Q1, which has just passed, Weilai handed over a brilliant report card: 7257 units were delivered in March, a record high, with a total of 20060 units delivered in Q1, reaching delivery of more than 20, 000 units in a single season for the first time, an increase of 422.7% over the same period last year.

As of 8 April, there were 2768 patents in China, including 41 in Hong Kong; 204patents in Europe through "NIO NEXTEV LIMITED"; 193patents in the United States with "NIO USA" as the main query; and 13 patents in South Korea and seven in Japan.

Weilai has submitted a total of 3184 patents worldwide, making it the company with the largest number of patents among the three new car-building powers in China. Penguin decoding tries to see the R & D strength of Weilai through these 3184 "capillaries".

Invention patents account for 44%, and the gold content is not low.

In the Chinese patent system, there are three categories: invention patent, utility model and design.
At present, there are 1208 invention patents, 984 utility models and 533 designs in China.

According to the patent law of our country, the examination and approval procedure of invention patent includes five stages: acceptance, preliminary examination, publication, actual examination and authorization. The final authorization will be reviewed comprehensively on the basis of criteria such as novelty, creativity and adaptability. At present, 202 invention patents have been finally authorized in China, accounting for 17% of the total.

Invention patents are groundbreaking or groundbreaking patents, while utility models, commonly known as "small inventions", are improvements based on previous products or technology. the requirements for the creativity and technical level of utility models in the Patent Law are lower than those of invention patents. In other words, the more invention patents, the higher the gold content.

Weilai has the highest proportion of invention patents, 44%, of which authorized inventions account for 17%. It can be seen that the "gold content" of patents is not low.

In 2017, patents and products broke out at the same time.

The patent belonging to the main company of Weilai can be traced back to January 6, 2016. it is an invention patent "an electric drive system for an automobile and a car using the electric drive system". The electric drive system is the power "heart" of the electric vehicle, which starts the real journey of building a car.

In China, the year in which the largest number of patents was published was 2019, with 1230 patents.

Among them, there are 540 invention patents, 437 utility models and 253 exterior designs.

According to this, the submission time of the largest number of invention patents should be concentrated from the second half of 2016 to the first half of 2017.

Back in April 2017, Xilai unveiled 11 cars at the Shanghai International Auto Show, including the first mass-produced ES8. There are 11 cars on display, including 2 FIA Formula Electric team racing cars, 6 electric cars EP9, 1 driverless version of EP9, concept car Lailai EVE and the latest production car Weilai ES8. )

It can be seen that a large number of patent accumulation gave birth to the outbreak of this product. In 2017, it is really the dawn after Weilai dormant.

In addition, it should be noted that in 2013, before its establishment, Weilai also had five patents, except that these were all its patents obtained after its wholly-owned acquisition of Beijing Art (after the acquisition changed its name to Beijing Yufeng).

This acquisition, in addition to technology and patents, Weilai also acquired all the company's automotive engineers.

In 2013, Beijing Yufeng has a total of 5 utility model patents, including welding fixtures for car bodies, door fixtures for cars, mobile vehicles for car models, edge-closing moulds, cutting and positioning underframes for sheet metal parts and cutting positioning devices.

Although these patents are not "hard cores", they have also laid the foundation for Weilai to take the lead in the patent layout of automotive hardware.

It is far-reaching in terms of "electricity", and the most painstaking efforts are made by "changing power stations".

The difference between the new energy vehicle and the traditional vehicle is that the power system changes from mechanical energy to electric energy, of which the core technology is "three electricity", including motor, battery and electric control.

In the "three electricity", the "battery" related patent layout is the most.

Although batteries are fully market-oriented products, there are mature suppliers, such as Ningde era. The battery cell involves raw materials (such as lithium iron phosphate and ternary lithium) and cannot be controlled independently, but the core competitiveness of the battery, such as the independent design and production of battery components and battery management system, can be controlled in their own hands.

Looking through the patents related to Weilai battery, there are 10 patents related to "battery module" and 68 related to "battery management", which are related to power battery remote monitoring and alarm, battery cooling, battery health assessment and so on.

Do you still remember many spontaneous combustion incidents in 2019, mainly due to the use of ternary lithium batteries with high energy density but poor thermal stability? At present, the mainstream solution is water cooling.

Therefore, it can be seen that great efforts have been made in the temperature control related to the electric drive system, and there are 51 patents related to cooling alone.

