Volkswagen Group's electrification transformation in China is frequent, with 2.5 billion euros given to Volkswagen's Anhui Innovation Center, and three cooperation with Xpeng in one year.
During this Beijing Auto Show, the Volkswagen Group gave a lot of news on the transformation of new energy, such as the launch of plug-in hybrid oil hybrid, the adjustment of the organizational structure of the software company, the launch of the gold standard Volkswagen, etc., the battle is quite big, not at all like the previous said that it would slow down the momentum of electrification.
Refuting the surplus of new energy? Automakers are increasing their investment in China
"There is no future for electrification, China's new energy overcapacity", the West is hyping such a view, of course, this is not new, and it is understandable to be out of protectionism. Talking about this one, but doing another, I want to isolate Chinese cars, but I can't give up such a huge market as China.
This is the real idea of traditional car companies in the transformation of electrification, the transformation of electrification in the Chinese market has brought a certain sense of crisis to traditional car companies.
Although the theory and practice of slowing down the electric vehicle project and continuing to develop the internal combustion engine has been supported by many consumers, it is obviously not a wise choice to abandon such a market in the wave of electrification in the Chinese market, so we see the arrival of a new joint venture model in the era of change.
Build factories, buy software, buy hardware, and reverse joint ventures of independent brands to help these large groups avoid falling behind in the transformation, and catch up with the pace of the leaders at a faster speed, which Volkswagen is considered to play clearly, especially the previous "Dapeng match", from July 23, Volkswagen Group signed a share purchase agreement with Xiaopeng Motors; In February 24, Xpeng and Volkswagen once again signed a joint development agreement around platform and software strategic technology; Finally, in April this year, Xpeng Motors and Volkswagen issued a joint statement that the two sides will sign the latest strategic cooperation framework agreement on electronic and electrical architecture technology. Three collaborations a year is enough to see what the public expects from this cooperation model.
Volkswagen's additional investment in the field of new energy in China is a representative operation in the industry at present, and it is also a flexible way to respond in the post-joint venture era.
The stuffy head is no longer rushing, and the current affairs are flexible and responsive
Earlier we talked about a problem, that is, there are now more and more voices singing about pure electric, do think carefully with rational thinking, the development space of pure electric has indeed touched the barrier, from the technology, audience, supporting, use and other aspects, this route is likely to put itself in an embarrassing situation.
It seems that the transformation in the minds of Europeans was to abandon the internal combustion engine, just like the Volkswagen of the Diess era, which was determined and unhesitating to switch from the internal combustion engine to the motor, but such a desperate gamble and abandoning profits is obviously not a long-term solution.
The follow-up Blume is more like a correction route for Volkswagen on this road of transformation, especially in 2023, the plug-in hybrid sales of China's automobile market will soar, and the plug-in hybrid products will no longer be bored, and plug-in hybrid products will be taken out, and at the same time, FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC Volkswagen will also take the lead in developing HEV gasoline-electric hybrid as a supplementary model to the market.
The reason is that no matter what products are pushed in the Chinese market, they are inseparable from the word just need, which is determined by the consumption power of consumers in the Chinese market.
Of course, Volkswagen has shown its determination to transform in the Chinese market, and the more representative one is Anhui Volkswagen, which has made frequent moves recently. UX provides users with a differentiated experience, which is mainly reflected in three aspects: expressive design, personalized experience, and humanized innovation. This is the official description of this sequence by Anhui Volkswagen.
According to its plan, in 2027 there will be 5 ID. The UX model was launched, including two products in collaboration with Xpeng.
From the current planning point of view, Volkswagen is still pure electric as the main path of transformation, but unlike before, the future Volkswagen will not hold a pure electric thigh, but to start walking on multiple legs, which is actually very similar to Toyota, what Toyota is now doing in the global market is according to its own planning, in a number of drive energy types on the layout, but it does not regard which route as the main path, but more flowering, which will help Toyota to better adapt to various regions and markets, And then set a record profit.
The future may be electric, but it won't become a reality overnight, so how long will it take? Is it completely goal-oriented or market-oriented? Obviously, the market, industry, and consumers are more inclined to the latter, so no one can give a clear time at this stage, and it is far more practical to respond flexibly than to chase the goal.
In the past, China relied on the public, and today the public depends on China
From the current Volkswagen new energy transformation strategy, it can be seen that one of the most important points is that before I launched the product, your market accepted my product, and now it is what your market needs, so what do I rely on localization.
In the past, Volkswagen could be said to have been firmly in the first position in the Chinese market, but in the field of electrification, the seats have long been disrupted and reordered, so far, the pressure on the joint venture company can not be underestimated, and the relationship between the two parties has also begun to change, and the Chinese market has become a place for car companies to rely on.
So in response to such changes, car companies have to do nothing more than to please consumers in the domestic market, just talking about the transformation, the development speed of the Chinese market is obviously not expected by the joint venture, in this Chinese speed, the essence of self-innovation is to rely on localization to speed up the transformation, and make the transformation more thorough.
On the second day of the Beijing Auto Show Media Day, CARIAD, a software company under the Volkswagen Group, held an all-staff meeting, the core content of which is the adjustment of the organizational structure, its business in China focuses on the development of CEA electronic and electrical architecture, which is based on Xpeng's EEA architecture, and the two sides jointly develop, and the Chinese market will completely independently develop this electronic and electrical architecture.
This architecture will cover the cockpit, intelligent driving and other intelligent core functions, for the mass market, the Volkswagen Group will all adopt local research and development, the follow-up FAW-Volkswagen, SAIC Volkswagen, Volkswagen Anhui will uniformly adopt this specification of electronic and electrification architecture products, and now the goal is to ensure that the launch of the production car will be completed in 2026.
From a certain point of view, the current localization and the localization mentioned by these previous joint ventures are completely two things, before talking about localization is nothing more than a large space, Chinese favorite color matching, etc., but now? The field of software and hardware is directly handed over to China.
If you want to catch up with the speed of change in the Chinese market, you obviously need to rely more on China's strength, and the experience of joint ventures in the previous 40 years may have changed at this stage, and the new joint venture model may become the new mainstream in the subsequent new energy era.