"After the Zhijie S7 was launched, it received 20,000 large orders in a short period of time. But then, we had problems such as factory relocation and supply shortages. At the Huawei HarmonyOS Ecosystem Spring Communication Conference on April 11, Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei, CEO of Consumer BG, and Chairman of Huawei Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, explained that the delivery of Zhijie S7 has been dismal since its launch last year.
We saw that from November last year to February this year, the cumulative sales of Zhijie S7 were only 794 units. Sporadic deliveries, this model lost the opportunity to "become an instant hit", and gradually became a marginal product in the same class of models in the field of public opinion. With the solution of these production capacity constraints, after nearly 5 months, Chery and Huawei chose to "re-launch" the Zhijie S7, hoping to bring it back to the center of the public opinion field and create new achievements for M7 and M9.
"The new intelligent driving S7 has upgraded its battery life and configuration, but the price has not changed. There's no way, now the car market is too rolly, and Zhijie S7 is selling at a loss. Yu Chengdong said. In order to show its determination to return to the market, Zhijie also readjusted the configuration and price of the S7. This time, Zhijie S7 has launched a total of five versions: Pro, Max, Max+, Max RS and Ultra, with a price of 240,900 yuan to 349,800 yuan.
Among them, although the price of the Pro version has not been adjusted, the battery capacity has been increased from 60kWh to 82kWh, the range has been increased by 155 kilometers, and it is also equipped with Huawei's pure visual intelligent driving solution for the first time. The prices of the Max, Max+, and Max RS versions have been reduced by 20,000 yuan, and the new Ultra version has been upgraded to a CATL 100kWh battery based on the Max RS, with a range of 751 kilometers and a 0-100 acceleration time of 3.3 seconds. At the same time, in order to avoid "backstabbing" old car owners, Zhijie also provided 13,000 yuan of car owner care for the old car owners (excluding the Pro version) that had been ordered before. Among them, it contains a cash red envelope of 10,000 yuan and a MagLink tablet set worth 3,000 yuan.
In the automotive industry, there has actually been a precedent of "secondary listing". For example, Xpeng G9 was "relisted" two days after its launch due to price and configuration problems. At that time, Xpeng did not re-hold the press conference, but only announced the new price and configuration through official channels, but in the end, the G9 was "lived" through the price reduction of the 2024 model model. Like the Zhijie S7, there seems to be no situation in the industry where two consecutive press conferences are held for the same model.
"Today we have overcome these difficulties. The rain has been stinging, and the spring flowers are blooming. Today, Zhijie S7 started mass delivery. According to Yu Chengdong, at present, Chery's factory can roll off the assembly line of a Zhijie S7 in one minute. With the increase of production capacity, the orders accumulated in the early stage of Zhijie S7 have started to accelerate the release. According to third-party data, from April 1 to 7, the sales volume of Zhijie S7 reached 1063 units.
It was re-launched after a five-month hiatus
As the first sedan in the smart car business, the Zhijie S7 focuses on Hongmeng cockpit 4.0 and Huawei's ADAS intelligent driving. After nearly five months, these features have been upgraded. First of all, the Pro version is equipped with HUAWEI ADS Basic Edition, which is an intelligent driving that does not rely on LiDAR and high-definition maps. In terms of the visual scheme of intelligent driving, Tesla has always been the most admired.
According to Yu Chengdong, the Zhijie S7 Pro version supports national highways and urban expresswaysNCA intelligent driving pilot assistance, which can achieve intelligent driving on and off ramps, and has a certain ability to independently change lanes and avoid obstacles and bypass when encountering road construction, cone barrel diversion and other scenarios.
In addition, Huawei's high-end intelligent driving city NCA has also been fully upgraded recently, supporting all major roads and branch roads in 40,000+ cities and towns across the country. According to Huawei's official data, the success rate of incoming/outgoing elevated highways in intelligent driving cities is as high as 99.2%. Its intelligent parking capabilities have also evolved again. At present, Zhijie S7 supports car driving, valet parking, remote control parking, and it is expected that by May and June this year, Zhijie S7 will support mechanical parking spaces.
