The story of Huawei's concept car continues in the automotive industry.
No, the new HI version of the Polar Fox Alpha S, which has been postponed many times, has finally come out recently.
The new HI version of Polar Fox Alpha S is the first smart electric vehicle to use Huawei's HI full-stack smart car solution. BAIC said that the new car can achieve urban high-level assisted driving capabilities.
Liu Yu, chairman of BAIC BJEV, said, "The new HI version of Jihu Alpha S is a benchmarking product and a symbol of THE intelligent transformation of BAIC BJEV. ”
01 Huawei endorsement, can it reverse the deadlock
Let's take a look at the highlights of the new HI version of Polar Fox Alpha S under the background of Huawei's strong support.
This new car has built-in Huawei's Hongmeng car machine Harmony OS system, which has functions such as unimpeded call, voice interaction, gesture photography, car home mutual control, seamless circulation, and one-touch transmission, which can realize hardware upgrades and software OT. At present, this car machine system has supported a variety of mainstream applications including AutoNavi, Kugou Music, Huawei Music, NetEase Cloud Music, Youku, Migu Video, Huawei Video, and Bilibili.
The car is also equipped with 9 ADAS cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars, 6 millimeter wave radars, and 4 surround view cameras to support Huawei's tailor-made driver assistance system.
In terms of intelligent driving, the Polar Fox Alpha S Huawei HI Edition has reached Huawei's current highest level of automatic driving, providing a point-to-point continuous automatic driving experience from the residential garage to the company's garage, Door To Door. In the scenes of exiting the community, congestion following/congestion, traffic light intersections, unprotected left turn, mixed traffic of people and vehicles to avoid obstacles, highway cruise, lane change, large trucks driving in the line to avoid giving way, up and down ramps/inbound and outbound, automatic parking, etc., there is no need for manual takeover.
In terms of power system, the new HI version of the Polar Fox Alpha S is equipped with dual motors, the maximum power is 473 kW, the combined maximum torque is 655N·m, and the acceleration time of 0-100 km/h is 3.5 seconds. At the same time, the car will also be equipped with a 74.5kWh ternary lithium battery pack, NEDC cruising range of 500km, and support 750V fast charging technology, charging 10 minutes Cruising range can increase by 197km.
In terms of hardware, the Polar Fox Alpha S Huawei HI Edition is equipped with 3 Huawei 96-line vehicle-grade lidars, with a maximum detection distance of 200 meters and a detection frame rate of 10 Hz. With 9 ADAS cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars, 6 millimeter wave radars, 4 surround view cameras, and 11 high-definition cameras, it achieves super perception capabilities with 360° all-round coverage. At the same time, the car is also equipped with Huawei's MDC 810 computing platform, which has a computing power of up to 400 TOPS. In terms of power, the new car is equipped with a dual-motor system provided by Huawei, with a maximum power of 473kW.
In terms of appearance, the new car still maintains the overall style of the ordinary version of the model, the front part of the car adopts a larger area of closed style, and 3 rectangular lidars are added on both sides and in front, which is also an important hardware configuration in Huawei's intelligent driving system.
02 Desperate bets to find the peak loop
In September 2018, Baiqi Blue Valley became the first new energy vehicle stock in China through major asset restructuring, and has been making every effort to build the new energy brand of Jihu. The Polar Fox is enough to be called a chip for its transformation.
To put it bluntly, the success of the cooperative model directly determines whether Beiqi Blue Valley can still have a tomorrow. However, the unfortunate thing is that despite the aura of Huawei overhead, the sales volume of Beiqi Blue Valley is flat.
In terms of market sales, from the annual sales of 150,000 vehicles in 2019 to the annual sales of 26,000 vehicles in 2021, in just 3 years, Beiqi Blue Valley fell from the peak to the bottom. Behind this, in addition to objective factors such as the market environment, the most important factor is that BAIC's own transformation is not satisfactory.
In the past 2021, the Extreme Fox has only achieved sales of 4993 vehicles. Taking the Polar Fox Alpha S as an example, as of March 2022, the sales volume is 1015 vehicles, the cumulative annual sales volume is 1804 vehicles, and the rolling sales trend chart of the latest year is as follows:
You know, in the past two years, the financial data of Beiqi Blue Valley has been miserable. From 2020 to the first quarter of 2022, its cumulative net profit loss was as high as 12.677 billion yuan.
