On the morning of July 24, 2003, in the direct sunlight of California, a line of cars drove slowly into Hollywood Immortal Cemetery (Hollywood Forever Cemetery) in Los Angeles, and a piper dressed in traditional Scottish costume walked at the head of the funeral procession.

It was an eerie funeral, and people came here dressed solemnly and holding flowers not to bid farewell to their loved ones, but to see off their cars-an electric car called the EV1. The scene was shown in a documentary released in 2006, entitled: "who killed the electric car?" "(Who Killed The Electric Car? )

Two months before the funeral, General Motors Co, who single-handedly created EV1, decided to bury it with his own hands-recycling them one by one from clients and sending them to a car graveyard in the desert, crushed and crushed.

The move sparked outrage among environmentalists, to which GM argued that EV1's early death was caused by insufficient demand and poor battery technology, but in the eyes of electric car enthusiasts, it was a premeditated murder by oil oligarchs and US politicians.

More than a hundred years ago, electric cars and internal combustion cars were neck and neck, but because the Ford Model T completely changed all that.It reduced the production time of a car from 12 hours to 90 minutes, the price from $850 to $300, and the constant discovery of oil fields, gasoline cars gradually gained the upper hand in the battle of the century. quiet and environmentally friendly electric cars have retired from the stage of history.

It was not until the 1970s that people reconsidered the value of electric cars because of soaring oil prices caused by two oil crises and serious air pollution caused by car exhaust.

California was plagued by haze at the time, and 1/4 of teenagers in the Los Angeles area suffered from severe respiratory diseases, and car exhaust was the culprit. As a result, the local government introduced a zero-emission bill in 1990, requiring companies that sell cars in California to sell a certain proportion of electric or fuel vehicles within a specified period of time. EV1 came into being as the first truly modern electric vehicle.

However, this epoch-making product is a flash in the pan, producing only 1100 vehicles in just nine years from birth to death. On March 15, 2005, the last batch of EV1 was loaded into a trailer to be destroyed and disappeared from the public view, but people's attention to electric vehicles did not disappear.

In 2011, the same director made a new film, "Revenge Of The Electric Car," which demonstrates that electric cars are quietly reviving by telling the story of Chevrolet Volt, Nissan Leaf and Tesla, Inc. Roadster.

Who would have thought that ten years later, electric cars would indeed be popular, but the protagonist in the center of the stage would have changed.

The Chevrolet Volt halted production in 2019, and Carlos Ghosn, the former Renault-Nissan alliance CEO who led the Leaf project, went into exile. Tesla, Inc., who nearly went bankrupt, became the world's largest car company by market capitalization, equivalent to ten times that of GM, and Musk once became the richest man in the world.

The year the revenge documentary was released, there were three milestones in the mobile phone industry. First, Jobs died, leaving behind a stunning iPhone4;. Second, Alphabet Inc-CL C bought Motorola for 12.5 billion US dollars. The most sad thing is that the former industry leader Nokia was beaten to the teeth by Apple Inc and Samsung and had to form an alliance with Microsoft Corp to advance at full speed on the road of self-destruction.

Today, the automobile industry is experiencing a similar scene, and people in it can't help thinking of the mobile phone market at that time, how fast smartphones replace functional phones, and no one wants to be the next Nokia, despite the difficulties. but the traditional auto giants are trying to turn around, while the "barbarians" are taking advantage of the opportunity to use the power of capital and technology to break through and seize a place.

There are always countless opportunities at the turn of the old and the new, and individuals want to seize them, and so does the country. For more than half a century, China's auto industry has been playing the role of a chaser, and the process is very difficult, but in the mobile Internet era, when car properties and travel patterns have been changed, Chinese Autobots are ushering in an once-in-a-century opportunity.

To paraphrase Wang Xing, founder of Meituan:In the era of traditional fuel cars, there is no reason for Chinese companies to win; but in the coming era of smart electric cars, there is no reason for Chinese companies to lose.

Dormant

Wang Xing's remarks may disgust some auto bosses. After all, Meituan is only ten years old and can only be regarded as a "son" in front of the auto industry, so before we start a grand narrative, we need to answer a question:In the era of fuel cars, are China's car companies really going to lose? Where did you lose?

As we all know, the car was first invented by the Germans, and then the production line was first realized in the United States, and the production level was raised to a higher level by the Japanese in the 1970s, while China lost on the starting line from the very beginning.

The Chinese do-it-yourself car dates back to 1931, when a truck called Minsheng 75 was produced with the support of Young Marshal Zhang Xueliang, but it came to an abrupt end because of the outbreak of the September 18 incident.

