A few days ago, there were media reports that the Chinese name of the R car under SAIC Motor Group may be "extraordinary", although it has not yet been confirmed by the manufacturer, but the news that the Chinese name of R car will be officially released is conclusive.
ON July 22 this year, SAIC Motor has submitted trademark registration applications for "SAIC Extraordinary" and "Feifan".
In the end, it does not matter what the name of the Chinese is, what is important is that the official opening of the new Chinese name marks a new starting point for R Cars to completely break away from SAIC Passenger Cars, and this also means that R Cars has made all the necessary preparations from a brand to a completely independent operating entity, completing the transformation from 0 to 1.
The most important evolutionary stage of human life process is the 10 months before childbirth, and the 10 months of gestation are evolution, qualitative change, and the subsequent years are only growth and quantitative change. The same is true for a business, a brand, the most difficult and important thing is to start from scratch, from 0 to 1.
It's only been a year since it was founded, and in order to achieve the evolution from 0 to 1, let's take a look at what the R brand has done.
The first is to build a new retail service system covering the whole life cycle of "purchase-use-maintenance-exchange".
R STORE experience center, R DELIVERY CENTER delivery center, R STATION service center "three-dimensional integration" layout continues to improve, at present, R car has been laid out nationwide 150 R STORE experience centers, this year will reach 200; to provide after-sales repair, maintenance services have been built 70.
R STORE experience centers will reach 200 this year, pictured here is Shanghai Xintiandi Experience Center.
The second is the formation of a perfect charging and replacing ecology.
R Car brings users more accurate, comprehensive, dynamic and real-time charging pile query and navigation planning services through cooperation, self-built charging piles, and opening up exclusive charging service areas. At the same time, R car is accelerating the establishment of a "1 km fast charging ecology", the central urban users can find the R car APP access to the public charging pile within 1 km, the public charging pile has been connected to more than 400,000, and the R brand exclusive charging station has also been built 100 seats, this year will reach nearly 200.
In addition to fast charging, R Car also provides one-key power-up services such as door-to-door pick-up and on-site power-up of charging vehicles, and also supports power exchange.
The second is to build a digital user operation system that integrates online and offline.
Through the R car APP, users can realize online car appreciation, car selection, car purchase, car use, and even, users can also participate in the co-construction and co-creation of the brand, and define all the functional details of the vehicle together; discuss user rights and interests, model prices; and study the follow-up OTA plan together...
Offline, we have created the "R Together" user operation activity brand, covering 4 dimensions and its 20 life circles, creating a diversified community game with users, and extending the breadth, depth and quality of life.
At present, R Auto APP has 470,000 registered users, and the daily new registered users have reached 300+.
The design of the ES33 concept car is inspired by the imagination of "smart new species", with "intelligent electric drive" as the design language, from the three dimensions of "vitality", "wisdom" and "aerodynamic force" to interpret the scientific and technological aesthetics of intelligent life forms, which makes people fall in love at first sight. The production version will be released next year, and the appearance is highly restored to the concept car.
Finally, of course, is the technical and product reserves.
In March last year, R Auto released the R-TECH high-energy intelligent body that lasted for 5 years of research and development and a total investment of more than 20 billion yuan.
It brings together the world's top software and hardware technology, is a new species of black technology built, co-created and shared by R car and strategic partners, which can realize that the hardware can be plugged in and replaced, the software can be bought and sold and defined, and the battery can be charged and replaced.
The R brand currently has two products on sale, ER6 and MARVEL R, but the product that can best represent the R brand in the future is obviously the ES33.
ES33 is a new model based on R-TECH high-energy intelligent body, which is equipped with a full-stack self-developed high-end intelligent driving solution PP-CEMTM, through lidar (Luminar), 4D imaging radar, high-precision map, visual camera, millimeter wave radar and other sensors, to build the world's leading "six-fold fusion perception system", with all-weather, over-the-horizon, multi-dimensional perception capabilities, can more accurately predict the behavior and action trajectory of pedestrians, vehicles and other obstacles. Take the technical level and safety of intelligent driving to a whole new level.
The six-fold fusion perception system makes the ES33's intelligent driving assistance can achieve "5 not afraid" - not afraid of black, not afraid of small, not afraid of quiet, not afraid of strange, not afraid of emergency.
ES33 is also the first product equipped with SAIC Zero Beam SOA full-stack solution, which can achieve the global integration of "cloud, mobile phone, car, and intelligent hardware", and third-party developers can realize agile development and rapid iteration based on the SOA platform, and accelerate the OTA upgrade frequency in the industry to weeks or even days. The goal of R Cars is to leave the definition of functional scenarios to users and third-party partners.
ES33 calls itself a new species, not only because of "intelligence," but also because of "co-creation."
The R brand completed the evolution from 0 to 1 in just 1 year, which is a very amazing speed, and the same thing, Tesla took a full 9 years!
Tesla was founded in 2003, and its first model, the Roadster, was released in 2008, but it wasn't until the Release of the Model S in 2012 that Tesla really completed its 0-to-1 process.
Xiaopeng Motors was founded in 2014, and it was not until the P7 was listed in 2020 that it truly completed the evolution from "0 to 1", which took 6 years.
From the perspective of brand growth, there is a speed called R car.
From the establishment of the brand to the delivery of the first model, Tesla took more than 5 years, the ideal took 4 years and 10 months, Xiaopeng took 4 years, Weilai took 3 years and 8 months, R Car is the only brand that was delivered on the market.
Why is it so fast? Of course, because behind the R car is the saic group with the strongest comprehensive strength in China.
In fact, many of the work of R cars is not from scratch, although the establishment of the R brand is only 1 year, but the research and development of R-TECH has gone through 5 years!
The new pure electric platform, more than 1,000 patents for three-electric technology, and the absence of SAIC Behind it are simply unimaginable for a car brand that has been established for only 1 year.
As the focus of pure electric vehicle users gradually returns to safety, quality, service, cost, etc., R Automobile will play an increasingly large market effect by relying on this advantage of SAIC Motor.
The R car, which boldly innovates at the level of business system and user ecology, is becoming the vanguard of SAIC's transformation into a "user-oriented high-tech company" with technological upgrading, business globalization, brand high-end and ultimate experience.
However, it is absurd that a leaf of blind people can't see this, and some people question the sales performance of R cars - for a car brand that has only been established for 1 year, is there any point in talking about sales?
In August, ER6 sales exceeded 1,000, and the sales of pure electric cars at the same price did not exceed it.
If you consider that it has only been established for 1 year, the sales of R cars are actually very good.
According to the data of the Association of Automobile Associations, the sales of the two models of the R brand in August were 1960 vehicles, of which the ER6 exceeded 1,000 units, and there were not many pure electric cars at the same price (150,000-200,000 yuan) that exceeded it; marvel R sales were close to 1,000 units, ranking very high in the same price point (220,000-260,000 yuan) pure electric SUVs, and the price of the Polar Fox ARCFOX αT sold 522 units in August, and the sales of GAC Aeg LX in August were only 97 units. From January to August, the total number of vehicles was only 548.
Marvel R's sales ranking among pure electric SUVs at the same price is actually quite high.
At present, the sales volume of R car single store has been close to "Wei Xiaoli", in fact, the user development speed of R car is faster than that of "Wei Xiaoli". The first 10,000 R cars will take only 10 months, and the second 10,000 vehicles may only take 4-5 months. The first cumulative delivery of 10,000 units is such a difficult challenge for the initial stage of "Wei Xiaoli", everyone should still have a little impression, didn't Li Bin and He Xiaopeng still make a bet on this?
Text | Green Lord