On the eve of the Beijing Auto Show, in addition to the price war in full swing, the "second wave" of new energy vehicles is intensifying. Especially after Xiaomi joined the warband.
Xiaomi has succeeded in building cars in three years, and there are no major problems, and the speed is incredible in the industry. This also made a number of traditional car companies and new car-making forces gasp and have an opponent who is "next to the couch". And this auto show is undoubtedly the main battlefield of the air competition.
Xiaomi's car manufacturing reflects the industry reality of "software-defined vehicles", with modularization and decoupling of software and hardware. In particular, its chassis system, judging from the public information, emphasizes the "full-stack self-developed chassis control algorithm" in terms of software, and there is no overall explanation of the chassis hardware part. Of course, it's hard to talk about this matter, otherwise my article will be gone.
And Xiaomi is so nervous, the ideal is to avoid its edge, and only Huawei can take it at present. As a seed player against Xiaomi, Huawei's cooperation with Cialis, JAC, Chery, and BAIC has also entered the market, and the Tuling chassis has begun to fight the world. Although Yu Chengdong no longer said "far ahead", everyone knows Huawei's methods.
"Outsiders look at the excitement, insiders look at the doorway", from Huami's "full-stack self-development" and "ecology" Dafa, the logic behind the car manufacturing has completely changed, with the Beijing Auto Show as the battlefield, the car circle has entered a new period of hegemony.
The controversy over the secondary architecture
Xiaomi's impact on the industry is that it seems easier to build a car, but it is actually more difficult. If you want to build a car, you must not only have money and capital to boost, but also have deep technical strength. 40 billion a few years ago is simply not enough now. For example, Chery's technology investment in the past five years will reach 100 billion.
The so-called car building looks at the platform, and the platform looks at the architecture. At the last 2020 Beijing Auto Show, the hot words at that time were platforms and architectures, and the core competitiveness of the R&D system began to show. After several years of market games, the original speculative car companies have died out in this wave of melee. And the platform architecture has evolved to the second wave of elimination.
According to relevant statistics, from 2020 to February 2024, as many as 24 car companies have withdrawn from the Chinese market. Geely's vast architecture, Chery's E0X and M3X platform architecture, including the SDA architecture being built by Changan, are undoubtedly the leaders in their own brands.
Judging from this auto show, the joint venture brands have given way to their own brands. Whether it is a plug-in chaos war or a smart cabin intelligent driving war, it all comes down to the platform. Without a platform, nothing can be accomplished.
Therefore, Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile, can calmly say: "At present, everyone may be very worried about the fierce price war in the industry, but I think it is not so terrible." With the fierce competition in this industry, it will accelerate the 'good money to drive out the bad money', and will return the industry to the benign state of the best value competition. "I have food in my hands, and I don't panic in my heart.
Therefore, new entrants must have unique skills. According to Xiaomi, its "chassis control algorithm" allows vehicle driving to have the ability of full-dimensional perception and global collaborative control, which can not only perceive changes in road conditions ahead in advance, but also respond quickly in milliseconds to achieve global collaborative control of the body, effectively reduce safety risks, and far exceed the passive chassis control of traditional cars.
As for Huawei, Wenjie, Zhijie, Aojie, and Xiangjie have entered the market one after another, all based on its "XX leading" Tuling chassis. According to Huawei, Huawei's Turing intelligent chassis is based on a digital base to achieve multi-domain collaborative control, focusing on intelligent perception and intelligent control, and can provide users with an easy-to-control, safer, and more comfortable driving experience.
In addition, Huawei's vehicle intelligent control center also integrates a series of intelligent algorithms for collaborative vehicle control, such as the MFSS Multimodal Fusion Sensing System, the Dynamic Adaptive Torque System (DATS), and the xMotion intelligent body cooperative control system. In the future automotive intelligence war, it is very certain.
And the new forces of car manufacturing are also building upgrade platforms one after another. Moreover, the decoupling of software and hardware and the decoupling of software and software under the new electronic and electrical architecture have basically been achieved. It goes without saying that 800V high-voltage platforms and silicon carbide are used in applications. That's why we say "second wave".
Under this ever-evolving logic of car manufacturing and modularization, NIO and Xpeng have developed their own sub-brands to decentralize technology and seize market share. The brands that have renewed their lives, such as Zhidou and Southeast, have also entered the competition again with the blessing of car companies.