It took 25 years for the Chinese people to continue their dream of building cars. With the support of Soviet experts, China's first "Jiefang" car pulled off the production line in Changchun in July 1956, but later, due to the rupture of Sino-Soviet relations, technological blockade and the shortage of foreign exchange and talents, China's automobile industry hesitated for a long time and stayed at the primitive stage of making cars with hammers.

After the reform and opening up, China wants to change the backward situation of automobile technology and is determined to introduce foreign investment. after asking around, few multinational companies are interested. When a representative of Toyota Motor Corp was invited to visit the Shanghai Automobile Factory, he was frightened by the deafening sound of a hammer and said, "this is the mode of production of our grandparents." It deeply stung the hearts of the Chinese people present.

At that time, China could only produce thousands of cars a year, and there was no system to speak of, and the automobile industry spelled out exactly the system, which involved upstream research and development, procurement, manufacturing and downstream marketing and after-sale. The longer the time, the more tacit understanding between different links, the higher the technical barriers, the more mature the system, the stronger the overall competitiveness.

It was not until 1984, when Shanghai Volkswagen began to assemble the first Santana, that such a system was gradually set up, but it was more than half a century later than abroad, so the localization rate of Santana increased from 2.7% to 5% in three years.

In order not to fall short of success, at the end of 1987, the state decided to establish the "Shanghai Santana Localization production Community". Finally, through various efforts, in August 1991, Shanghai Volkswagen ended the way of assembling Santana in the form of imported pieces. the goal of localization has been achieved.

A Santana has made the Germans taste all the benefits, but also attracted the coveted of many foreign companies. After China's accession to the WTO, almost all multinational car companies have set up joint ventures in China, and automobile consumption has entered an unprecedented blowout period, maintaining double-digit growth for more than a decade, turning the once dilapidated Shanghai car factory into a modern group that sells more than 6 million cars a year.

Through joint ventures, China has realized the zero-to-one automobile industry system, established a complete automobile R & D system and a huge supply chain, and trained a large number of excellent engineers and mature workers, but hidden worries remain.

In 2020, China sold 20.17 million passenger cars, but among so many cars, Chinese brands accounted for only 38.4%, down 0.9% from the previous year. This is also the embarrassment of China's automobile industry for a long time. Foreign capital has got the "market". However, the Chinese side has not changed back to the due "technology", and the survival space of independent brands is constantly squeezed.

In the era of fuel trucks, China has been frantically making up lessons because of the disadvantage of backwardness, constantly accumulating talents, experience and technology, and originally thought that it could achieve a counterattack through "joint ventures for technology", but unexpectedly, not only did it not cultivate international brands such as Volkswagen and BMW, but instead raised black sheep like brilliance.

However, the Chinese have never been discouraged, but are waiting for an opportunity. At present, new energy is the trend of the times, and new forces emerge one after another. From the original NIO Inc., XPeng Inc. and ideal to the newly unveiled Zhiji car, the new generation of Chinese Autobots once again sounded the assembly number of charge.

Compared with the past, this charge is no longer a single battle by Autobots, but a "joint operation of multiple arms." more and more vehicle factories have realized this. For example, behind Zhiji cars are SAIC and BABA. One is the most powerful automobile group in China, and the other is the Internet giant with the top technological strength.

Without an energy revolution, there is little chance that latecomers will want to overtake in place. In the new energy era, when engines and gearboxes are abandoned, the technical barriers built by foreign giants are no longer an insurmountable hurdle, and almost all runners return to the starting line.

Whether it is the driving force, the electronic and electrical architecture or the supporting infrastructure, the underlying logic and game rules of the whole industry have changed greatly, and a brand-new track has emerged, which is why it will give China's automobile industry a chance to turn around again.

Pave the road

The recovery of electric cars is inseparable from a "good gentleman".

In 1978, John Goodenough, who had studied physics in the United States for more than 20 years, was cut off for scientific research and went to Oxford, where he began to concentrate on batteries, a material called lithium cobalt, to be exact.

In 1991, based on the research results of Gudnerv and Akira Yoshino, another Japanese scientist, Sony Group Corp launched the world's first lithium-ion battery with light weight, long life, fast charging and high energy density, which set off a revolution in the consumer electronics industry.

Since then, Gudnauf rose to fame in the scientific community and discovered the cheaper and safer "lithium iron phosphate" in 1997, which is now widely used in electric vehicles. Gudnauf is regarded as the "father of lithium batteries".

At the beginning of the 20th century, lithium battery technology was firmly controlled by the Japanese, and its market share reached an astonishing 94%. There was almost no sense of existence in China.

