Electric view
Written by | Liu Jihao
For the winner of the traditional track, the transformation of new energy does not seem to be an easy thing to make up his mind, but once he is serious, it must not be comparable to the new forces simply stacking configurations and parameters.
A few days ago, the night before the launch of Dongfeng Honda's first pure electric vehicle with Honda logo, e:NS1, Honda China held an online event with the theme of "Reinventing EV Driving Fun". Katsushi Inoue, Managing Director of Honda Giken Industries Co., Ltd. and Minister of China Katsushi Inoue, handed the stage to the engineers after briefly releasing the e:N brand declaration, slogan, and the launch of the first mass-produced model — because they were the protagonists of the whole conference.
From the mouths of this group of lovely engineers, many of the information captured by the author point to one point: in the era of pure electricity, Honda wants to redefine the driving pleasure of electric vehicles.
Start with technology and be true to somatosensory
It is no secret that electric vehicles are speeding up quickly, but when they first start to contact, many old drivers who are accustomed to driving fuel vehicles will feel "addicted" and "energetic", but many people often ignore the feelings of other passengers in the car, the most typical is motion sickness.
Such a situation has occurred many times in the scene of electric vehicles, not only the new forces of car manufacturing, including some traditional car companies' early electric vehicle products. However, Honda's engineers said very affirmatively that electric vehicle motion sickness will become history, because Honda has made countless tests and adjustments to pedal feedback according to the output characteristics of the motor, and people feel more when driving a sense of linear acceleration of traditional fuel vehicles, but they do not sacrifice the dynamic characteristics of the overall speed.
How does Honda do this? We can see the foundation from a data, which is aimed at China's road environment and user use scenarios, and the electronic control assembly has become more than 20,000 control algorithms - this number is more than 40 times that of ordinary EV models.
At the same time, because electric vehicles do not have the obvious noise of the engine, in order to increase driving pleasure, Honda has transplanted its own simulation engine acceleration sound (Honda EV Sound), which was well received in the Formula E race, to the e:N product, which makes people feel bloody.
Moreover, the reason why the e:N brand dares to shout "reinventing EV driving fun", Honda's accumulated aerodynamic control experience in F1 events has also been widely applied, such as from the simulation optimization of modeling design to the details of chassis flatness. This is not only reflected in reducing wind resistance and increasing vehicle stability, including NVH control, Honda's approach is also very targeted - because there is no engine noise, people's sensitivity to wind noise outside the car, tire noise and noise in the electrification parts of the car is multiplied, so engineers have adopted various measures to reduce the impact of these noise sources on the interior of the car, whether it is high frequency, intermediate frequency, or low frequency.
There are many similar details, in short, in order to make the first pure electric car that hangs the Honda car logo different, engineers not only have to look at the data, but also pay attention to people's actual feelings - as a chassis engineer said, "Maybe the data will deceive people, but the car will not!" ”
e:N enters the market, the starting point is not the same
The whole conference lasted nearly half an hour, and the engineers shared half of it, and from this detail, it can be seen that Honda has confidence in its pure electric products and wants to express its own difference.
The difference between the e:N brand should be very obvious for the old owners of Honda.
For example, the intelligence that young people like today, the e:NS1 and e:NP1 that are the first to be listed are more extreme than any fuel vehicle currently on sale at Honda. The most obvious is the "e:N OS" full-stack intelligent control ecosystem, which combines Honda SENSING intelligent driver assistance system with Honda CONNECT vehicle networking system, and intelligent digital cockpit. 15.1-inch large HD ultra-thin frame central control screen to achieve a three-in-one display, convenient and easy to use, is many brands of simple stacking screen practice can not be compared; and Honda CONNECT 3.0 pure electric vehicle exclusive version, set a natural and smooth AI voice assistant, car home interconnection, energy management, OTA online upgrade and other more than 20 functions, is also the same level of leadership, breaking the tradition of joint venture brand car machine is not very grounded; Honda model for the first time equipped with DMC driver status perception system, It can effectively identify the driver's status, and even detect the emotional changes to actively remind, with AR accurate intelligent navigation and panoramic automatic parking and other functions, to further improve the safety factor.
Moreover, not only is the product force different, the e:N brand has also been upgraded in the production and sales service end.
In the production process, in the words of Katsushi Inoue, "Honda's consistent requirement of 120% yield rate will only become more stringent in the EV era, especially the core part of Sandian." It is said that after the new electric vehicle plants built by Guangqi Honda and Dongfeng Honda are put into operation, they will be the benchmark for Honda's global plants.
In the sales and service links that users contact the most, in order to fully show the difference between the e:N brand, Honda has also launched an online cloud showroom with the times, providing consumers with online one-on-one consultation, appointment test drive, ordering products and other services.
At the same time, offline physical stores will also be fully upgraded. According to the information disclosed by Honda China, Guangqi Honda first launched electrified sales service stores and supermarket stores in core cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and Dongfeng Honda will set up e:N brand areas in existing special stores; in terms of after-sales, Honda provides services through more than 1,200 4S stores across the country today - which is what other new forces can only look at, because the starting point of e:N is much higher.
"Final Talk"
It can be seen that whether it is the era of fuel vehicles or the era of EVs, the original intention of "technical control" Honda for driving pleasure has never changed, and redefining the driving pleasure of electric vehicles is not a slogan, e: N is still the very fragrant Honda Dafa.
Today, Dongfeng Honda e:NS1 has been officially listed, and its starting price of 175,000 yuan is quite honest, which is much thicker than the Toyota C-HR EV that is oil-to-power, not to mention the product strength advantages brought by the new pure electric e:N Architecture architecture. It can also be seen from this that Honda seems to be eager to quickly establish its own advantages in the electric vehicle track, after all, with the three core product forces of "movement, wisdom and beauty" as the selling point of the e:N brand first bomb model, it really makes people see Honda's determination to new energy.
A month later, the Guangqi Honda e:NP1 (Extreme Turbulence 1), which is homologous to e:NS1, will also open pre-sale, at which time, the first new car of the Honda e:N brand will form a joint force to declare war on the new forces of car-making, and by 2027, Honda will launch as many as 10 new e:N brand cars in China to build a complete series of pure electric products.
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