What is the chemical reaction between Chery iCAR and Zhimi Technology?
On April 12th, a press conference that was half smart meters and half iCAR revealed some of the mysteries. At the Chery iCAR Brand Night, Dr. Su Jun, Founder CEO of Zhimi Technology and Chief Product Officer of iCAR Automotive, made an appearance. The brand logo of iCAR has also changed the style of tangram.
"Although it seems to be just a change in form, it is actually a consensus on the development of enterprises after integration. In the interview before the press conference, Dr. Su Jun answered the questions of the media, including the automobile commune, without leaking. Of course, more details were unveiled at the press conference.
As Dr. Su Jun said, he is very confident that there is value in this industry, not to "make trouble", but out of a deep understanding of users, that is, to find the deep desire and demand of young users and pan-rice noodle users for automotive products, and want to do this from the origin of user value.
The starting point is to create value for these users, rather than creating a random car to join the competition. At the press conference, the appearance of V23 and X25 also confirmed what was said.
In addition, several problems that made the outside world wonder in the early stage, for example, the distinction between smart rice and Xiaomi is very blurred, etc., are also clear. In short, the car made by the two parties after the "deep integration" is the iCAR brand, and the qualification is iCAR, all of which belong to the iCAR division of Chery Group.
The next question is whether the iCAR will be able to achieve satisfactory results after the product is launched. At least, in the interview before the press conference, it can be seen that Dr. Su Jun's state is still a little tense.
Deep integration
The first question is, of course, what changes has Zhimi Technology brought to Chery iCAR?
From the mouth of Dr. Su Jun, the methodology of explosive products, deep integration, the principle of assumed success, reverse pricing, "Xiaomi Ecological Chain Battlefield Notes", "Cultural Strategy", ...... The contrast between the concept of Xiaomi's style and Chery's cautious and conservative style is indeed a bit weird.
Moreover, the iCAR V23, which has uncovered the mystery, and the X25, which has the image of a lunar rover, show the new power that broke out after the "deep integration" of traditional car companies and Internet technology companies. One of the phrases I heard after the press conference was "This trip was not in vain. "It's the best proof of that.
In terms of process, Zhimi Technology will start to incubate the team of car manufacturing in 2021, and the main body of incubation at that time is Zhimi. However, in the process of development, the automotive industry has changed, so Dr. Su Jun found Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery Holdings.
After Yin Tongyue's matchmaking, Dr. Su Jun met with Zhang Hongyu, General Manager of Chery New Energy and General Manager of iCAR Brand Division.
Su Jun said that now, the automotive entrepreneurship team incubated by Zhimi has been fully integrated into the iCAR business department, and there is an essential difference between the Zhimi team and Huawei's car manufacturing, and the Zhimi entrepreneurship team has injected vitality into iCAR in the form of integration.
However, "Chery, as a traditional independent brand, is actually quite difficult to be a new energy brand. Zhang Hongyu still told the truth. "Difficult", not only Chery, but also the industry, including SAIC, FAW, Dongfeng, Geely, Great Wall, Changan, etc., is quite difficult to make new brands of new energy.
The difficulty lies in the fact that the user thinking, Internet thinking, and marketing methods required by the new energy track are difficult for traditional car companies to adapt to due to too much inertia. Moreover, the traffic "star absorption method" of Huawei and Xiaomi's press conference is also not available to traditional enterprises. However, in the current market, it is necessary to compete with each other, so it is extremely difficult for traditional car companies to make such a new energy brand.
After the "deep integration", the first thing to do is to think about what products iCAR wants to launch to impress users. Because iCAR is "making cars for young people", what kind of cars young people like has been discussed for a long time within the team.
The final conclusion is that the car that young people like is "I hope that this car is fun, easy to drive, can impress them in terms of styling, and also has a sense of technology and soul." Therefore, around these directions, iCAR divides the future cars into three sequences:
0 sequence: iCAR 03, representing the direction of science and technology and refinement;
V sequence: V23, representing the direction of style off-road;
X-Series: X25, the all-new "new species" of the new box. And the debut of the X25 also reflects a fairly strong impact.
From the product level, iCAR from 03 to V23 has the meaning of "wild" in it, and the meaning of "wild" is more like giving people a yearning for the wild, but it is not wild in the pure functional sense.
As for the price of V23, Zhang Hongyu said that it is impossible to shout "90,009" like everyone shouts, but the future price of these series models will definitely show "sincerity and strength". "Dr. Su and I have been looking forward to making the iCAR brand 'fight' in the industry. ”
In addition, since it is integrated, it is impossible to be without difficulties and challenges when the Internet thinking collides with the thinking of traditional car companies.
In this regard, Zhang Hongyu said, "The integration between me and Dr. Su has made everyone see the future of iCAR relatively clearly, so everyone's internal promotion efficiency is very high. The launch of iCAR 03 and V23 have received a good response from the market, which are the results of the joint promotion of the integration team. ”
Of course, there are some difficulties in this process, if you want to do a good job of iCAR based on the explosive product methodology, you must first set up a geek team and build it according to the standards of a lean organization, and there will be a run-in in thinking, but because the overall team is relatively young, you can understand it.
"In our view, the integrated iCAR will have a strong anti-risk ability with both Chery-empowered technology base, strong manufacturing and supply chain, and strong anti-risk capabilities. At the same time, the doctoral team has accumulated a large number of methods in the Xiaomi ecological chain, and these new ideas can be effectively nested with the iCAR brand. ”
"Explosive Product Methodology"
I raised a question, from the very beginning of Wei Xiaoli to the current Xiaomi car, and then to the future, is it the Internet thinking companies that kill the traditional car companies, or the traditional car companies that absorb the Internet thinking and transform it into a new technology company, who will occupy the real mainstream in the end?