The data of the omnidirectional collision avoidance function has also been further improved. The forward active safety AEB has been increased from 4 km/h to 120 km/h last year, the top speed has been increased to 150 km/h, the maximum braking speed has been increased from 90 km/h to 120 km/h, the maximum speed of lateral active avoidance has been increased from 120 km/h to 130 km/h, and the active recognition of stationary/dynamic pedestrians and stationary/dynamic vehicles has been added, and the maximum speed of rear active safety has been increased from 12 km/h to 60 km/h.
In terms of smart cockpits, the HarmonyOS 4 Super Desktop 2.0 supports full mobile phone applications, HUAWEI MagLink can expand the screen for the rear row, and the in-car smart assistant Xiaoyi will be connected to Huawei's Pangu model in May, becoming a smarter private car consultant.
When Yu Chengdong introduced the Hongmeng cockpit, he did not forget to "tease" a competitor of Zhijie S7 - Xiaomi SU7. "A strong heart, no need for a phone holder. Yu Chengdong bluntly said that he didn't understand why many cars should add mobile phone holders, and later realized that the navigation performance of their cars was not good, and they wanted to install a mobile phone holder to navigate with mobile phones. Yu Chengdong said that more than 99% of users equipped with Hongmeng car machines are using their own navigation systems.
And shortly after the press conference, #余承东问车上为何搞手机支架#这一话题迅速冲上热搜. At around 7 o'clock in the evening, the chairman of Xiaomi Auto also responded to Yu Chengdong's ridicule and interacted with netizens: "Do you support the original mobile phone holder in the car? Why do you think we make the original mobile phone holder?"
At the same time, Lei Jun also launched a vote on whether to support the design of the original Xiaomi SU7 mobile phone holder. As of press time, 148,000 people have participated in the vote. Of these, 125,000 supported and 23,000 did not. What's more interesting is that before the second listing of Zhijie S7, Lei Jun also posted "I wish Zhijie S7 a big sale!" This interaction between the two sides was ridiculed by netizens as "plastic love".
HarmonyOS opens the "big year of products"
At this press conference, Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery, also personally stood on the platform to break the rumors that Chery and Huawei did not cooperate well. "If China wants to build a good car, it can't do without Huawei. If China's automobile wants to become an automobile power from a large automobile country to an automobile power, it needs the blessing and empowerment of Huawei's Hongmeng system. Yin Tongyue said. He said that Huawei's ultimate pursuit of products and technologies is an example for Chery to learn.
"In such a competitive situation, the right way to go is to combine the best of the best. Yin Tongyue said. It also mentioned that Chery will cooperate with Huawei as the first priority project in the internal ranking. To this end, the two parties have become a completely independent Zhijie brand division, led by Chery's R&D and manufacturing leaders.
This is suspected to be in response to the previous speculation caused by the production capacity problem of the Zhijie S7. At that time, it was reported that Chery had ceded the production capacity of the Zhijie S7 to the Star Era ES, which was launched at the same time, which was the first product of Chery's high-end brand Xingtu's new energy sequence Star Era. Not only that, Yin Tongyue also said that he meets and communicates with Yu Chengdong every month, holds online meetings every week, and sends WeChat exchanges every day.
At the press conference, Yu Chengdong also announced two sets of data. The first is that the new M7 has sold 174,000 units in seven months since it was launched at the end of September last year. A few days ago, Wenjie lowered the price of some versions of the new M7, which may boost the sales of the new M7 to further increase. The second is that since the launch of the M9 in January, the cumulative number of units has exceeded 70,000 units in three months. "At present, the monthly delivery capacity of Wenjie M's in September is 15,000 units, and we hope that the monthly shipment volume will quickly increase to 25,000 units, and we are accelerating the increase in production capacity. Yu Chengdong said.
At the press conference, Yu Chengdong also previewed the upcoming release of the new M5 at this year's Beijing Auto Show. Referring to the popularity of the M7 after the renewal, the renewal of the new M5 is still very interesting. In particular, with the new M7 and M9 selling well to the Wenjie brand, it will also be beneficial for the new M5 to open up the market. This new car will go head-to-head with the upcoming Ideal L6. In addition, the Xiangjie S9, a collaboration between Huawei and BAIC, is also expected to be unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show. With the "blooming" of Hongmeng Zhixing's products, Huawei's car BU has turned a profit in March and is about to enter the profit stage.