Grabbing iCar, leaving Apple Car with nowhere to go; Contacted Huawei, but kept Huawei's cooperation secret; What medicine is sold in Chery Hulu? Maybe this conference will give us an answer.
At the Chery New Energy Vehicle Conference on April 7, Chery executives said that Chery's cooperation with Huawei "has had contact, communication, and that's it." This is interpreted as the cooperation between Chery and Huawei, or will change.
However, judging from the entire conference, Chery's technical reserves do not seem to need Huawei's blessing.
Chery used an hour and a half, 5 executives took turns on the stage, even the first new car is only a "glimpse" like an appearance, and the rest of the time is all exported to the outside world, how Chery will keep up with the tide of new energy.
If you emotionally summarize it in one sentence, it is that all the words you have heard and seen in the new energy vehicle market in recent years have been condensed into a press conference by Chery.
A colleague in the media wrote in the circle of friends: "Tonight's press conference makes people find the feeling of the Volkswagen Group night before the Frankfurt Motor Show. ”
I think this is definitely not a compliment, because people who know Volkswagen can probably feel the subtlety after watching this press conference.
And deconstructing this press conference is actually deconstructing Chery's new energy ambitions.
I don't know how many people still remember Yin Tongyue's words of "having more children and fighting", the multi-brand strategy of that year is difficult to say success in retrospect, but in the new energy era, market changes may also inject a new understanding into this sentence.
Chery's new energy future is based on technology, through the combination and construction of different technologies, to match new energy products that meet the needs of different consumers, and these products are interpreted by brands with different positioning, so as to achieve coverage of a wider market and relative independence between brands.
What was the one-and-a-half-hour press conference about?
An hour and a half of extremely informative press conference, Chery contributed a large number of "proper nouns", in fact, for the media on the scene, it needs to be sorted out.
First of all, Chery clarified its brand matrix:
Chery, Xingtu, Jietu, and iCar released last night, the positioning of the four brands is: technology has love, the national choice; High-end, super comfortable; Travel + car brands; A new force of scene intelligence.
In fact, in the brand development in the past few years, the positioning of Chery and Jietu is basically clear, and Xingtu, which has been eager to soar high, has actually encountered many twists and turns. The iCar is not the first time it has appeared in Chery's statement, and this time it has been completely upgraded to an independent "new force brand of the group".
iCar will anchor and chase new young users, build a process system facing users, build a full-link digital touch point experience system around users' full-scenario car experience, and connect 100% of users. To put it simply, it basically follows the successful experience of the current new force brand.
In the future, Chery's brands will be fully elected, including hybrid, range extension, pure electric and hydrogen options.
Next, there is the rush of the stars:
The Xingtu brand released the new energy product series - Star Era STERRA, and launched two models, STERRA ES and STERRA ET, positioning medium and large electric SUVs and electric sedans respectively. In the future, the Star Era STERRA will cover B to C class, sedans, SUVs and MPVs in a variety of body forms, pure electric and extended range two power forms.
At this conference, more conceptual content such as the birth concept and user definition of the Star Era STERRA product series was explained, and the actual experience of specific products will need to wait for a while.
Finally, Chery's technical reserves support the transformation of all the above brands to new energy and a new product matrix.
It includes four major technical areas: Mars Architecture, Kunpeng Power, Lion Intelligence and Galactic Ecology.
To this end, Chery will establish more than 300 Yaoguang laboratories, invest more than 100 billion yuan in R&D funds, and build a R&D team of 20,000 people.
Under the Mars architecture, the third-generation super hybrid platform and the E0X high-performance electric platform will be launched to meet the needs of the next generation of products.
At the same time, there are a total of 135 intelligent and ecological technologies supporting these two platforms, including third-generation hybrid technology, battery technology, electric drive technology, Chery's full-stack self-developed CHERY-OS, Lion Zhiyun 6.0 intelligent cockpit technology, intelligent driving technology, Galaxy ecology and so on.
Dismantling and interpreting these technologies may be another long article.
Simply put, Chery has reserved all technologies including hybrid engines, gearboxes, batteries, operating systems, intelligent cockpits, and intelligent driving for its new energy strategy, and a PPT led by CTO Gao Xinhua and 16 experts in various fields is enough to show that this even includes Gu Junli in the field of intelligent driving, and her first two jobs were at Tesla and Xpeng.
