Smart cars compete for ＂upgrading＂, how to start？
Image source: Extreme Vietnam official
Near the end of the year, although the "Golden September and Silver 10" has ended, the competition among major car companies has not been resolved, but there are signs of a new round of price war.
At present, the industry has entered the year-end impulse stage, and in November, many brand car companies announced price reduction concessions. Extreme Yue 01 announced the price adjustment of the whole department, with a minimum starting price of 219,900 yuan, a further reduction of 5,000 yuan for new replacement users and a cash compensation of 30,000 yuan for users who have already picked up the car. And some of the best-selling models of BYD Dynasty Network and Ocean Network have also reduced their prices by 3000-18000 yuan. In addition, in November, brands such as Euler, Krypton, Ideality, Ai ‘an, and Lectra all launched cash discounts and various promotional items ranging from 5,000 to 40,000 yuan.
From the end of 2023, this only one month is a critical period for car companies, which is directly related to the achievement of their respective annual sales targets. At this point, the "price war" of car companies that almost ran through the whole year also came to the closing moment.
Along with the intensive push of new products by major car companies and the multi-party competition of price wars this year, there may be some deeper thinking for the whole industry besides feelings.
In the last year or two, apart from the price war, what should major car companies roll up? Or what is the core element of the enterprise’s survival and even its advantage in the increasingly fierce market competition?
At present, the competition of new energy vehicles is becoming more and more fierce, and intelligence has become a new position for major brands to compete for. In addition to traditional car manufacturers, Wei Xiaoli and other new forces to build cars, automobile brands backed by Internet giants such as Jiyue and Wenjie have also joined the battle.
In the past, under the traditional logic, the automobile industry often focused on volume design, volume configuration and volume cost performance. In this competitive environment, in order to compete for market share, automobile manufacturers often sell their cars at low prices. In the eyes of the industry, price war is not a sustainable competitive strategy, and enterprises need to consider more important competitive factors such as quality, technology and service to achieve long-term development goals.
Then, when the domestic auto market enters the intelligent "second half" competition, what should the auto companies roll up?
A price war that swept through the whole year has made major car companies play a "real fire" and have come up with housekeeping skills in order to seize more market share. However, to the surprise of most people, Huawei, which was relatively quiet in the first half of the year, began a concentrated outbreak in the second half of the year. No one expected that the new car-making force, originally represented by "Wei Xiaoli", will now be replaced by new car-making brands blessed by technology companies and become the focus of market attention.
From Huawei’s announcement of the independence of BU business, to the listing of Zhijie S7, to Yu Chengdong’s public invitation to Cyrus, Chery, Jianghuai, BAIC and FAW to join the new joint venture company. Although Huawei does not build cars, its every move will attract the attention of the entire automobile industry.
From the perspective of the industry, the leading intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit technology, coupled with excellent car definition and design, user experience building, and marketing and sales capabilities, will become the "strength puzzle" that major car companies will compete to complete.
Coincidentally, in the current car-making industry, there is also a company that has also assembled this "explosive configuration" early, that is, the extreme leap created by Geely and Baidu.
The two companies have leading strengths in the technology industry and the automobile industry respectively, and the more they can get sufficient resources from the two companies. Thanks to the blessing of these two companies, Baidu’s powerful AI capability has become a sharp weapon to break the circle of Extreme Yue 01, and it has also become the world’s first smart car with a large model "getting on the bus". "ERNIE Bot" has made SIMO’s IQ reach a new height.
According to Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu and Extreme Yue, Extreme Yue 01 is the first "real" smart car in China, and the core of its intelligence is that it is the first car equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 chip in China. The 8295 chip brings the intelligent cabin voice interaction ability beyond the same level and the smoothness of the car comparable to that of the mobile phone, which is regarded as a "revolutionary change" by Xia Yiping, and the car finally has the confidence to fight head-on with the mobile phone.
Another selling point of Extreme Yue 01 is the intelligent driving system. Extreme Yue is the first automobile brand in China, and it is also the only smart car brand that adopts the "pure vision" intelligent driving scheme at present. As a "developer" of pure visual mode, Tesla’s domestic version of Model Y only provides high-speed intelligent assisted driving, while urban scenes and automatic parking are missing. The beta version of FSD has just entered the owner’s manual.