When China joined WTO, global mobile phone shipments reached 500 million units, notebook computers shipped more than 25 million units, and many electronics companies set up factories and put into production in China one after another. It is precisely in this industrial migration that a number of potential stocks of the lithium industry have emerged in China, including those once known as China's lithium power giants: Tianjin Lishen, BYD, Bic and ATL.

Among them, ATL is the predecessor of "Ningde era" (CATL). In 1989, Zeng Yuqun, who graduated from the ship engineering department of Shanghai Jiaotong University, was assigned to a state-owned unit in Fujian, but Zeng Yuqun was not happy with his iron rice bowl. after three months of work, Zeng Yuqun decided to go to sea and go to an electronics factory in Dongguan.

Ten years later, 31-year-old Zeng Yuqun was promoted to engineering director and planned to change his job to become general manager of a company in Shenzhen, but was stopped by two senior leaders to start a business together, so he founded ATL. In 2001, Zeng Yuqun led a group of engineers to solve technical problems and successfully broke into Apple Inc's supply chain to supply iPod.

In 2011, when the central government was already interested in supporting the development of new energy vehicles, Zeng Yuqun, who saw the opportunity, decided to start a business again, spun off ATL's car power division separately, and returned to his hometown of Ningde, Fujian, to establish the Ningde era.

Because of its cooperation experience with Apple Inc, Ningde era attracted the attention of some big companies soon after its establishment, including brilliance BMW. Through this cooperation, Ningde era completed a complete set of whole process of power battery from R & D and design to production and delivery, laying the foundation for cooperation with other car companies later.

In 2017, sales of new energy vehicles in China reached 770000, up 53% from the same period last year, ranking first in the world for three years in a row, which made Ningde era surpass Panasonic to become the world's largest power battery manufacturer, at the same time, the car factory leader also began to seek deeper cooperation with it. In 2017, Ningde Times and SAIC established two joint ventures, ushering in a new era of strong cooperation.

In the past 100 years, who has mastered the core technology of the three core components (engine, chassis and gearbox), and who has a stable, reliable and high-quality supply chain?Who has mastered the commanding heights of the industry, in the new energy era, this set of rules also applies, who has the most powerful teammates, who can make a good article on the battery, will be able to take the lead.

After more than three years of cooperation, substantial progress has been made in the cooperation between SAIC and Ningde era. The "silicon-doped lithium" technology jointly developed by both sides can enable the battery to have the highest energy density in the world at the same weight, with a maximum 1000km life and zero attenuation of 200000 km, far exceeding all the competitors on the market at present.

If you want to get rich, pave the way first, the development of any industry is inseparable from the improvement of infrastructure, such as 4G promoted the outbreak of smartphones, the development of express delivery accelerated the prosperity of e-commerce.

In this reform of the automobile industry, the Chinese government has foresight, through active policy guidance and the efforts of a group of entrepreneurs, to catch up with the developed countries in the core technology field, not only to establish a huge and complete upstream and downstream battery supply chain, but also to have the world's largest recharging network, and the infrastructure has been continuously improved.

But this is not enough to enable China's auto industry to achieve its coveted counterattack. In the mobile Internet era, "software-defined cars" has become a trend. In this context, Chinese auto companies want to occupy the commanding heights of the industry. More reliable teammates are needed to form a strong alliance of Avengers.

Rise in momentum

In 1992, Shi Zhenrong, founder of Taiwan Acer Group, put forward the famous "smile curve" theory, that is, under the mode of global division of labor, in the value chain of an industry, there is design and R & D on the left, production and manufacturing in the middle, and sales on the right. the added value at both ends is the highest, and the profit in the middle link is the smallest.

The automobile industry is a typical representative. Multinational car enterprises and core parts suppliers have the greatest say. Although China has been the world's largest automobile market since 2009, most of the profits are actually grabbed by foreign investors because of insufficient accumulation of core technology. independent brands are mainly concentrated in the middle and low-end market of 100000 to 200000 yuan, and the profits are relatively limited.

If you want to turn things around, you have to find out where the high value-added point is. In the new energy era, the answer is no longer traditional components such as engines and gearboxes, but software.

According to Deloitte's forecast, by 2030, software costs will account for 50% of the vehicle's BOM (bill of materials). In addition to application development, the software here also includes AI algorithms, operating systems and electronic hardware such as controllers and chips with a high degree of software and hardware integration, which means that the smile curve of the automotive industry will revolutionize.

It is important to note that software and chips do not just appear in cars today. as early as the 1980s, automotive electronics can already be used to control engines. ButDifferent from the Internet industry, automotive software is embedded development, which means that each additional function, it is necessary to increase the corresponding ECU (Electronic Control Unit), and develop code for this.

