On the evening of September 26, Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile, drove a new LS6 drift onto the field, and the smell of tire burning permeated the entire press conference. This is rare in the entire industry. Liu Tao demonstrated the driving ability of the new Zhiji LS6 in this intuitive way. In the new Zhiji LS6 listed this time, the equity price is 216,900 yuan ~ 279,900 yuan. On the basis of a slight price reduction, this annual facelift model can also be described as a "comprehensive" upgrade. The new LS6 has a high competitiveness in the entire 200,000-level pure electric SUV market from chassis to cockpit to intelligent driving.
For example, the new LS6 has an upgraded digital chassis and is equipped with rear-wheel steering. This allows the LS6 to make a U-turn on narrow urban roads, comparable to the turning radius of the Mini Cooper S. After the entire chassis has been upgraded, the safety has also been improved a lot. For example, the anti-rollover coefficient has been reduced by 33%, which is equivalent to adding an additional ESP system to the vehicle, which has twice the stability of the ESP system in terms of anti-skidding, anti-safety and stability. In addition, the upgraded comfort braking reduces the G-value of flat braking by 92.3% and reduces motion sickness.
"This is the driving quality that only a million cars can have in the era of fuel vehicles." Liu Tao said.
In addition, intelligence is Zhiji's consistent specialty, this time, the new Zhiji LS6 is equipped with LiDAR + NVIDIA Orin X chip, the whole system has "no map city NOA capability", and the delivery will be opened nationwide. At the same time, "IM AD Automatic Parking Assist" and "AVP One-click Valet Parking", which support 300+ parking scenarios, have been newly launched.
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In the cockpit, two new practical functions have been added. The first is the Falcon Smart Lighting System. The system can provide a maximum width of 165° for night driving, and it is safer without blind spots in scenarios such as turning, intersection traffic, and parking. The Falcon also has a "Continuous Flashing Ghost Probe" function. "Rainy Night Mode 2.0" can AI identify large areas of water on the road surface and raise the air suspension in advance to make driving more stable in rainy days. In addition, Carlog has been upgraded to multi-view, and the ISC Smart Lamp System has also been equipped as standard.
In terms of interior configuration, the new LS6 also adds a cooling and heating refrigerator to the car, and the new Zhiji LS6 has been upgraded to 50W air-cooled fast charging, and has been upgraded from a hard material that clatters during driving to a soft rubber material. In addition, the range has been upgraded with the addition of an 83 kWh battery pack, which allows the car to be offered in three options: 625 km, 701 km and 802 km.
For the competitive strength of the car, Liu Tao called it a "good student". "Our goal is to sell more than 10,000 per month." Li Weimeng, CMO of Zhiji Automobile, said.
01
Filling in the gaps: ensuring a continuous "high fever"
Monthly sales of more than 10,000 are actually not too difficult for the new LS6. Judging from the performance of the old products, it already has a good reputation and market foundation. After the old LS6 was launched in September last year, it took only four months to reach the scale of 10,000 units (9,878 units) in December, and since then, it has been the sales champion of medium and large electric SUVs for 19 consecutive weeks.
The new product was pre-sold at the Chengdu Auto Show until September 26, and the car has already received more than 30,000 pre-sale orders. Li Weimeng said that after the pre-sale began, the order volume of the new Zhiji LS6 has maintained a "straight rise", especially in the past week, the daily month-on-month growth has maintained 20%-40%. On the night of September 26th, Li Weimeng also said that the increase in orders made people feel like "five million", and she also bluntly said that she felt that the new LS6 would definitely be popular.
According to Zhiji's official information, 12 hours after the launch, the new LS6 has more than 6,000 lock-up orders. Li Weimeng said that the new Zhiji LS6 was in the climbing stage in September, and it is expected that the delivery volume will increase significantly from November to December. And next year, it will be in full firing power. This time, with the price reduction and overall improvement of functions, the new LS6 also has a stronger competitiveness.
Of course, it is not enough for Zhiji to achieve sustainable development. Li Weimeng said that Zhiji has also made internal adjustments and reflections to exercise stronger system capabilities. "When you're in the first place, the competitors have a certain offense and defense against you, and it's easy to get caught when the whole 'chassis' of the team isn't so stable." Li Weimeng said.