PPA, the core function of the high-order intelligent driving system carried by Extreme Yue 01, has run through the urban roads in Shanghai and achieved "zero takeover" in the whole process. The system has Baidu Apollo’s full set of advanced autopilot capabilities and security system empowerment. Baidu Apollo has always been regarded as one of the leading companies in autonomous driving technology in the industry.
Now, the results are finally reflected in the body of Extreme Yue 01. Empowered by Baidu Apollo, the intelligent driving system of Extreme Yue 01 applies the "pure vision" scheme of BEV (God’s perspective) +Transformer (a neural network model for processing sequence data). Based on dual NVIDIA DRIVE Orin chips, the AI computing power reaches 508 TOPS. Some insiders said that at present, in the competition of the first echelon in the field of smart driving, the main competitor of Baidu Apollo is Huawei.
All high-level intelligent capabilities are leading "out of the box". With the blessing of benchmarking intelligent capabilities, Extreme Yue 01 has also become a popular exhibition area at the Guangzhou Auto Show.
With the advent of the era of new energy vehicles, more and more family consumers began to focus on 200,000-300,000 high-end pure electric SUVs, which made the competition in this market segment more and more fierce. In the past, the main products in this price range were often immersed in the competition of comfortable configuration. Even if there are occasional models with "black technology" as the selling point, it is often the "lamp factory" like Audi that produces fancy lamps, or the engine technology of German and Japanese car companies has been improved.
Nowadays, independent brands have begun to focus on building high-end intelligent pure electric vehicles and launched an impact on the high-end market. Without exception, these models are full of scientific and technological content: high-computing chips, lidar, intelligent cockpit, etc. have almost become the standard of "high-end". The slogan "entry-level is high" has also been heard many times.
"Volume" is the key word of China automobile market in 2023. From competing product functions, to competing technology and iterative ability, the competition in the auto market has become fierce. Under such a market background, it is not easy for latecomers to break the game. The combination of car companies and technology companies will become a new trend to drive the development of the entire smart electric vehicle industry.
Just as the sale of domestic Tesla a few years ago led to the explosion of the new energy vehicle market. Nowadays, the smart car ecology blessed by Baidu, Huawei and other technology companies will play the role of Tesla’s "catfish" and drive the smart electric vehicle industry into a new game stage, which is undoubtedly at the forefront.
At the end of 2022, because the new energy car purchase subsidy will end in 2023, a considerable number of potential users chose to buy cars in advance before the year, in order to catch the last bus of subsidies.
However, what no one expected was that after entering 2023, Tesla’s price reduction directly plunged the price of new energy vehicles, and it was normal for new energy vehicles to offer a discount of 30,000 to 50,000. Now, car companies have started the mode of rushing sales at the end of the year. After last year’s "lesson", some consumers are cautious about the concessions given by car companies. It can be seen that a simple price war has been difficult to effectively stimulate users’ desire to buy a car.
In this context, how to grasp users’ core car purchase demands and give them sufficient "car purchase confidence" has gradually become the focus of a new round of game, and major car companies have begun to focus on car purchase rights.
In the past, when we bought a car, we paid more attention to the official selling price and the floor price given by dealers. With the rise of the direct sales model, it seems that only the officially announced model price is left for consumers who buy new energy vehicles. Under the background of the "rights war" of car companies, some cognitive "misunderstandings" have also emerged from the traditional perspective.
Take the Extreme Yue 01 listed last month as an example. The earliest official price of this car was 249,900. After seeing this price, many people seem to label the Extreme Yue 01 as not cost-effective. In fact, this single-dimensional algorithm not only ignores the software and hardware advantages of Extreme Yue 01 in terms of intelligent cabin and intelligent driving, but also ignores the small order rights of Extreme Yue 01 and the car purchase rights of 70,000 yuan. In fact, if all kinds of rights and interests are added up, the "intelligence-price ratio" of Jiyue 01 will remain highly competitive among competing products.
