What is the weird culture behind the anti-human tongue twister product name?
During the special period, in addition to the circle of friends of the automobile media, in addition to the opening of the kaifeng dish, cola, And Liu Qihong, the Beijing Cloud Auto Show is also another landscape. A variety of online press conferences have made WeChat messages even more explosive.
But today we're not talking about which cars are the most beautiful, but rather two japanese electric cars that are outraged by everyone — the Toyota bZ4X and the Honda e:NS1.
Not to mention how the product is, the car name is difficult to remember, difficult to read, difficult to play. Lowercase initials, containing numbers, symbols, as if the username of which platform was registered. This is very different from other Polestar2, EQS, Ideal ONE, ET7, Good Cat, etc. Catchy, clear and easy to remember car names.
Further check the information, you will find that there is actually no esoteric meaning behind the name of the car. The bZ4X stands for Beyond Zero, and the 4 and X represent body sizes and body types.
e: NS1, e is energyize, electric, N is New, Next. Guangqi Honda's sister model is called e:NP1, Chinese or will be named Polar 1. I couldn't figure out Dongben and Hiromoto, and I didn't want to figure it out in the future.
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"Love up hard to remember product name" is not a patent of Japanese car companies, the just released Sony player is called WH-1000XM4, the headset is called NW-WM1ZM2.
Compare Apple headphone naming methods: AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods MAX. The latter is more user-friendly regardless of marketing and user purchase.
The truth is that Japanese companies must also understand that their products are not difficult to remember. So what logic is behind these hard-to-remember product names? What culture? I recently interviewed a few friends and it was quite interesting.
▼ Interviewee 1: Mr P
(Former car media, Japanese culture enthusiast, Shanghai male)
A: Maybe the Japanese are not good at taking names, such as Suzuki's K-Car called Hustler...
Comments: ┐('~';)┌ Didn't Suzuki's leader look up the dictionary before naming it?
▼ Respondent 2: Mr.X
(Former Public Relations Department of Japanese Car Companies)
A: "It's like a father giving his son a name, the meaning is for himself, and outsiders don't care." Whether the son is strong or not is not strong, it is in the achievement, not in the name. ”
Comments: There is quite a hatred in the words of iron not steel
▼ Interviewee 3: N Teacher
(Japanese luxury brand marketing)
A: Japan started with manufacturing, very leading [engineer thinking], even worship. After the Meiji Restoration, emphasis was placed on industrial powerhouses rather than selling concepts. The cult of engineers leads to the use of these code names when they want to name something with a particularly mysterious sense of superiority.
There are also Japanese Shinkansen naming, E5, E6, 500 series, 700 series, derivative models N700A, N700S, etc., which obviously shows the iterative relationship.
In contrast, American manufacturers such as Apple are "product manager thinking". Polar Star is the brand name as the car name, which is a different thinking.
But not all Japanese products are hard to remember. For example, several of Sony's products are very obvious engineer thinking, internal codenaming, but there are also simple naming such as Walkman, PlayStation, CyberShot and so on.
Like Honda, Toyota's early products that focused on the US market were named by the US leaders, such as the name Lexus, which was also named by the Americans, and the Americans attach importance to the brand name. There are also Camry and Accord, which are also american names, and these car names are easy to remember.
Engineers pay attention to reliability, product managers talk about experience.
Comments: Makes sense! It seems that Liangtian's electric vehicles are not ready to challenge the US market, is Tesla daunting? Ha ha
▼ Respondent 4: Small M
(Shanghai boy who grew up in Japan after 1995, now lives in Japan)
Q: What do you think of these hard-to-remember car names?
A: Hahaha Japanese car media, netizens themselves also complained. However, only internally and on Twitter, the official media channels will not say it explicitly. In fact, most of the car names in Japan are easier to remember, that is, the old manufacturers, the atmosphere dominated by engineers is relatively strong, directly take the engineering code as a product name, and there is also the romance of engineers in it.
↑ Japanese netizens complained on Twitter:
Left: Toyota's electric car, bZ4X, pronounced bZ4X (written under a hiragana), which reminds me of "special programs" (satirically pronounced strangely).
Right: Judging from the strange and difficult name of "bZ4X", this car is definitely different from the target customers of "Aqua" and "Mirai" (another Electric Vehicle and Fuel Cell Vehicle of Toyota), right?
A: Actually, I don't really know why, like Lexus RZ and Subaru's Soltera are normal names. Maybe it has something to do with corporate culture, and I don't have that name for Nissan (Nissan's upcoming electric car is called Aria).
Q: What is the difference between Nissan and Ryota?
A: Unlike the impression of Chinese consumers, Nissan feels that Nissan is more foreign, which is very different. Honda is a technical house, Toyota is good at making money, but Nissan is different. For example, Xuanfakou and management, many of them are a group of relatively foreign young people with study abroad backgrounds, and there are many women in management. After a wave of unity with Renault, it is still different from other families to a certain extent. A company like Toyota would never let a foreign monk be the boss.
Comments: It turns out that this name japanese themselves find it difficult to pronounce!
The views of the above four respondents are different, although there are some imprecisions, but they also represent the true perspective of ordinary people. Personally, I most agree with the "cult of engineer thinking" and "the romance of old-school engineers". Reminiscent of the JDM we chased in those years:
Toyota 86, representing an engine bore and stroke of both 86 mm;
Subaru BRZ, representing Boxer Rear-Wheel drive Zenith (horizontally opposed + rear-wheel drive + pinnacle);
STI, short for Subaru Tecnica International;
Mazda RX-7, R stands for Rotor Engine...
Personally, I think that the most representative of the "technical stacking nomenclature" is GT-R's generation of famous machine RB26DETT:
Racing Basic
2.6 liter displacement
DOHC (Double Overhead Camshaft)
Electronic petrol injection +
Twin Turbo (twin turbo)
You can feel the pride of an engineer.
At the peak of the Japanese era, being able to blurt out the meaning of code names and names seemed to be the self-cultivation of every JDM. But feelings have become feelings because they are now rare.
Honda is no longer the Honda of F1, Subaru is no longer subaru of STI, Mazda is no longer the Mazda of rotor engines... It's like when you buy a Toyota, you'll never do anything wrong or do anything right. Most Japanese cars have more of such a middle-aged world warmth, but they no longer have the look of youth and madness.
Just like the Japanese electric vehicles that started a little late (in China), they bid farewell to the old world, but they don't know how the new world will come, perhaps only the "engineer-style" car name can make the faith last for one more second.