After four years, the long-awaited Beijing Auto Show has finally opened.
Physically, this is the busiest large-scale international auto show in recent years. More than 200 new cars, no less than 150 press conferences, and exhibitors from different countries and regions have overwhelmed all car people.
On the way to the auto show, I heard more than once that my media colleagues complained that they didn't even eat lunch in a hurry, and my friends from car companies were even more stressed, and it was common for them to be so busy in formal clothes that their clothes were soaked and they didn't even have time to drink.
(20,000 steps, not ranked in the top 10 at all)
But if you want to say who is the busiest at the auto show, in addition to Lei Jun, who will bring the crowd wherever he goes, it is probably "the only car model on the first day of the 2024 Beijing Auto Show",
360 boss Zhou Hongyi.
(Lei Jun who flashed at BYD's booth, and Wang Chuanfu who made a cameo commentator)
The "Red Cannon" not only visited the booths of domestic new energy, but also showed off a rock climbing technique and directly climbed to the roof, which was crowned by the media as "the only car model on the first day of the 2024 Beijing Auto Show".
Regardless of whether this statement is true or not, it can only be said that Lao Zhou, who is the first generation of Internet celebrities, really understands the traffic.
So, what are the secrets and stories that are not known at this Beijing Auto Show, and what are the ups and downs of the development trend?
Today, let's start with some interesting facts.
01. Rim bosses, rubbing traffic with each other?
At every large-scale auto show, the bigwigs of car companies will go to each other's booths for in-depth exchanges.
But unlike in previous years, when "low-key visits" were not allowed to stand on the platform for fear of being recognized by friends, this year, all bosses seemed to be high-profile, and even some private conversations were intentionally or unintentionally exploded through the media.
For example, Li Xiang complained to Li Bin in the new Weilai ET7: "High-end pure electric, it's really hard to push~" It seems that after the sales of MEGA did not meet expectations, he finally understood the difficulties of Li Bin doing Weilai for so many years.
Li Bin also responded with a wave of empathy: "Looking back now, it is still very difficult for us to sell so many high-end pure electric vehicles, and we only know how difficult it is along the way", and also welcomed Ideal to join the battery swap alliance of Weilai.
The executives of state-owned enterprises, who are relatively cold in people's impressions, have also opened the "big face perspective" to interact with friends online, and there is no offline shelf, and they mingle with users.
After the auto show, He Xiaopeng, who was still unsatisfied, posted on Weibo @雷军和李斌 to meet for a live broadcast next time. Lei Jun also replied as soon as possible, asking everyone what topics they wanted to hear.
To borrow the words of a particularly daring CEO of a car company, "the big guys came to the booth to visit for nothing else, just to rub some traffic with each other."
Involution is involution, and it is indeed good for everyone to push the heat of new energy up.
02. A global brand that can't play with traffic
However, compared with Chinese brands that "understand the traffic", global brands based on joint ventures are still exploring their own paths.
One of the most stark contrasts is that even if a domestic brand has a central enterprise background, the boss is very impassioned when he speaks, and golden sentences are frequent, which is easy to attract the attention of passers-by.
(This sentence "The only thing I don't want to roll is covering" is the first golden sentence I saw today)
Even if it is boring to throw data, it will often be translated in a language that everyone can understand, such as "China's first hybrid SUV with a range of more than 2000km", which is a good memory point from the perspective of communication:
On the other hand, at the press conferences of some joint venture brands, the spokesperson read the manuscript almost word for word, which caused the media teacher next to him to complain: "This press conference is really hypnotic...... If I hadn't been standing, I would have fallen asleep."
Perhaps it was the status of a joint venture that prevented them from saying the wrong thing at the press conference, or perhaps it was the executives who specialized in the art industry and were not good at words who were forced to come to the fore from behind the scenes, but the final result was not satisfactory.
Coupled with a large number of technical upgrades and model parameters that only industry insiders can understand, and the old-fashioned marketing level of joint venture car companies, it is really time to keep pace with the times.
03. The absolute C-position of new energy
Let's throw two sets of data first: as many as 82.5% of the new cars unveiled/pre-sold/listed at this Beijing Auto Show are new energy vehicles.
Judging from the new energy penetration rate of more than 50% in the first half of April, those who are still buying oil cars this year are really a minority!
To achieve the 50% penetration target set by the state in 2020 11 years ahead of schedule, in addition to the efforts of car companies and the support of the supply chain, it is also inseparable from two groups of people.
