been very good accumulation in the past. Therefore, when they carefully chose to start joining the era of electrification, the market also gave them the most kind feedback and very efficient promotion efficiency.
For example, Honda Europe announced in 2020 that it will stop selling pure gasoline/diesel vehicles in 2022. This plan, which was initially not optimistic about almost everyone, has been basically realized in Europe.
Obviously, if in the most conservative European market, Honda's new energy revolution has received the expected feedback. Then, no one can find a reason not to let Honda do a big job in the Chinese market, where the development of new energy vehicles in the world is the most vigorous.
Thus, the importance of e:NP1 and e:NS1 is self-evident. They are different from the vet-1 and M-NV cars that were more tentative in the early stage, but they are really for sales, for the future to lead the honda product line.
The problem now is that even in China, the most fertile soil for the development of electric vehicles, you have to be careful about how to build products. After all, if you choose the wrong route here, you will inevitably lead to failure. Because, the soil is fertile, and there are many brands that mark the competition.
For example, Tesla, which has the potential to become a "national scooter" from the beginning, is ready to seize the market at a low price from the beginning, and then gradually launches a better product, and then to the "Wei Xiaoli" who wants to build a Chinese luxury car brand; and then pushes to the full entry, fully inherits the brand gene, and steadily moves towards the BBA of electric luxury. Although the price range is different and the positioning is different, everyone has the desire to dominate the world in the growth period of the market.
So, how does the Honda e:N, which has been lagging behind in the field of electrification, want to go? It has become a very important direction choice. Judging from last night's press conference, at least at the current stage, it is still taking the young route, still inheriting the market and reputation left by the "god car" loved by young people such as Fit and Civic, which is a very stable and suitable product route.
So, at last night's press conference, Honda asked the young engineers to give a comprehensive introduction to what e:NP1/S1 was going to bring them. For example, for electric vehicles, strong power is obviously indispensable, after all, Honda has its own traditional artistic ability in the three major areas. However, light has strong power, and it has long been the car-making concept in the early stage of automobile electrification.
Honda's young engineers thought of how to use the most appropriate pedal response and power output characteristics through more precise and delicate motor control, so as to offset the dizzy feeling caused by the rapid acceleration and deceleration of electric vehicles.
These are not simply adjusting the output power of the motor, the response time of the brakes. Honda's young engineers aimed at the daily use scenarios of Chinese consumers, and the electronic control assembly became more than 40 times that of ordinary EV models, and up to 20,000 kinds of control scene algorithms, so that a seemingly basic driving control experience was simplified and finally presented.
Like driving performance, intelligent human-computer interaction experience is also an important development direction for pure electric vehicles. For example, the huge transverse high-definition fish screen that we are familiar with has become the mainstream configuration of many models. But instead of trying to catch up with the trend, Honda adopted a giant central vertical screen that Tesla likes as an interface for human-computer interaction.
There are no particularly fancy functional compartments, and the three functional blocks from top to bottom represent basic information, human-computer interaction and carriage operation. Concise and clear, but including voice assistants, driver status awareness, OTA online upgrades and a series of product points included in the Honda CONNECT 3.0 function framework, there is no less. Obviously, for many people who love Japanese MUJI style, e:N brings a good design that is really different from the trend of the world, and is full of Japanese cool air.
Of course, at present, the products given by e:N to GAC and Dongfeng hondas respectively seem to be an electric model derived from the overseas version of the Binzhi model. This is also very understandable, after all, catching up and deriving research and development from existing products is a good way. Because according to Honda's plan, the exclusive electrification platform "Honda e: Architecture" will be officially launched in 2026, but the market has never waited for anyone.
In addition, there is another point of concern about e:NP1 and e:NS1. For Japanese companies that have always liked a car "north and south", the two products that Honda China currently provides to Guangqi Honda and Dongfeng Honda, at least from the release video and press release, I have not found more differentiated descriptions.
Therefore, how can these two joint ventures re-develop and expand on this car, how to create differences in the prototype car, how to reflect competitiveness in pricing strategies, and how to create a new model in user experience (this, GAC e:NP has mentioned at the brand launch before), will become an important determinant of whether they can press friends in Honda's electrification competition.
Obviously, compared with Honda China's one-bowl water flat product distribution strategy, who can achieve better results in actual sales in the future is also a very interesting and worth observing.