To break the inertia of the industry, Huawei wants to attack the last bastion of BBA

Tong Jiren car review

2024-04-24 23:45Posted on the official account of Shanghai Tong Jiren Auto Review

Can a Chinese brand build a market-recognized executive-class luxury flagship sedan?

Judging by the past inertia of the automotive industry, it is difficult. Because the executive flagship sedan has always been the hinterland of BBA, and it is also the luxury segment with the highest barriers, very few brands take the initiative to touch it.

However, since Huawei began to empower automobiles, what it is best at is breaking the inherent inertia of the industry. Huawei is not bound by traditional inertia, and thinks about what Chinese automobiles should do and what they should do from the new system capabilities that are really needed for the intelligent transformation of the automotive industry.

It is the courage to break the inertia that has allowed the M9 to create a new record for the sales speed of luxury cars of more than 500,000 yuan.

It is also because of this courage to be the first, Huawei officially launched Hongmeng Zhixing's first executive-level luxury flagship sedan Xiangjie S9 on April 23, and will make its debut at the 2024 Beijing Auto Show, entering the hinterland of the high-end market monopolized by BBA, advancing to the field that Chinese brands have never touched, and forming the "Huawei 9 series dual flagship" together with the M9.

Huawei, which has strong technology, strong to C capabilities, and strong market awareness, has begun to attack the most important market of BBA, and we have reason to believe that this will be another peak moment for Chinese automobiles.

BBA's flagship sedan is not invulnerable

The executive flagship sedan market has long been monopolized by German luxury brands. However, BBA's flagship fuel car has entered the stage of product micro-innovation and marketing to eat the brand's old roots. The shaping of experience is limited to physical dimensions such as fuel power, materials, technology, details, and configuration, and lacks breakthrough thinking about the intelligence of the whole vehicle and the overall driving experience. However, when Mercedes-Benz BMW began to explore flagship electric sedans and launched Mercedes-Benz EQS, BMW i7 and other products, they failed to reproduce the glory of their fuel predecessors.

Perhaps this also shows that in the era of new energy and intelligence, BBA has been difficult to meet the new needs of today's consumers. They have a strong sense of labeling, they seem to be old-fashioned, and their intelligence cannot keep up with the times. Although the price is very expensive, it is expensive because of irrelevant taxes and brand premiums, not on the product experience. Their sales volume is just a kind of market inertia.

It's inertia, and someone has to break it after all.

In the first quarter of this year, BBA still ranked in the top three in the sales list of luxury brands in the Chinese market, and the fourth place was Tesla, which is not considered a luxury brand in the minds of many people, and Wenjie has quietly come to the fifth position.

The Wenjie M9 with an average price of more than 500,000 yuan delivered 6,243 units in March, with a cumulative total of more than 70,000 units in three months on the market, and the delivery capacity is expected to exceed 25,000 units in April.

This is enough to prove that with the empowerment of Huawei's full-stack intelligent technology and terminal business, Chinese automobiles are fully capable of breaking the inherent perception of brand and price segment, and attracting a large number of high-spending users who do not know about intelligent new energy vehicles. The resulting HarmonyOS Zhixing ecosystem is currently the most promising new model for creating a market-recognized high-end car in China. Through cooperation with traditional automakers, Huawei has empowered the entire process in product definition, channel services, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, and charging and energy replenishment, creating smart car products that far exceed the value of previous luxury cars.

Xiangjie S9 is the product of Huawei's projection of this capability to the executive flagship sedan market.

In the past, the product strength of the executive flagship sedan, such as wide styling, luxurious materials, and top-notch performance, were only basic qualities in the context of Huawei. What Xiangjie S9 wants to do is to bring subversive changes to the product experience with a new design and technology application, so that those consumers who are already bored with the old luxury in the era of fuel vehicles can get a futuristic smart luxury experience, and meet their pursuit and expression of the technological leadership of the executive flagship car.