The first group is a group of politicians represented by Wan Gang, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, who was present today.
It is they who led the promotion of the new energy strategy during the critical period of the development of China's automobile industry, so that China's automobile successfully "changed lanes and overtaken" and stepped into the forefront of the world.
The other group is the world's most concerned and most passionate about new energy car owners.
In the words of Qin Lihong, president of NIO, it is the first time to see so many enthusiastic users at the auto show, even if you look at the world. Only in China can you meet so many lovely user friends.
04. Accelerate into the playoffs
At the same time, price reduction has also become the main theme in the domestic market in the past two years.
If in the past few years, car companies have relied on brand premiums and can still make a lot of profits, but once they have been labeled as expensive in recent years, it can be said that it is even more difficult to turn over.
As soon as a new car is launched, almost everyone is staring at the price. Pricing strategies that affect profits, word of mouth, and brand image have also become the most important decisions for car companies, if not one of them. As strong as Ideal and Zhijie, they also had to quickly adjust their prices in a short period of time after the release of new cars to cope with fierce competition.
After the big waves of the first round, the more brutal second round of eliminations has begun.
As the so-called "Spring River Plumbing Duck Prophet", the bigwigs in the industry have long been prepared.
Li Bin said in an interview that in 2019, we judged that we would enter the knockout stage around 2025, so the timing of Ledao's launch was just right. He Xiaopeng also bluntly said that if you think that the competition is fierce now, it means that you don't know anything about the knockout round, and the most important thing is to survive.
05. The cooperation between industries is getting closer and closer
One of the surviving solutions is to divide labor and collaborate.
At this press conference, Lotus released a blockbuster news:
Lotus will carry out in-depth strategic cooperation with NIO in the charging and swapping industry, using NIO's 2,000+ charging stations across the country to provide Lotus owners with lifetime free charging rights.
Li Bin said in an interview at the NIO booth that the upcoming fourth-generation battery swap station is actually a "shared battery swap station" prepared for the Ledao brand, which is different from the existing "exclusive battery swap station", which can be compatible with the battery pack specifications of Changan, Geely and other brands, and provide battery swap services to partners.
The day before the auto show, VOYAH also announced at the Technology Day: "The cooperation between VOYAH and Huawei has been implemented, and Huawei's Qiankun ADS 3.0 intelligent driving system will empower VOYAH models", "The pure electric SUV jointly built by the two parties will be released this year", and "Next year, the VOYAH Dreamer will also be equipped with Huawei's intelligent driving and intelligent cabin".
In addition, we just mentioned that GAC Toyota and Huawei cooperated to build a smart cabin, Volkswagen joined hands with Xpeng to develop electronic and electrical architecture some time ago, and Toyota and BYD jointly built new energy vehicles......
All these performances show that win-win cooperation is the general direction of the development of the automotive industry.
06. Chinese cars go global
Another solution to survive is to go to sea.
The most crowded at the auto show is undoubtedly the BYD booth of the "new energy vehicle world champion". I tried it twice in the most intensive stage of the morning presentation, and it's not an exaggeration to say that it was really hard to squeeze in:
(So much so that I could only take a picture and leave silently and come back in the afternoon)
It's not because of anything else, there are too many foreign friends at BYD's booth!
Including brands that have done well in overseas business such as SAIC, NIO, and Great Wall next door, there are also a considerable proportion of overseas friends to negotiate business. Even the chairman of the German Association of the Automotive Industry, the Hungarian ambassador and executives from the Middle East were present at the Beijing Auto Show.
That's right, they only came for two purposes: one is to deeply observe the development process of China's automobile industry, to put it bluntly, it is to explore the reality, and the other is to explore the direction of open cooperation and win-win, to put it bluntly, it is to purchase.
The most typical is Chery, which invited more than 3,000 foreign businessmen to participate in the Beijing Auto Show. The number of foreign friends at the booth was even twice as large as that of Chinese!
It is no wonder that Chery was able to double its export volume in just one year, ranking first with 937,100 units sold.
07. Global car companies embrace China
While Chinese cars are going global, global car companies are also embracing China.
The most typical case is Lotus who shouted "China is the second hometown of LOTUS" from the mouth of the founder's son at the scene.
The high-end custom brand Lotus Chapman Bespoke released today, as well as the "user puts forward private needs, designers come to customize" scheme, which is different from "car companies provide a variety of design solutions and user combination choices", and even the world's only original gradient car paint, are all new ways of playing from the divergence of domestic co-creation thinking.