But Ji Yue is not satisfied with this. On November 30th, Extreme Yue announced the launch of a new pricing policy and rights: from now on, all models of Extreme Yue 01 (Extreme Yue 01 Max or Extreme Yue 01 Max Performance) will be purchased according to the latest price standard. In addition, the optional package of 100kWh ternary lithium battery offers a discount of 10,000 yuan (limited time), and the 720km battery life version of Extreme Yue 01 Max (that is, the optional 100kWh battery package) offers a maximum discount of 40,000 yuan.
Based on the new price policy and rights and interests, the price of the entry-level version of Extreme Yue 01 has been increased to 219,900 yuan. Compared with other models in the industry, such as Tucki G9, Aouita 11 (panoramic car viewing), Wenjie M7 and Tesla Model Y, the discount is at least 30,000 yuan.
For the old users who have picked up the car, Extreme Vietnam will give cash compensation of 30,000 yuan difference according to the latest model price. Immediately, the next step is to add 12 months of "pure vision" high-level intelligent driving ROBO Drive Max free subscription, lifetime vehicle/three-electricity warranty, lifetime free road rescue and many other rights and interests. Not only that, users who lock orders in 2023 can upgrade the U-shaped steering wheel for free, and receive UWB keys for free when picking up the car during the year.
Judging from the trend of the new energy vehicle market this year, the discount given by car companies for the year-end sales volume is indeed great, but to say how the specific effect is, it will eventually fall above the user’s demand.
At this point, although the brand of Extreme Yue was born soon, its response speed to the market is still very fast in controlling users’ thinking.
After the previous launch conference of Extreme Yue 01, the official received a lot of feedback from users, thinking that the optional package of Extreme Yue 01 was complicated and difficult to understand, and everyone did not approve of bundling the optional 21-inch wheels with the comfortable suit. Extremely aware of the important value of user feedback to new products and new rights and interests, Extreme Yue set up a special group overnight and completed the rights and interests adjustment plan the next day.
In fact, for the brand of new car-making power, it is difficult to "start" under the background of price war, and every penny should be spent on the cutting edge. For brands such as Jiyue, Wenjie and Zhijie, which have the empowerment of technology companies and occupy a certain opportunity in intelligent games, it is more necessary to grasp the needs of users while competing for technology.
Therefore, Xia Yiping constantly stressed on various occasions that technological development needs a process. As a product to be listed soon, it is impossible for Extreme Yue 01 to lead to a decline in the whole product experience because of too advanced technical iteration. Extreme Yue 01 will provide users with the best solution in intelligence, but it will not blindly pursue the application of cutting-edge technology and lose some product experience.
Since this year, the "price war" in the domestic auto market has gradually escalated. Tucki G6, Wenjie New M7, New Lantu FREE, 2024 Tucki X9, Lingke 08EM-P, Zhiji LS6 and Feifan R7, and so on, all have embarked on the road of low price when they go public.
Under the double pressure of price war and rights war, the test is not only the research and development and reserve of intelligent technology of car companies, but also the competition of "bearing capacity" of the whole enterprise.
For Ji Yue, "birth" does give Ji Yue a "pressure resistance" that is different from other new brands of car making. Geely Holding Group and Baidu Group, as strategic partners of the automotive robot project, are extremely powerful capital backing.
Based on the vast architecture of the world-leading SEA, Geely Holding Group gives full play to its competitive advantages in the fields of R&D, manufacturing and supply chain management, deeply integrates automotive intelligence and networking technology, and is responsible for manufacturing intelligent leading automotive robots. Baidu is the world’s leading AI model company, and also a leading enterprise in autonomous driving technology. It fully opens up the latest and most advanced AI technology capabilities such as intelligent cockpit, intelligent driving and ERNIE Bot, and empowers automobile robots.
Under the joint efforts of the two, compared with other new forces, it has got rid of the complicated links such as the construction of heavy-asset production plants, chassis development, and research and development of autonomous driving technology. It can bring users a smarter and more intimate product experience to the greatest extent under the innate advantages of mature vehicle architecture, top-notch car production line, high-quality supply chain system and Baidu AI technology.
Although, at present, the alliance between technology companies and automobile companies has not yet formed a certain road to success. But what is certain is that this powerful alliance composed of head car companies and technology companies will become the "darling" in the market competition for a long time to come, and will even have an impact on the development of the entire intelligent electric vehicle industry.
(This article is the first titanium media App)