Therefore, Xiangjie S9 provides a new solution for the executive flagship car in the intelligent era, which wants to prove that the flagship car market that has been guarded by BBA for decades is not invulnerable, and it also wants to prove that consumers are actually looking forward to the flagship car market, because Huawei's entry will be full of new vitality.

From design to technology, Huawei has reshaped its new luxury flagship

In a mature market, any attempt to win on paper is futile. Only by establishing new categories can it be possible to win new minds, new cognitions, and new scales.

Although there is not much specific information about the Xiangjie S9 now, judging from the information that has been released by the official, the Xiangjie S9 will reinterpret the connotation of the flagship sedan in an all-round way in two aspects: luxury design and intelligent technology.

From the design point of view, Xiangjie S9 has a length of nearly 5 meters2, and the family design of Hongmeng Zhixing has a new aesthetic presentation in such a form. At the same time, the S9 uses a new universal color system, inspired by the color scheme of the stars of the universe, which is elegant, high-end and bold and innovative, bringing a refreshing visual impression to the flagship sedan.

In terms of technology, the phrase "a new breakthrough in full-stack Huawei intelligent technology" is enough to make consumers full of reverie about what "black technology" beyond imagination will be possessed by Xiangjie S9.

Huawei's ADS intelligent driving system, which has been mass-produced and implemented on models such as the M7, M9, and S7, not only realizes high-end intelligent driving in urban areas with the highest urban coverage in China without relying on high-precision maps, but also integrates high-end intelligent driving with active safety, the industry's first omnidirectional collision system, and an intelligent base supported by the industry's highest 3.3E FLOPS cloud computing power AI training cluster that exceeds the sum of the second and third places.

With the support of such capabilities, Huawei's ADS intelligent driving system exceeded 270 km in February this year, and the success rate of urban elevated inward and outbound transportation reached 99.2%, which is a veritable "national can be opened, and the more it is opened, the better it is". In addition to intelligent driving, Huawei's continuous investment in new technologies such as intelligent cockpits, intelligent vehicle digital bases, and intelligent electric drive platforms has created a unique software and hardware integration capability in the industry. With Huawei's evolutionary speed, these capabilities will definitely be iteratively upgraded again when the Xiangjie S9 is officially launched this year.

As a partner of Xiangjie S9, BAIC has a long-term cooperation with Daimler, fully absorbing the production and manufacturing heritage of luxury cars, and has rich experience. When innovative technology empowerment meets a good foundation, the product texture and luxury experience of Xiangjie S9 are expected.

From the positioning of the Xiangjie S9 and the price of the M9, we boldly guess that the price segment of the Xiangjie S9 is likely to fall at the level of 500,000 yuan, and the product power is a comprehensive benchmark for BBA's 78S flagship sedan. This will be the first time that a Chinese brand sedan has launched a frontal attack on BBA's flagship sedan.

From the continuous upward movement of Hongmeng Zhixing and the challenge of the past impossibilities, it is not difficult to see that what Huawei needs to do is not only to pursue high sales, but also to completely break the inherent inertia of market perception and change the inherent pattern of traditional luxury brand monopoly in the era of intelligent electric vehicles.

As Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei, CEO of Device BG, and Chairman of Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, said, Xiangjie aims to build an intelligent luxury car that is "intelligent and people-oriented", and the Xiangjie S9 will be officially launched in July and August this year - the key battle to reshape the pattern has begun.

Write at the end

In 2024, Huawei will use its actual market performance to prove the strong vitality of this new model in the automotive industry. The potential energy of the Hongmeng Zhixing ecosystem is also snowballing. Therefore, the S9 launched an attack on the highest barrier of the BBA at this time, and there are prerequisites for the right time, place, and people.

Moreover, in the executive flagship sedan market, which is dominated by traditional German luxury brands, if Huawei's entry can break through the ceiling and even become a new leader, then all Chinese auto brands aiming for high-end will have a way to follow, and the entire Chinese auto industry will enter a new cycle of high-quality development.

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