Who made China the largest single market for Lotus?
Porsche, which has harvested China's "second hometown" for eight consecutive years, also displayed a huge Chinese dragon sculpture at its booth to show goodwill to China in the Year of the Dragon:
Genesis, which is exploring new markets, was also attended by Li Zhe, CEO of the sales company and a "China fan". The whole speech is in Chinese, and even the teleprompter is all in Chinese!
This shows how much global car companies attach importance to the Chinese market.
08. Joint venture uncoiling intelligence
More attention is paid to China, the world's largest auto market, and joint venture brands. In the field of intelligence, joint venture car companies have finally made up their minds and are ready to catch up with the footsteps of the first echelon.
Moreover, it actually started with a fuel vehicle......
Kia has launched a new fuel SUV of less than 100,000 yuan, which is equipped with L2 level assisted driving and Baidu intelligent interconnection system 3.0, and the slogan that fuel cars are smarter than trams was also shouted at the scene:
The Toyota Camry, which was launched some time ago, was also built by Guangfeng and Huawei.
This time, I experienced it, aside from the UI interface is still Toyota's original style, it seems very out of place, such as voice assistants with voiceprint recognition, car machine applications, intelligent scenes and even fluency, which are already close to the level of new forces.
Even Volkswagen, which is "low-key and calm" in the stereotype, has added a passenger screen to the interior of the new generation of Magotan, used a new UI, and changed the gear.
Removing the steering wheel and saying it's an electric car is not out of place.
As for why the joint venture car companies were not very popular before, but they have suddenly gone collective again recently, the president thinks that there are four main reasons.
On the one hand, the approval and verification process of the previous joint venture car companies is too long, and it is difficult to push the update and iteration of the intelligent cockpit in the monthly cycle, and on the other hand, the joint venture car companies' intelligent R&D capabilities are indeed weaker than those of Chinese brands.
In addition, if the joint venture does not roll up the experience, it will really be beaten to the ground by Chinese brands.
And, last but not least, China's smart cockpit industry chain has brought down the price, so that joint venture car companies that pay attention to cost control can start at a lower price.
Not to mention anything else, like many Chinese and foreign brands with inverted prices of new cars, thank you for making in China.
09. Suppliers come to the forefront
The mystery of the rise of China's automobile manufacturing industry is also hidden in the supplier booth map this time.
In the past, parts suppliers would open several large exhibition halls at the Beijing Auto Show, but this year it has been reduced to one. Self-owned suppliers such as Aisin, Denso, etc., as well as LG Chem and Panasonic, whose competitiveness is not comparable to that of Chinese companies, have gradually faded out of the field of vision of the auto show.
Instead, it is the Chinese suppliers who are "rowing stations" in the vehicle hall and car companies.
These Chinese suppliers are also increasingly looking to step in front of the stage, skip the connection between car companies and users, and leave a good impression.
(The slogan of the CATL era, you know)
Another little secret that cannot be elaborated on is that many so-called "self-developed" new technologies are actually jointly developed by car companies and suppliers.
This is also the reason why "solid-state batteries" are being prepared for mass production recently.
I also had a good chat with Dynaudio at this auto show and learned a lot about car audio. If you are interested, I will write a separate article to talk to you about this topic.
Write at the end:
New energy is breaking through the "darkest moment"
Some time ago, I heard the saying that the global automotive industry around 2010 was at its peak, and then it was all about compromising on cost, efficiency and regulations, so it was going downhill.
If you think about it, this statement may be true. At that time, the global automotive industry had just experienced large-scale technological breakthroughs and competition, and a large number of car companies (Volvo, Aston Martin, Saab, Chrysler, General Motors, etc.) had gone bankrupt or reorganized...... It can be called the "darkest hour" of fuel vehicles.
Now we are also experiencing such a "darkest hour". Among the hundreds of new energy brands, only twenty or thirty brands may survive in the end, which belong to more than a dozen large automobile groups.
There is only one secret for the automotive industry to break through the "darkest moment" and reach the peak moment: to use more advanced technology in exchange for higher efficiency and better user experience.
Solid-state batteries, high-efficiency hybrid systems, intelligent cockpits, AI assistants, and even autonomous driving ...... The moment it falls from paper to reality, it will become a flower of hope, promoting progress in the field of transportation and the development of society.
China's automotive industry is also becoming the initiator and leader of this round of scientific and technological revolution.