The new melee seems to have begun, and all of this has laid the groundwork for 2020.

        At the beginning of 2021, the automotive industry will be very lively, and various corporate actions will continue. BYD officially released the brand new LOGO, Tesla launched the domestically produced Model Y and the remodeled Model 3, and Xiaopeng Motors announced a cooperation with the lidar company incubated by DJI.

       The new melee seems to have begun, and all of this has laid the groundwork for 2020.

        New energy, intelligence, survival of the fittest, car building... these keywords that must be mentioned every year in the automotive industry in the past five years have exuded new brilliance in the past 2020.

       This year, independent brands focused their efforts in the field of new energy. In the auto show, new energy vehicles replaced fuel vehicles occupying the C position of various auto companies. Ideal and Xiaopeng have successively landed in the US stock market and started the "stock price rush" mode. Traditional car companies can't sit still either. New brands such as Lantu, GAC NIO, ARCFOX, etc. frequently move, trying to “acquire” key factors such as high-end, intelligent, and new energy in the future.

        This year, the trend of smart cars gradually became clear. New carmakers continue to add to the field of intelligence, and have repeatedly updated their self-developed intelligent driving systems. What follows is their monthly increase in sales.

        This year, the entire domestic automobile industry has accelerated its reshuffle. Established car companies such as FAW Xiali, Lifan, and Zotye have left the market one after another, while technology giants such as Apple, Alibaba, Baidu, and Huawei are trying to squeeze into this industry that is still in a critical period of transformation...

       For a time, new automakers, traditional auto companies, and technology giants gathered together, and the competitive landscape of the auto industry was changing.

New energy "takes off"

Remember PPT making cars?

        Since 2014, a group of "Chinese geeks" who have seen the future of smart electric vehicles through Tesla have successively established their own electric vehicle brands.

        The word "building a car" means a huge cost investment. For a long time after its establishment, these companies rely on various PPTs to try to gain the trust of the capital market. I only saw the PPT but not the actual car, which was dubbed by the industry as "PPT car making".

       Even in the next few years, new car-making forces such as Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal, and Weimar successfully launched new models, the market's mistrust still exists, and the label of "PPT car-making" has always followed.

The situation will change in 2020.

        This year, Tesla took the lead in opening the "market value hurricane" mode, surpassing Toyota for the first time in the middle of the year to become the world's most valuable car company. This is just the beginning. Its market value has accelerated in the second half of the year, and it is now the total of nine major auto companies including Toyota, Volkswagen, Nissan, Hyundai, and Ford.

Tesla has taken the lead, and new domestic car manufacturers have also performed well. Following Weilai, Ideal and Xiaopeng have entered the US stock market one after another and began to deliver a large number of new cars, and they have been welcomed by more consumers. At the end of the year, Weilai's monthly delivery even exceeded 5,000 units for two consecutive months. No one doubts that they are "PPT making cars", and the industry even takes "Electric Power Three" as its new title.

Compared with the previous year, the situation of the new car-building forces is quite different. This is due to the fact that it has reached the stage of development where a large number of new cars are delivered and accepted by the market. On the other hand, it benefits from the domestic new energy market. Rapid development.

Data shows that in the new energy market this year, the proportion of personal consumption has increased from 20% two years ago to nearly 70%, and the proportion of purchases in cities with non-restricted purchases has also reached 60%. On the whole, due to the impact of the epidemic at the beginning of the year, my country's automobile production and sales fell by about 3% year-on-year in the first November of 2020. In contrast, the new energy market only shrank by 0.1%.

Chang Chunsheng, deputy director of the Automobile Development Department of the Equipment Industry Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, believes that 2020 is the first year of the market-oriented development of new energy vehicles, and "the entire industry has entered a new stage." Shen Hui, the founder of Weimar Motors, once held the same view, thinking that 2020 is a watershed for new energy vehicles.

Judging from the situation of several major auto shows held this year, whether it is a traditional car company or a new car manufacturer, its booth C has basically turned into a new energy vehicle. Even if domestic subsidies are about to decline sharply again, the trend of new energy is unstoppable.

Intelligent wave "knock on the door"

Like new energy, the wave of intelligence is also coming fiercely.

From the perspective of the development stage, the trend of automobile intelligence in 2020 is very clear, but compared with the new energy market in the same period, it is still slightly "nature".

At the beginning of the year, Zhu Ronghua, chairman of Changan Automobile, took the seat in person, and showed live broadcast of the “muscles” of L3 autonomous driving, “waiting for the opening of laws and regulations”; at the end of the year, Great Wall Motors released the coffee intelligent driving system, setting the stage for “China's first full-scale driving system in 2021. The car’s redundant L3 level capability is the “Flag” of autonomous driving.