At present, a traditional car has more than 70 ECU and about 100 million lines of code. They are developed by different suppliers and correspond to different parts and basic functions, such as air conditioners, windows, brakes, airbags and audio-visual entertainment systems. They do not have any overlap with each other, much like Nokia before iPhone.

Today, Nokia has been swept into the garbage heap of history, and the mobile phone has become an omnipotent intelligent terminal, sending e-mail, brushing Douyin, watching live streaming, playing games, and proficient in everything. By contrast, traditional cars are still in the initial stage of transportation, and the level of intelligence hesitates. No wonder Wang Jian, chairman of the BABA Technical Committee, said, "when you get on the car, you still have to use your mobile phone, which is a disgrace to the Autobots."

In the era of traditional fuel cars, this humiliation is almost inevitable because of mechanical structure and electronic and electrical architecture, but electric cars are different.

Electric cars and intelligence are naturally good friends, because there are 1/3 fewer parts than fuel vehicles, and the structure of the whole vehicle is greatly simplified. coupled with the revolutionary electronic and electrical architecture, electric cars are more likely to become an iPhone with four wheels, which means that the hardware level will gradually become standardized in the long run, the marginal benefits of hard work will be smaller and smaller, and software is the biggest source of differentiation.

To some extent, this also explains why Apple Inc's dream of building a car continues to this day after Jobs' death. Chinese Internet giants have entered one after another, and industry leaders like Volkswagen have proposed to transform themselves into a software company and a travel service provider, because they have realized that mainframe manufacturers need to use the capabilities unleashed by the software to achieve product differentiation and bring new experiences to consumers.

However, the software has always been developed by suppliers, and the whole car factory is more involved, but with the continuous improvement of the value and importance of the software, the whole vehicle factory can no longer be a shopkeeper, so it is necessary to invest in research and development. while bringing in more external partners.

After more than a decade of development, the penetration rate of smartphones in China has reached more than 95%, and a large number of Internet technology companies with international influence have emerged. It provides a very good user base, application ecology and technology reserve for the development of smart cars.

Previously, some communication service providers, Internet platforms and big data, which seemed to have little to do with the automobile industry, may become the Tier1 (first-tier supplier) of the new era, producing strong synergy with the whole car factory.

For example, SAIC and BABA set up a joint venture "Zebra Network" as early as 2015 to introduce Internet ecological services into cars and provide consumers with a richer driving experience. In China, SAIC is one of the few vehicle manufacturers that are entering into software in an all-round way. in addition to zebras, SAIC set up Zero Software last year, focusing on intelligent driving, software architecture, basic software platforms and data factories. the team is expected to expand to 1000 this year.

The cooperation between the two giants will also continue to deepen in the Zhiji Automobile project. As one of the three major shareholders, BABA will fully empower Zhiji cars with the advantages of users' big data and Dharma's latest technology, and help them seize the first-mover highland in the global smart car field.

On January 13th, Zhiji released two products that made great innovations at the software level. On the one hand, they adopted a new generation of domain-converged central computing digital architecture, which removed the barriers between hardware and made it a mobile supercomputer that can realize full-vehicle OTA;. On the other hand, through a series of super hardware enhancements, it can create a "full-scene, most continuous" zero-takeover intelligent driving experience.

If electrification opens a window for lane-changing overtaking in China's automobile industry, then intelligence is the door to be knocked on.

Co-creation

At the beginning of last year, because of the epidemic, many car workshops began to produce epidemic prevention materials such as masks, but Wuling, which was not well-known, gained a lot of favor because of the saying, "Wuling builds what people need."

But it was not until June last year, when the Wuling Hongguang MINIEV, which started at 28800 yuan, went on the market and once surpassed the domestic Model3 to become a new generation of "national magic car" that people gradually realized the real lethal power of this sentence.

"what kind of car do the people need? This question is supposed to be the origin for all enterprises to think about the problem, but in the era of traditional fuel cars, this question is very difficult to answer, because the whole car factory is only responsible for building the car and selling it to 4S stores, and there is no direct contact with users.

According to the relationship between car companies and users, we can roughly divide the history of the industry into two stages:

1.0 the era of "manufacturing thinking to build cars": represented by Ford and Toyota, reducing costs through economies of scale and improving quality through lean production, but essentially doing 2B wholesaler business, not directly facing consumers.

2.0 "Internet thinking car building" era: represented by Tesla, Inc., through direct marketing to ensure the consistency of prices, brands and services, and then through remote OTA means to provide software and hardware upgrades, is a typical 2C enterprise, but the interaction with consumers is relatively limited.