In addition, Xiaomi and Huawei have their own ecosystems, such as Xiaomi, which emphasizes and emphasizes that "ecology is the core competitiveness". Under the second wave of car manufacturing, Xiaomi relies on strong suppliers and conquest with strong integration capabilities and software algorithms, and the car rim is indeed a bit "square".
What if you don't have your own chassis, or if it's too late? For example, at the end of the year before last, Nezha signed a contract with CATL to buy CATL's skateboard chassis. This shows from the side that skateboard chassis suppliers are also on the rise. In addition to Nezha, CATL's rock chassis scheme is also on the AVATR 12.
Looking at car companies from the perspective of platform architecture, we can know that many car companies cannot support this year's involution. Under the scuffle, after the Beijing Auto Show, there will be another group of car companies that will lose their souls. I have to say that without technical accumulation, it is not effective to sharpen the gun in battle.
Under homogenization
However, one of the side effects of the platform architecture is homogenization. This is based on the concept of modularity.
Cars are becoming more and more modular and homogeneous. As the saying goes, "The essence of involution is serious homogenization." In my opinion, one is the agility of the development system, and the other is "ecology is the core competitiveness" like Xiaomi.
In terms of the R&D system of car manufacturing, it has already shifted from a V-shaped positive R&D system to a "∞" DevOps (DevOps) agile R&D system.
What most people don't know is that the so-called V-shaped forward R&D system is a development system based on the E/E electronic and electrical architecture proposed by OEMs such as Chery, which has also created A-SPICE (Automotive SPICE), a software development system widely used in the automotive industry.
To make a long story, A-SPICE (Automotive SPICE) was first developed in the late 1990s by a group of German automotive companies, including BBA, Bosch and Volkswagen, with the goal of establishing a common framework for evaluating and improving the software development processes used in the automotive industry.
The predecessor of the V-shaped R&D system, V-Model, also known as the verification and validation method, is the testing phase of each development stage that A-SPICE builds on V-Model. Because this development system can well meet the management needs of car companies for large and complex systems and software, it has been vigorously promoted and applied by European and American car companies.
However, with the continuous development of the central computing architecture led by Tesla, the gradual popularization of OTA, and the increasing number of terminal functional applications, OEMs are increasingly required to quickly iterate software versions to meet customer needs and stay one step ahead of other car companies.
Especially with the advent of the era of "software-defined vehicles" and the era of intelligent electrification, the traditional V-shaped development system cannot keep up. However, some OEMs have already begun to introduce the agile development model and implement user-centric DevOps, which shortens the original R&D cycle of 24~36 months to 18~20 months, or even shorter.
DevOps DevOps is a "∞" closed-loop development process, from planning, code, compilation and packaging, testing, release, deployment, to operational feedback, adjustment and continuous improvement, and finally back to planning. This distributed, progressive system is characterized by customer-centricity, continuous feedback, and continuous improvement.
Due to the significant reduction in the time for software development and version iteration under this system, companies such as Tesla and Wei Xiaoli have long been able to apply this R&D system relatively well. The biggest feature of this system is the decoupling of software and hardware, and the decoupling of software and software. Such internal strength has also become an important direction for major OEMs to "improve their skills".
Under this kind of "volume", the joint venture brand has been directly defeated in the past two years. Self-owned brands are driving straight into the market and gaining the first opportunity. As mentioned earlier, Chang'an's SDA platform architecture adopts the DevOps R&D system, with software and hardware decoupling and software and software decoupling.
Let's talk about the traffic star Zhiji a few days ago. In fact, in addition to those radical and old-fashioned words, on the underlying logic, Zhiji L7 only took 22 months from project approval to small-scale delivery, which is also based on the agile development system, and is the DevCube R&D, operation and maintenance integrated platform that Zhongan Technology has landed for Zhiji Automobile. In addition, through DFV (Data Feed Validation), the real-world "data burn-in" acceleration process is started.
Finally, the next stage of homogenization will be extreme. The ultimate performance will of course be in the competition between the core of the intelligent cabin and the intelligent driving. Borrowing from the historical experience of earlier consumer electronics competition such as TVs and refrigerators, in order to succeed, it is necessary to create a personalized label of its own brand, without labels, there is no survival.
Therefore, from the perspective of this auto show, the core of various new car development is changing in the direction of the DevOps development and operation system, but the label is that the eight immortals have crossed the sea to show their powers. To borrow a famous phrase, "Next, it's time to witness the miracle".