In the first half of this year, the sales of the old LS6 could not continue to grow last year, which is the regret of Zhiji. Therefore, after the launch of the facelifted L6 and LS6 this year, the Zhiji team re-set the sales rhythm and carried out in-depth intensive cultivation of the entire market. After the launch of the new L6, Zhiji's overall sales volume has stood at 6,000 deliveries for three consecutive months. "With the addition of the new Zhiji LS6, when we reach another 10,000 deliveries, it will be a healthier delivery." Li Weimeng said.
In fact, if LS sales reach 10,000 units in June, then Zhiji may sell about 15,000 units per month.
In terms of building sustainable growth capabilities, Liu Tao said that the automotive attributes of electric vehicles have changed. He believes that now the car is a large intelligent terminal, and young consumers have gradually purchased the car as a product with the attributes of a technological consumer product. Liu Tao believes that automobiles should also iterate on products like electronic technology consumer goods, whether it is software, hardware, software decoupling, hardware decoupling, OTA capabilities, software iteration capabilities, or intelligent cockpits, autonomous driving, etc.
At present, Zhiji has the ability to complete iteration products in 12 months like consumer electronics. "This is the underlying logic of the super competitiveness of the products that the core of Zhiji will exert in the future." Liu Tao said.
02
Range extension will become a new growth point
At this communication meeting, Zhiji's senior management also revealed the plan for its range extension products. Li Weimeng said that Zhiji Automobile will launch range extension products next year, and there are more thoughts about range extension in Zhiji products. In terms of products, Li Weimeng emphasized that Zhiji's range extender car will focus on creating a "latecomer advantage". Liu Tao said that there are still many problems in the current range extender vehicles, such as voltage platform, battery size, etc., and many range extender vehicles are not treated by charging stations. And these are the future development directions of Zhiji.
Generally, because of the small battery capacity and limited charging power, the general range extender vehicle can only reach the charging power of 20kW and 30kW, and it takes forty or fifty minutes to fully charge. On this basis, Zhiji will launch range extension products with its own independent thinking to open up the "blue ocean". "The pain points faced by users today when using extended-range models are the direction of our innovation tomorrow." Li Weimeng said.
Some media previously reported that Zhiji range extender products will be released in the first quarter of 2025, and this new car will be benchmarked against the ideal L7. The range extender technology comes from SAIC's internal platform architecture, codenamed E1, which is capable of accommodating larger battery packs and series architectures. At present, in addition to Tesla and NIO, other new electric vehicle brands have clear range extension plans, and even Xiaomi is secretly recruiting range extension engineers. From the perspective of the timetable, in 2025, in addition to Zhiji, Xpeng, Zeekr, Aion, etc. will launch extended-range products.
In addition, on the issue of how to ensure the steady rise of sales, Liu Tao said that Zhiji will also make great efforts in three aspects. The first is to insist on upgrading the digital chassis, which is also the biggest feature of Zhiji. Liu Tao said that at present, there are only two companies in the industry that have completed the development of digital chassis, and Zhiji is one of them. At present, car companies are still rolling intelligent cabins and intelligent driving, but Liu Tao believes that the next competition point must be intelligent chassis.
"As a direct participant in automobile sports, if the chassis is not deeply intelligent and digital, then the intelligent map of automobiles will lack a piece of the puzzle." Liu Tao said.
The second is intelligent driving. A week before the launch of the new LS6, Zhiji has officially announced that it will open mapless intelligent driving for all models in October, realizing the ability to drive nationwide. In terms of specific capabilities, Zhiji's mapless intelligent driving has been able to realize navigation in various special road conditions such as village roads, mountain roads, construction roads, and laneless roads. In addition, it can also handle extreme scenarios such as roundabouts, U-turns, and ETC toll booths. At present, Zhiji is one of the few enterprises in China that realizes end-to-end + large models.
Liu Tao said that Zhiji's intelligent driving is built on the flywheel of data iteration, and there will be more exciting L2+ superposition functions in the future, including Door to Door.
In addition, channel capacity building is also the next focus of Zhiji. It is reported that Zhiji chooses different network layout strategies for the different situations of first- and second-tier cities and third- and fourth-tier cities. Users in first- and second-tier cities have strengthened the layout of core business districts. The focus of third- and fourth-tier cities is to increase the test drive rate. This year, new power brands are sinking channels, and third- and fourth-tier cities will become the focus of grabbing in the future.