What about the innovative car companies of the 3.0 era?

First of all, we need to understand what innovation is. Schumpeter, a famous political economist, believes that innovation does not only mean the production of a new product, but also the establishment of a new "production function", that is, the recombination of production factors. corresponding to product innovation, technological innovation, institutional innovation and other forms, entrepreneurs need to introduce these combinations and cultivate innovative soil.

If it is placed in the context of the automobile industry, battery + motor instead of engine + gearbox can be regarded as product innovation, voice interaction and self-driving can be understood as technological innovation, and institutional innovation is the foundation of innovation. the ultimate goal is to fully stimulate people's creativity and enthusiasm, the "people" here not only include enterprise employees, but also include tens of millions of users.

As cars become more and more intelligent, users are not only consumers of products, but also participants in the community, providers of data, and an indispensable part of the value chain, because in the era of artificial intelligence, data is one of the most important means of production and the most important fuel to push the automobile industry forward, whether it is bicycle intelligence or V2X and vehicle-road coordination in the future. All require huge amounts of data and powerful computing power.

How to stimulate the enthusiasm of users requires enterprises to make changes from the root.

The newly established Zhiji car provides an excellent demonstration. In addition to SAIC, BABA and Zhangjiang Hi-Tech, Zhiji divides the remaining 10 per cent into ESOP (core employee shareholding platform) and CSOP (user rights platform), using a series of technologies including blockchain to confirm the data value contributed by users in the form of digital rights.

Zhiji Automobile realizes the deep interaction and benefit sharing between car enterprises and users through this highly innovative model, which is not only further than the new forces such as NIO Inc. and ideal, but also a unique innovation looking at the whole world.

This is because Zhiji's founding team deeply understands that the core of "software-defined car" is not the software itself, but data-driven, and the data in the process of using the car, after the automated deep learning of AI, can directly promote the evolution and iteration of products, services and brands, and users will become the core drivers of the enterprise value chain.

In addition to CSOP, Zhiji Automobile also endowed itself with more humanistic connotations through the "partner mechanism" at the beginning of its establishment, and jointly created a rich and interesting new intelligent travel experience for AI. The current four partners include British architects Thomas Heatherwick, teamLab, Williams Senior Engineering and Jiang Qionger, co-founder of the Tianyi Culture Foundation, known as "contemporary da Vinci", with more members to join in the future.

For car companies, to create an excellent product is the most basic condition to attract users, and through system innovation and users to form a community of interests is a further step. On the one hand, car companies can further tap and meet the needs of users in the whole life cycle, on the other hand, users can also enjoy the dividends of the intelligent era, create a good driving experience, and achieve a real win-win situation.

The end.

In 1992, Qian Xuesen, China's "father of missiles", wrote a letter to the then Vice Premier Zou Jiahua, earnestly saying:

"now the United States, Japan, and Western Europe are all organizing their own technical forces to attack high-efficiency batteries and plan to develop battery cars. Under this situation, we should never wait again, but should immediately make plans to catch up. China has the ability to jump over a step and enter a new era of cars directly. "

When Qian Xuesen was writing this letter, GM had just launched a concept electric car called the Impact, the future EV1, while Japan made a major breakthrough in battery technology, which made China's science industry both excited and nervous. On the one hand, although there are already scientific research institutions in China to study power batteries, due to the limited technical and financial strength, if they do not act as soon as possible, they may be left behind by foreign countries.

As the "crown of industry", the automobile industry places generations of scientists' dream of becoming an industrial power. Over the past 40 years, China has established a complete industrial manufacturing system by means of "joint ventures for technology" and accumulated some technology through independent innovation and overseas acquisitions, but it has to admit that there is still a gap in the core areas. it is even more difficult to build an independent luxury brand.

Although new energy cannot make us rise to the sky in one step, it at least brings China and Europe and the United States back to the same starting line, and compared with the past, Chinese car companies are no longer alone, just like Zhiji cars, not only relying on SAIC's strong R & D and manufacturing capabilities, but also making full use of BABA's technology to fight hard in the high-end market.

In this race with no corners to go, whether it is the hot sale of Model 3, the sharp price reduction of Model Y, or the rapid rise of the domestic industrial chain, the frequent debut of new domestic brands indicates that the fiercest competition stage is about to begin. To sum up in a sentence that we are very familiar with, that is,There is not much time left for the Chinese team.

So back to the beginning, Wang Xing"China has no reason to lose in the era of electric cars."In fact, there should be the next sentence, that is:In the era of electric cars, Chinese enterprises must not lose, nor can they afford to lose any more.