According to Zhang Hongyu's understanding, the future competition lies in who grasps the trend and who builds a deeper brand moat, and who has a greater chance of winning.
Dr. Su Jun believes that when the industry shifts from the original "channel, supply chain" to "user-centric", such a powerful enterprise will be turned upside down. The logic behind this, the methods, methods, starting points, and attitudes used are completely different.
Dr. Su Jun, who said that "modeling is my profession, but not limited to modeling", said that he has experienced Xiaomi mobile phones and Xiaomi ecological chain, "There is no need to repeat too much, how the Xiaomi ecological chain has created hundreds of billions of assets from scratch and driven the entire consumer electrical appliance industry to change, and the automobile industry is likely to repeat itself." ”
And companies like Xiaomi and Huawei, as long as they enter an industry, they will have earth-shaking changes. Because, when moving from the B-end perspective to the C-end perspective, it is the user perspective and the user thinking is generated.
At the same time, he also believes that this result must be benign. Because the car itself is a consumer product, it needs to be calibrated from the user's point of view, and after calibration, the user will definitely get a bigger and better product, a better experience, the user will definitely get higher satisfaction, and the entire industry will be more benign and vigorous. At that time, the new energy field will become more vigorous than it is now.
For traditional car companies such as Chery iCAR, Su Jun believes that new energy will essentially bring about the transformation of the pattern of the automotive industry, and there must be survival of the fittest in this transformation, so in the end, it is still "the user wins the world", "there must be new forces to die, and there will be old forces to be eliminated, but the last survivor must be able to fully learn, absorb, and then change, and finally form a team." ”
And when it comes to users, there is a popular saying nowadays that "there are too many cars, and there are not enough young people." ”
Dr. Su Jun said, "I don't think it's really that there are not enough young people, but that the needs of young people are seriously neglected, which is really something I will never forget. At the press conference, Dr. Su Jun made a complete statement of "why build a car", which will not be repeated here.
In the process of creating a "young man's car", Dr. Su Jun frequently mentioned the "explosive product methodology". The biggest effect of this methodology and specific play method is to change the previous car-making thinking of Chery and iCAR.
He said, "We look like a so-called modeling product, but in fact it is a commercial logic, just like when we look at Apple's products, I think it's beautiful, but is it just industrial design? No, it's a combination of countless elements, the commercial logic of feel, system, hardware integration." In other words, the commercialization of the product is a more systematic logic.
The core logic of the "explosive product methodology" lies in the fact that, just like the original air purifier made by Zhimi Technology, it has been the first in the same type of products in China for eight consecutive years, with a sales volume of more than 20 million units, the first is to grasp the core needs of users, the second is to use the geek team to deeply understand users, focus on subtraction, focus on the core value of users, and finally reverse pricing based on the principle of assumed success.
After the product is launched, the product has a continuous and large number of self-propagation because of its good reputation, and then fission, and finally forms a popular model. Explosive models bring traffic, and traffic can give birth to the generation of another popular model.
Therefore, the popular model is not necessarily cheap. Zhang Hongyu said that iCAR is not a cheap car, but a "car that young people yearn for", which is not available in the industry now. After the team is deeply integrated, it will definitely have a greater ability to provide these high-value products.
Part of the core users
So, what is the logic of the product planning of the iCAR brand?
Dr. Su Jun explained, "Product planning is not what we want to do, but the transformation from 'technology Chery' to 'technology Chery + user Chery', that is, users can do what they need. Assuming that the core users of iCAR need hard-core pure electric off-road, then do it, and everything starts from the user's needs. ”
So, how to achieve insight into "user needs"?
For example, just like the location of Zhimi Technology, surrounded by Zhihu, Feishu, 58.com, Baidu, Xiaomi, Good Future, and Kuaishou, the young people in these companies are all target customers (the core target users of iCAR, of course, are the young people of Kochi in the first and second-tier cities), how to gain insight into their user needs?
Quite simply, "because we're them, we're part of the core users, and that's the best way to get to know our users." "So, in fact, it's essentially making a product for yourself, and you can't make a product that you don't even want and sell it to customers.
According to Dr. Su, this approach has also been proven in the automotive industry. For example, why is Li Xiang successful? Because Li Xiang is the core user of L9, his cognitive insight into this product far exceeds that of ordinary users.
"Also, when Mr. Lei (Lei Jun) made mobile phones, he often carried more than a dozen mobile phones in his pocket and hundreds of mobile phones in his drawer. ”
In addition to users, what insights does Dr. Su Jun have for the automotive industry?
Dr. Su Jun said, "I have found that there is a business law that any mainstream market develops from a marginal market. "Great Wall makes SUVs, and Nike makes sneakers. "Doing anything is not about starting with a mass-market product that caters to the needs of all people. ”
In Dr. Su Jun's view, a brand must have a very strong core. The more focused the kernel is, the more it will be able to capture the overlooked user needs. It is often a marginal user, which can give a stronger explosive force, because once the brand breaks out, the power will be weakened. If the core is insufficient, in the process of outbreaking, the brand's stamina will be gone.
Due to fate, iCAR, as Chery's "new special zone", has the promise of Yin Tongyue, chairman of the group, that he will spare no effort to support iCAR, and there is no upper limit on investment, so that iCAR will enter the first camp of new energy.
Since the dream is like a tiger with wings, Dr. Su Jun, who is cold and warm-hearted, can't help but feel proud, "In the future, we will speak in a more powerful way and make products." ”