The homogenization of trams is serious, Lei Jun: Do you need so many similar cars?

Univision Automobile

2024-05-05 20:05Posted in Hunan automotive creators

During the Beijing Auto Show, Lei Jun, who visited almost the entire exhibition hall, became the largest traffic owner. If you have any views on this auto show, or on the current new energy vehicles, he should also have the most right to speak.

Recently, Lei Jun summed up his feelings after visiting the auto show at a forum, he said that it is difficult for him to understand why car companies want to make so many homogeneous models, "There are a few good cars, why do you need so many homogeneous cars? Lei Jun even said that he was "desperate" after visiting the auto show: "This is making products, and it is completely relying on Meng." ”

Xiaomi SU7 is the biggest "hit" in the current car circle, and every time Boss Lei makes any kind of opinion, it is easy to "lead the war" in the circle. But let's think about it rationally, Lei Jun's statement is not unreasonable. Nowadays, the essence of the involution and price war in the automotive industry is actually because the threshold for new energy car manufacturing has been significantly reduced, the homogenization of products is serious, and many car companies have a single means to break the game, and they can only rely on sharp price cuts, repeated price cuts, and crazy price cuts to obtain users.

Parameter homogenization

In the era of fuel vehicles, it is quite difficult to improve because the performance of the internal combustion engine is close to the limit, and every point of improvement is a huge difference, which is also easy to make users excited. The introduction of large-capacity batteries and high-efficiency motors easily broke through the performance bottleneck. This also leads to the problem of homogenization in performance parameters.

Take the acceleration performance as an example, from luxury models of more than 500,000 yuan to economic cars of more than 100,000 yuan, with the blessing of the motor, the acceleration of zero hundred can easily reach less than 5s. From slow to fast, from the past 8S to today's 5S, the user's perception is obvious, but faster than the fast, the difference between 4S and 5S, the user can not perceive. Let's look at the drag coefficient. With the engine and gearbox removed, the styling restrictions on electric vehicles were lifted. As a result, the ceiling of the drag coefficient has been repeatedly broken. In the past, the drag coefficient of cars usually hovered around 0.3-0.5Cd. Nowadays, 0.2Cd or even lower abounds.

In short, whether it is a car of 100,000 yuan or a car of 500,000 yuan, there is not much difference purely from the parameter point of view.

Homogeneity of design

The convergence of new energy vehicle design has become boring. Over the years, many models have encountered the storm of "hitting the face", and consumers are also stupid and unclear.

For example, the shape of the Dongfeng Wind Planet Sea S7 and the shape of the Zhiji L7 cannot be said to be exactly the same, but it is also a copy of seventy or eighty percent. Changan and Geely also almost went to court because of the "face collision" of the model model.

From the appearance, the closed front + "squinting eyes" + hidden door handles have almost become the "standard" of new energy vehicles. It seems that the car styling design has been liberated because of new energy, but in fact, under the trend of pursuing minimalist style, the space that can be played in the design is becoming narrower and narrower. Once a car becomes a "hot model" in the market, the product design of friends will begin to learn from the popular model, so that the overall design style converges. At the Beijing Auto Show, car companies gathered to launch the "square box" model, which is the case.

Similarly, the so-called intelligent cockpit is nothing more than a combination of hardware and software such as large sofa + large refrigerator + large sunroof + advanced audio + LCD instrument + large-size central control screen + passenger screen + rear LCD screen + HUD + intelligent voice interaction system. The same supply chain system makes the use of software and hardware in the intelligent cockpit gradually converge, and even in the interface of the car machine system, it is all imitating the design of the mobile phone interface. Although the intelligent cockpits of each company continue to roll up around the use experience, this kind of experience based on the software level, except for a few heads that can make perceptible differentiation, the rest of the car companies are all 50 steps and 100 steps.

Three-electric homogenization

Although in the power battery, large manufacturers also have their own packaged technical solutions, such as blades, magazines, divine refining, divine walking, and so on. However, at present, the battery formulas and raw materials on the market, mainstream car companies still use similar solutions for products at different subdivision levels. For some small and medium-sized car manufacturers, they can only follow the supplier's plan.

For those who pursue a long battery life of more than 700 kilometers, it has become a routine operation to carry a large battery with a capacity of about 100 degrees; those who like cost performance are generally 70-80 degree batteries with a range of 500-600 kilometers; and those below 150,000 yuan still have a battery life of about 400 kilometers. As for the safety of the battery itself behind the battery life, because each manufacturer spares no effort to promote zero spontaneous combustion, no fire, etc., in fact, for users, there is no difference.

In terms of charging, although there are various fast charging and ultra-fast charging technologies behind it, charging from 20% to 80% in 15-20 minutes is a common saying used by car companies. Before the popularization of true 800V or even higher 900V, when the power and voltage of the charging pile could not be fully matched, the charging efficiency of each company was similar.

Homogenization of the chassis

When it comes to the chassis, I believe that what everyone hears the most now is aluminum alloy, multi-link, CDC air suspension and intelligent chassis. In the past, the MacPherson structure commonly used in oil vehicles is basically rare in new energy vehicles, and the new energy vehicles have removed the large parts of the engine and gearbox, leaving more space for the chassis to arrange the multi-link structure. Therefore, now there are almost more than 150,000, and it is often an aluminum alloy chassis, a multi-link structure, and even an air suspension, which was only seen on high-end cars in the past, is now a bad street configuration.

However, it is difficult to say how the experience of these structures compares to that of the combustion engines of the past. As a result, dancing, turning around on the spot, crab walking, and launching into the water have become the propaganda methods of new energy vehicles. The first one to eat crabs may have gotten a lot of traffic as a result, but when all the car companies do it, it becomes very boring.

As for tuning, the new energy aspect is also invariably using digital intelligence capabilities to make up for the lack of chassis tuning capabilities. Now mainstream manufacturers are promoting their own digital chassis or intelligent chassis. Because in principle, the movement status of the chassis is monitored in real time with the help of software, so as to achieve timely intervention and auxiliary control of the chassis.

Homogenization of intelligent driving

Intelligent driving is a technology that cannot be systematically quantified, and we cannot compare the quality of intelligent driving only by how many takeovers and how many mistakes in a test. Therefore, intelligent driving can only look at the technical solutions behind and the functions that can be achieved by the front-end.

From high-precision maps to high-precision maps, high-speed NOA to urban NOA, plus intelligent parking, the two major factions of the current intelligent driving solution, pure vision and lidar, can all achieve the above functions, and the current trend is going to the convergence route. From the perspective of user perception, although there are differences in experience, from the perspective of grading, they are all L2+ level assisted driving. Before the arrival of L3, everyone remained at the same level overall.

Epilogue:

Essentially, in the current car-making model, even if the technology is iteratively upgraded, product homogenization is almost unavoidable. Car companies are creating some market gimmicks of demand and experience based on existing technologies. This leads to the fact that everyone's product realization is close to the same in terms of user experience. The subtle differences in experience and the technical differences behind them are actually difficult for users to perceive. In the end, in this increasingly boring era of car building, in order to compete, there are only two ways to choose: either the brand is fandomized, or the price has to be sold. (Text/Youshi Auto Old Cannon)

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