How to replicate the success of "Polytechnic Man"?
The last "science and engineering man" Wang Chuanfu, using DM-i and blade batteries to make BYD sweep the market, and Chery, who has always advertised himself as a "science and engineering man", must be unwilling.
For a long time, Chery has actually ceased to be the most glorious one in domestic brands.
But you know, in the past 2022, Chery sold 1.2327 million vehicles, more than Great Wall; revenue of 208.6 billion yuan, surpassing Geely; export 451,000 vehicles, second only to SAIC.
However, although the sales of 233,000 new energy vehicles hit a new high, the main products are still QQ ice cream, Little Ant and Unbounded Pro, three mini vehicles, and although the hybrid brand of Kunpeng Power is played, the market performance is tepid.
In areas such as intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit, Chery has not come up with many products in the past.
Zhang Guozhong mentioned at the beginning of the press conference that Chinese brands are ushering in opportunities to change lanes and surpass, and new energy, intelligent networking, shared travel, platforms and ecology are all opportunities. And for Chery itself, why not?
It seems that Chery seems to be moving a beat slower, but in fact, it is not too late, and even to some extent, it can step on the road of experience of predecessors and take fewer detours.
For example, the emphasis on new energy technology, after all, in the current market, except for BYD's DM-i and blade battery killing, there is no other brand that can be truly successful. Foreigners' MEB or e-TNGA have limited competitiveness, and Geely's flag-shaking Raytheon power is barely better than Great Wall's lemon and coffee.
This is certainly an opportunity for Chery.
Under the "Yaoguang 2025" strategy, Chery has created 4 major fields, 15 core technologies and more than 1,000 key technologies.
The super hybrid platform has zero hundred acceleration of 4.2s, fuel consumption of 4.2L, pure electric range of 165 kilometers, and comprehensive range of 1400 kilometers, which can cover A-B class cars, SUVs, and MPVs.
The E0X platform supports pure electric and extended range, covering A+ to C-class models, with a range of 700km+, a battery life of 150km in 5 minutes, a energy consumption of 12 degrees per 100km, and a high computing power of 1000TOPS.
From the technical interpretation released by Chery, you can also peek into the planning of many future products, such as 180° rotating seats, 60/80/100 degree battery packs, L2++ to L4 capable intelligent driving... Leaving enough room for imagination for 20+ products in the next two years.
But it's probably too early to say success.
After all, the new models equipped with Kunpeng super performance electric hybrid C-DM, Xingtu Yaoguang, Chery Tiggo 9, TJ-1 and Jetway Traveler have only been unveiled, and the Star Era STERRA products have not been revealed in more details, and it will take a long process from the launch to the dealership.
The construction and operation of the system around users is not an overnight achievement, and all brands of NIO's success are in their eyes, but there seem to be not many who can really replicate success.
But in any case, at least in this hour and a half of the Water Cube, the outside world saw a Chery that was not the same as before, and the next thing is left to time to prove.
Large corporate perspective
Frankly speaking, people have been a little numb to such a grand narrative launch for a long time, and the brand that held the longest launch in history 5 years ago is now one meter tall.
On the one hand, people are used to receiving simple and direct information, on the other hand, the stimulation that the product itself can bring is more direct than technical terms.
But for Chery, it does need such a press conference to justify and cheer for itself, at least such a high-profile flag is erected, in order not to be slapped in the face, you have to redouble your efforts in the future.
The speeches of five executives, Zhang Guozhong, Gao Xinhua, Bo Siyu, Jin Xin and Li Xueyong, are also very similar to a typical Chery who is transforming at the same time.
witnessed Chery's Zhang Guozhong "blowing the trumpet" from scratch; "Technical man" Gao Xinhua released the dry goods move of the entire press conference; And Bosiyu has the identity of an iCAR CEO, expanding his experience to higher-end products after selling Little Ant; Jin Xin's speech had some more emotional words, and seemed to be trying to make Star Era STERRA more temperament different from traditional Chery; Li Xueyong is ultimately responsible for connecting technology to products and markets for consumers to understand. ——Still full of the seriousness and simplicity of science and engineering men, but at the same time, they will also try to talk to consumers in the new era.
The famous saying "having more children is good to fight" is still vaguely around my ears, but this time, several children will support Chery's next sky together.