According to the previous development plans of various car companies, 2020 should have been the time node for mass production of L3 autonomous driving. For the time being, leaving aside the domestic factors that have not yet introduced relevant laws and regulations for L3 autonomous driving, only from the perspective of system functions, automakers' autonomous driving still belongs to the category of L2+.

From the perspective of consumer usage habits, intelligence has gradually become an important consideration when buying cars. Therefore, the intelligent driving system below the L3 level has basically become the standard for new cars in 2020, and the L3 level automatic driving will most likely become the direction of the car companies' efforts in 2021.

From a macro perspective of the industry, intelligence is also quietly reshaping the automotive industry chain, and "software-defined cars" appear more and more frequently in the industry.

"The competition of smart cars in the future will largely be the competition of software," said Deng Zhidong, a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Technology and Systems at Tsinghua University.

Car companies have clearly realized this trend and made changes.

Some car companies choose to jointly develop software with other companies, such as GAC and Zhongke Chuangda to establish a smart car software technology joint innovation center; some car companies set up internal software departments, such as Great Wall set up a first-level department "digital center" to promote the group's digital business ; There are also auto companies that directly choose to establish subsidiaries, such as SAIC’s establishment of a "Lingshu" software branch; and many auto companies have chosen to cooperate with domestic Tier1, and the two parties jointly define the software architecture and complete the "software-defined car" topic.

Knockout accelerated, melee mode turned on

With drastic changes in the industry, companies that cannot keep up with the changes will have to be eliminated. In 2020, FAW Xiali, Lifan, Zotye, Brilliance and other once-famous independent brands have never survived this winter.

For traditional car companies, whether it is new energy or intelligence, it is a huge subversion of its original model. This means that many aspects such as the long-term accumulation of resources, fixed organizational models, and the way of thinking about the industry should change.

Organizational structure is the first step. McKinsey Global Managing Partner Peng Bo commented that the complex business processes and rigid "departmental walls" of traditional auto companies are the existence of "the top executives of auto companies are helpless". Faced with new businesses, new technologies, and new models, auto companies can only add new departments for this, and the organization has become more complex. Under the inherent system, the creativity of the new department is also greatly reduced.

In terms of thinking, traditional car companies that place great importance on safety are temporarily unable to adapt to the development idea of ​​"user-driven products and rapid iteration in the delivery process" of new cars.

In order to face the transformation more flexibly, some traditional car companies have accelerated the establishment of new brands in 2020, basically focusing on the three main factors of "high-end, smart and new energy".

During the Guangzhou Auto Show, the three-year-old GAC New Energy announced that it was renamed "GAC E'an" brand to operate independently, and launched the pure electric SUV "E'an Y". SAIC and Great Wall’s internal codenamed "L" and "SL" projects have also been announced one after another, and they have become "Smart Auto" and "Salon Smart Action".

Another part of auto companies that have new brands will suddenly increase their actions in 2020.

In the middle of the year, Dongfeng released the brand logo and Chinese name of Lantu Motors, and released the first medium and large intelligent electric SUV "Lantu FREE" at the end of the year. GAC NIO has created the industry's first publicly released BOM, the first to build a smart travel ecological "memetic team", and the first car company to publicly promise to pay for fires, while bringing a new 007S car series.

In today's smart electric vehicle industry, the enthusiasm of traditional car companies seems to be even higher than that of new car manufacturers. Li Peng, digital executive officer of Great Wall Motors, believes that the intelligentization of automobiles has just begun. He shouted, "The tide is approaching, and my generation should bend into the game." His determination to transform is evident.

In addition, technology giants are also ready to move. Although Huawei, Xiaomi and other companies personally deny car building, they are trying to gradually penetrate the industry through cooperation with car companies. Technology companies such as Baidu and Alibaba are still ambiguous about car building. Apple has announced that it will start two years in advance. Car building project.

Many types of players enter the game, and the smart car is about to open the "Melee Mode".

Conclusion

          Looking back on 2020, even after experiencing the new crown epidemic at the beginning of the year, China's auto industry still presents a "prosperous" scene.

         On the unique soil of China, new forces such as Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng, etc. that also have a place in the world have grown up. At the same time, traditional car companies and technology companies are also trying to get in. For the foreseeable future, this smart car melee belonging to China will form a virtuous circle and promote the transformation of my country's automobile industry.

        The next five years will be the key five years for China to transform from a major automobile country to a powerful automobile country. As the first year of the "14th Five-Year Plan", 2021 should be more exciting.