In 2021, China's new energy vehicle market sales reached 3.52 million units, production and sales increased by more than 160% year-on-year, accounting for more than half of the total sales of 6.75 million new energy vehicles in the world, which is the seventh consecutive year that China has won the world's first new energy vehicle production and sales. The increasing recognition of electric vehicles by consumers, as well as the penetration rate of new energy vehicles of 13.4% last year, also revealed the future development potential of China's new energy market.
New forces are emerging in an endless stream, striving to get a piece of this change. Traditional car companies are accelerating the electrification transformation and want to achieve brand transformation by changing lanes and overtaking.
For a long time, Honda Automobile has been known as a company that manufactures internal combustion engines, and because its internal combustion engine is so famous, a considerable number of people even bluntly call its cars internal combustion engines equipped with different "shells".
However, at the moment of the transformation of the global automotive industry, the inherent branding of Honda Automobile has become a special challenge in its transition to pure electric vehicles.
On the evening of April 25, Honda China held an online event with the theme of "Reinventing EV Driving Fun". At this event, The Executive Director of Honda Giken Industries Co., Ltd. and China President Katsushi Inoue released the e:N brand declaration, that is, in the EV era, Honda's original intention has not changed, technology is people-oriented, "motion", "wisdom" and "beauty" inject vitality into mobile, and the brand slogan of "reshaping EV driving fun" was also announced at this event. At the same time, it was announced that the first mass-produced model of the e:N brand, Dongfeng Honda e:NS1, will be officially launched on April 26, and GAC Honda e:NP1 will start pre-sale in May.
Honda's electrification business in China begins a new chapter
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 models reached 100% of sales in the global market, which in turn contributed to the brand's goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
In October of the same year, Honda China released a new pure electric vehicle brand e:N, officially launching the electrification business in China.
"The e:N brand embodies Honda's more than 70 years of car-making genes and brand beliefs, and integrates China's advanced electrification and intelligent technology, e:NS1 and e:NP1 are the first models we launched with absolute confidence, which is an EV that gives consumers sharpness and ultimate fun, e:N will definitely reshape EV driving fun." Honda China President Katsushi Inoue said.
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.
As a veteran car company, Honda has always been quite successful in creating driving pleasure, and now it brings this to the new e:N brand.
The new car uses a new "e:N Architecture F" pure electric architecture, which is characterized by the development of the architecture for electrification and has a high degree of integration. High-efficiency and high-power drive motor, large capacity and high density battery, and body layout based on pure electric architecture not only make the entire electric drive system achieve the smallest space occupation, leaving as much driving space as possible to consumers, but also making the front and rear weight ratio of the entire body more balanced.
Officials said that for the daily actual use scenarios of Chinese consumers, e:NS1 and e:NP1 have become more than 40 times more than ordinary EV models in the electronic control assembly, up to more than 20,000 kinds of control scenario algorithms, which can easily cope with various driving environments. Especially for the vertigo that is easily caused by electric vehicles, the delicate and precise motor control perfectly resolves the problem of motion sickness by constantly adjusting the pedal response and power output characteristics.
In addition to the full-dimensional upgrade in the driving field, e:NS1 and e:NP1 also have excellent performance in the field of intelligence. The new car is equipped with Honda's latest "e:N OS" full-stack intelligent control ecosystem, which integrates Honda CONNECT, Honda SENSING and the latest digital cockpit technology, combined with a new electrical architecture with high computing power and high intelligence, showing quite good results.
Its HMI human-machine interface system is quite advanced, including a 10.25-inch color full LCD digital dashboard, a 15.1-inch large HD ultra-thin frame central control screen, and a streaming media rearview mirror, etc., which can display the information inside and outside the car in an all-round way.
The exclusive version of Honda CONNECT 3.0 for pure electric vehicles not only integrates the latest car-home interconnection functions, natural and smooth AI voice assistants and exclusively tuned energy management system, but also supports OTA online upgrades to ensure that the more you use them in the future, the better they are. Honda's first DMC driver status perception system monitors driver status in real time, and can even detect changes in the driver's mood and give proactive reminders. Advanced features such as converged AR precision intelligent navigation and panoramic automatic parking can take into account both intelligence and safety.
In terms of appearance, with the design concept of "one touch of the future", e:NS1 and e:NP1 newly launched the e:N series symbolic hair light H mark and the tail "Honda" letter mark, and added the "Heart beat heartbeat interactive lamp language", which allows users to see the charging status at a glance during the charging process.
It is not difficult to see that the two models not only inherit the driving pleasure and quality standards of the fuel era, but also have the appearance and intelligence of not losing new forces, integrate the advantages of both sides into one, no longer have the entanglement of choosing one of the two, and form a new product that can bring joy to the user, which is the embodiment of the e:NP brand breaking the boundary of fuel vehicles and electric vehicles, setting no limits and bold exploration.
Comprehensively upgrade the production and sales model
At this conference, honda in addition to promoting its own "tactical planning" of new energy vehicles to 40% in 2030 and 80% in 2035, it is more clear that it will introduce 10 electrified products in the Chinese market in 2027. After 2030, all new models launched by Honda in China are electric models such as pure electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles, and no new fuel vehicles will be launched.
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.
In the field of production, Honda also adheres to the goal of creating "120% good products" and strictly controls product quality.
"In the EV era, Honda will further strengthen quality control on the basis of mature car manufacturing technology and experience, especially for the core components of electric vehicles such as batteries and motors, adopt unique strict quality inspection standards, and use a more rigorous attitude to let consumers feel the lean quality from e:N."
At the same time, Honda will accelerate the upgrading and development of the new sales model, with the listing of e:NS1 and e:NP1, it will simultaneously launch an online cloud showroom experience store, providing online one-on-one consultation, scheduled test drive, and ordered product services.
Offline physical stores will also be fully upgraded. GAC Honda will first launch electrified sales service stores and supermarket stores in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places, and Dongfeng Honda will set up an "e:N brand zone" in the existing special stores.
In terms of after-sales, Honda provides services through a network of more than 1,200 specialty stores that are now spread across the country.
Kanche said:
Mr. Lu Xun said in "On the Third Kind of Man": "The future is the present future, and only when it is meaningful in the present will it be meaningful in the future." From the fuel era with 9 million users, to the era of electrification. e:N by breaking the shackles and restrictions between the rules, the new forces and the advantages of traditional car companies are integrated, and the two choices and one choice questions in front of many young consumers have become single choice answers without conditions.