Toyota used bZ4X to tell the market a truth: its own brand lane change overtaking, it is likely to be a pseudo-concept brought about by "time error".
On April 28, the first model of Toyota's bZ pure electric exclusive series, the bZ4X, officially opened for pre-sale, with a pre-price of 220,000-300,000 yuan, and the new car will be sold in the two sales systems of FAW Toyota and GAC Toyota.
Although it is only a pre-sale, the arrival of bZ4X is enough to set off a big sensation in the car market.
On the one hand, from Toyota's point of view, as the first model built on the EXCLUSIVE PLATFORM OF BEV based on Toyota's e-TNGA architecture, the arrival of the bZ4X not only means that Toyota's 25-year electrification business has officially entered a new era. In addition, it also released toyota as the world's first car company, to launch a new round of challenges to the world's first automobile market.
On the other hand, from the perspective of consumers, under the background of Chinese brands taking the lead in switching tracks and accelerating "lane change overtaking", the international car giants represented by Toyota have gradually broken the doubts and prejudices that the market has had about Toyota's "electrification" transformation since the past through the product planning of the bZ exclusive pure electric series.
Therefore, for Toyota, the bZ4X, which can trigger the vigilance of opponents and also touch the market's expectations, is of great significance!
Standing at the starting point to predict the results, in this almost equivalent to the "starting from scratch" of the third automotive energy revolution change, now the new energy vehicle market growth rate is stabilizing, the pattern is beginning to appear, the antagonism between the new creation and the traditional pattern is deepening, Toyota as a representative of the traditional joint venture car companies, for the current new energy vehicle market initial pattern of the subversion, how much is the subversion?
Standing on the cusp of the great changes in the automotive industry that have been encountered in a century, can Toyota once again become the standard definer of the auto market in the new era? These problems are not only the market's torture of the world's first car companies, but also the market's expectations for an old car company that has accumulated more than 20 years in the field of new energy vehicles.
If a worker desires to do a good thing, he must first use it
Thanks to the support of the national subsidy policy, the attraction of intelligent technology car experience, the change of traditional service forms, in recent years, consumers' attitude towards new energy vehicles has gradually changed from conservative to open, and Chinese brands that have taken the lead in enriching the layout of products have become the first batch of objects of widespread concern to end consumers in the pure electric vehicle market.
However, at a time when the market penetration rate of new energy vehicles is less than 30%, this does not mean that the future pattern has been finalized.
Just as the so-called "work wants to do good, must first use the weapon", in order to achieve a steady transformation in the context of continuous turbulence in the changing situation, the probability of technical "trial and error" is compressed to a minimum, and the cost of trial and error of users is minimized, and the first move of Toyota electrification has actually been laid down as early as 1997.
In 1997, Toyota produced the world's first mass-produced HEV model "Prius", and in the past 25 years with Prius as the starting point, Toyota's electrification product layout has been expanding, and the reputation of users has become deeper and deeper.
During these more than 20 years, Toyota not only has 25 years of accumulation and development of electrification technology, with very perfect electrification technology and three-electric system advantages, but also under the all-round electrification product layout of HEV, PHEV, BEV, and FCEV, Toyota's cumulative sales of electrified vehicles in the world have exceeded 20 million. Moreover, in the past 25 years, the accident rate of Toyota's three electric systems has been zero.
This series of data not only proves Toyota's technical hard power in the core three-electric system, but also means that Toyota already has the largest electrification "user" base disk in the current global market in the electrification market. And such a word-of-mouth advantage is the biggest confidence of Toyota to accelerate the "anti-super" in the pure electric market.
Therefore, from toyota's gradual transformation from a single energy structure to today's multi-route electrification trajectory, from the era of oil vehicles to the era of trams, Toyota's insight into electrification is actually far more acute than we think, and the layout of the future car market is more long-term than other brands.
However, compared with the rapids of other car companies, Toyota has chosen to do the right thing at the right time. After the dual carbon target has become the ultimate goal of new energy, Toyota has also accelerated the "full power to electricity".
Such a gradual transformation process is destined to have more technical support and more sustainable development significance than the new power car companies starting from scratch.
Not forgetting the original intention of driving is the greatest respect for the new era
In the first quarter of this year, a relatively abnormal phenomenon occurred. Due to the decline of subsidies and the rise in raw material costs, the domestic new energy vehicle market has set off multiple rounds of crazy "price increases", down to tens of thousands of yuan of mini cars, up to more than 200,000 yuan of high-end intelligent electric vehicles, there are increases ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of yuan.
Logically, due to the uncertainty of the rise and fall of raw material costs, in the context of rising car prices, the new energy vehicle market should have ushered in a round of "cooling off period".
What is surprising is that this round of price increases has spawned a "rush to buy" in the new energy vehicle market. The reason is that, in addition to the sharp increase in the cost of economic vehicles brought about by the rise in oil prices, a series of "value experiences" that are difficult to achieve in fuel vehicles of the same level, such as the rapid acceleration of electric vehicles, power strength, cabin quiet, and the novel experience of intelligent technology, have gradually become the key reasons for attracting consumers.
If electric vehicles beat fuel vehicles by virtue of their superior driving experience, then in the electric vehicle market, how to open up the "difference"?
For this problem, most of the new energy vehicle companies on the market at present, some think that it is intelligent driving, and some think that it is customer experience...
Toyota's answer is the ultimate form of driving - "driving pleasure". Frankly speaking, in the current 200,000-level intelligent electric vehicle market, there are almost no products that focus on "driving control".
After all, the driving control fun born in the fuel era is not the pursuit of various parameters, but whether the user's driving sense of the entire vehicle is precise and precise, which puts forward high technical requirements for the innate foundation of the car company and the acquired tuning ability.
But this is precisely the advantage of Toyota as a traditional giant.
Unlike the physical parameter data of electric vehicles in this level of market that insist on zero hundred acceleration, in the BEV exclusive platform through low center of gravity, high rigidity and carefully tuned suspension system, battery chassis integration design, and Toyota and Subaru jointly developed X-MODE four-wheel drive off-road auxiliary mode, the newly developed Grip-Control intelligent creep mode, by reducing the center of gravity, and enhancing off-road performance, bZ4X emphasizes a driving pleasure that integrates physical body sense and sensual satisfaction.
It is worth mentioning that in the future, Toyota will also introduce an OMG package version equipped with a racer steering wheel and steer-by-wire system, at which time, the driving pleasure and control experience of the bZ4X will be further improved.
If it were not for the past few decades, based on user reputation and user feedback, and the accumulation of innate driving control foundation and acquired tuning experience, how can Toyota bZ4X play this trump card with the most "competitive advantage of difference" in the electrification market?
Therefore, looking back at the moment, rather than saying that the traditional giants represented by Toyota are "slow" in the pace of electrification transformation, it is better to say that they do not fight a battle that has no chance of winning.
After making sufficient preparations, you can hit a blow and accelerate the counter-overtaking.
Red dot observation:
In our opinion, the bZ4X for Toyota is the beginning of its electrification from defense to attack. Because this is a competition for the "right to speak" of the future car market, it should be different from the conservative attitude of the past.
It can be seen that starting from bZ4X, Toyota will not only accelerate the introduction of new electric vehicles and build a rich and powerful electric product matrix, but also compete with Tesla, new power car companies and many independent high-end intelligent electric vehicle companies through the advantages of safe and reliable three-electric technology and driving control pleasure.