Relying on the B-end market in the early days, as well as financial subsidies, the results of being too easy to get made BAIC lose its way forward. With the decline of subsidies and the rise of the C-end consumer market, it is not surprising that the performance of Beiqi Blue Valley, which cannot come up with competitive products, has shown a cliff-like decline.
In the first quarter of 2022, Beiqi Blue Valley achieved operating income of 1.731 billion yuan, an increase of 108.42% year-on-year; however, the net profit attributable to the mother was 957 million yuan, an increase of 12.08% over the loss of 854 million yuan in the same period of the previous year; and the loss of non-net profit was 973 million yuan, an increase of 8.43% year-on-year from the loss of 898 million yuan in the previous year.
The increase in revenue does not increase profits, and the signs of losses do not stop.
If you look at the annual report, Beiqi Blue Valley has been losing money for 2 consecutive years, and the situation is worrying-
In 2020, Beiqi Blue Valley achieved operating income of 5.272 billion yuan, down 77.65% year-on-year; net profit attributable to the mother loss was 6.482 billion yuan, from a profit of 0.92 billion yuan in the previous year to a loss;
In 2021, Beiqi Blue Valley's revenue was 8.697 billion yuan, an increase of 64.95% year-on-year; the net profit attributable to the mother was 5.244 billion yuan, although the loss margin shrank by 19.11% year-on-year, but it was still a loss.
2022 can be said to be the reform year of Beiqi Blue Valley, mainly reflected in the external marketing began to innovate, no longer stick to the rules, a change in the previous steady operation style, to do a strong pole fox as the main line, through innovative marketing, and strive to open up the C-end market.
The first is the marketing model to launch online + offline integration, and innovative development of direct sales, distribution and digital marketing business; at the level of channel construction, the company for the high-end market to promote direct stores, distribution stores, service network construction, as of the end of March, Jihu Automobile has opened 105 stores, plans to build 150 stores by the end of June, 2022 marketing stores will reach 186.
On April 9, 2022, Jihu Automobile and Beijing Guoan Football Club opened brand cooperation and jointly released the "Green Energy Charging Plan", which is intended to expand the brand influence.
On April 15, Cui Jian's first online concert, exclusively titled by Ji Fox, blew up the circle of friends on the day. The concert, titled "Continue to Sprinkle Some Wild", lasted nearly 3 hours and attracted nearly 46 million viewers to watch online, with more than 110 million likes and more than 2 million comments.
For a time, the circle-breaking marketing of the polar fox became a phenomenon-level event. With this cross-border cooperation between high-end intelligent driving and the entertainment industry, the Jihu brand has become the focus of the outside world in one fell swoop and successfully attracted the attention of consumers.
After Cui Jian's online concert, on April 16, Jihu launched the "Call Bar Champion" on Douyin non-stop, inviting Olympic champions such as Wang Mao, Hui Ruoqi, Xiao Ruoteng and other Olympic champions and car circle Internet celebrities to help Polar Fox Alpha S break the circle.
A meal of operation is as fierce as a tiger, and sales have finally improved.
In the first quarter of 2022, the cumulative sales volume of Beiqi Blue Valley reached 9120 vehicles, an increase of 189.62% year-on-year. Among them, sales in March reached 5,735 units, an increase of 438.5% year-on-year.
In January 2022, Beiqi Blue Valley said at the media communication meeting that the company expects to have a sales target of 100,000 vehicles in 2022, including 40,000 Jihu, and strive to impact 300,000 vehicles in the future. In the first quarter of 2022, the sales volume was only 9120 vehicles, which was 9% of the full-year target.
On April 22, some investors asked Beiqi Blue Valley on the interactive platform about "now the rumors on the market that Beiqi Blue Valley and Huawei have 'fallen out', and the delivery of the Polar Fox Alpha S (HI version) may become a problem" asked Beiqi Blue Valley. Beiqi Blue Valley said that it has noted the relevant information, and in response to false reports, the company will take resolute action to correct the audio-visual.
Beiqi Blue Valley's fiery reply is enough to see how much it attaches importance to Huawei's relationship, whether it can peak and turn around, Huawei may become its final bottom card.
Author: Hui Ze Lee