In addition, from the point of view of the charging scene, a "rechargeable, replaceable and upgradable" energy replenishment system has been established, and there are five ways to replenish energy, namely, exclusive charging piles, power stations, mobile charging cars, overcharging network and valet charging services.

Among them, charging piles, changing power stations, and charging cars (also known as "rechargeable vehicles") involve independent research and development, and are called by Shen Fei, vice president of power management at Weilai, as the three major power-up trumps of Weilai.

Among them, the relatively easy one-hour charging service, which claims to be able to solve the "power change" service in 3 minutes, is a moat that Ulai has been proud of and is consolidating. Shen Fei once judged, "only by changing electricity can electric vehicles power up faster than gasoline cars." "

From the patent level, Weilai has the most patent layout in power exchange, with 466 items, involving accurate positioning, rapid disassembly, compact integration, flexible deployment and so on.
Among them, the latest one is the patent for the invention of "wireless charging device and its coil switching method and related device," which was authorized in early March this year. Some analysts pointed out that this patent is likely to further improve the user's full-scene energy supplement mode.

Autopilot, intelligent cockpit, still need to work hard

Huang Renxun, CEO of Nvidia, has predicted that the whole car factory will sell cars at a price close to cost in 2025, and the profit will mainly come from software.

This means that the business model of electric vehicles will subvert the one-shot sale of traditional cars, no longer just selling hardware, and there is more room for value-added software subscriptions. In software subscription, the core must be autopilot service.

At the ET7 press conference of the first sedan in Weilai at the beginning of this year, Li Bin used the word "autopilot" instead of "autopilot". The cancellation of the word "auxiliary" also shows Weilai's ambition to enter the field of autopilot.

There are 47 patents in the field of self-driving, of which 64 per cent are filed by US companies, 36 per cent in Chinese mainland and none in other countries and regions.

Among them, there are 3 patents in the perceptual level, including an invention of "a distributed multi-core heterogeneous system", which shows that it can meet the precision requirements of L4 autopilot perception fusion; there are 28 patents in the control level, but the patent of the autopilot decision layer is 0. (there is and only one decision patent, which belongs to the field of L2 intelligent driving, and is "decision-making methods, systems and others of driver assistance system based on game theory")

Interestingly, in 2019, Ulay North America unveiled a "suicide" patent that automatically drives the vehicle to a safe location to self-destruct when a power system failure is identified.

However, compared with the leader in the field of self-driving, Baidu, which has 632 patents, Weilai's self-driving technology still has a long way to go.
If autopilot is classified as out-of-car intelligence, then the in-car intelligence is the intelligent cockpit.

In the intelligent cockpit, the core technology is human-vehicle interaction.

Since its inception, Weilai has been developing its own intelligent cockpit. At present, the most key achievement is the vehicle artificial intelligence system-- voice assistant NOMI.

Li Bin once said, "NOMI is a voice interaction system and emotion engine with powerful vehicle computing power and cloud computing platform, which can establish a new way of human-car interaction." "

However, using keywords such as "interactive", "dialogue" and "machine learning" to search and screen, there are only 14 patents, all of which are the type of invention publication, that is, they are still in the licensing stage.

As a "movable living space", the experience of intelligent cockpit can not be limited to spacious space, comfortable leather sofa and pleasant fragrance, but more importantly, intelligent "intimate". In this regard, Weilai still needs to make efforts.

It's not a car, it's a way of life.

Finally, let's take a look at the design patents. In addition to the graphical interface design, which accounts for the highest proportion, and the car-related design, what is more interesting is that in the "other" there are 29 products that seem to be "out of business". Such as scooters, toy cars, hoodies, thermos cups, folding umbrellas and so on. Most of these products can be found in Weilai's NIO LIFE store.

"you're not just buying a car, you're buying a ticket to a new lifestyle. "in February 2019, Li Bin of Weilai once said so.

For Weilai, which focuses on user service and is committed to building a fan community, cars are not only a means of transportation, but also a mobile living space, but also a ticket to middle-class life. The space of imagination is bound to be more extensive and far-reaching than selling cars.

To sum up, Weilai has made a lot of efforts in the patent layout of "electricity". The most important layout is in the core service scene of "changing power stations". This year, Weilai is working on the layout of the second generation power station, which is planned to hit 500 by the end of the year.

However, in the intelligent, including autopilot, intelligent cockpit and other major intelligent scenes, there is still a lot of room for technological improvement.