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Source: Zinc Finance
In June, the "Cloud Data Super Factory" jointly built by Zhiji Automobile and Alibaba Cloud debuted. It is reported that through the cloud data super factory, Zhiji Auto can return the massive data collected by the on-board sensing system to the cloud, and rely on Alibaba Cloud to provide efficient technical support for Zhiji Auto in the full data link, helping IM AD training and updating the intelligent driving model.
With the continuous rise of new car making forces, and under the guidance of the "dual carbon" goal, the broad development prospects of new energy vehicles have been magnified again and again. With the combination of long-term and short-term factors, most of the domestic traditional car enterprises have begun to layout new sub brands.
As SAIC hopes to build a global industry benchmark new energy model technically, the Zhiji car, which should have had a "reliable" aura, did not grow into the head of the track with a "golden spoon" as the market imagined, but lost its sense of existence more and more.
The market volume has declined again and again, which has not only lost the consumers' eyes, but also led to repeated complaints from the users of "Angel Wheel" due to problems such as inconsistent products with "propaganda", loss of scarcity of users' rights and interests, etc. Although Alibaba, an Internet giant, is involved, the stranding of Zebra Zhixing will inevitably put a question mark on the cooperation between the two sides in Zhiji Auto.
The continuous internal and external problems have made Zhiji an "invisible person" in the new energy vehicle race track. Facing the current situation of fierce competition, the future road is inevitably difficult.
All kinds of hard rubbing, no sense of existence
At the end of 2020, SAIC Group, Zhangjiang Hi Tech in Pudong New Area and Alibaba announced the establishment of the high-end smart electric car brand Zhiji Auto. Chen Hong, the chairman of SAIC Group, took the helm in person and tried to build Zhiji into a "Tesla of China".
In addition to the capital of up to 10 billion yuan, the experience advantages of traditional automobile enterprises, combined with regional support and technology bonus, make the market optimistic about the future development of Zhiji. It seems "no problem" to build a Chinese Tesla, and the goal is to surpass Tesla.
However, innumerable historical experiences have proved that how high you win at the beginning, how much you fall in the end.
In April 2022, Zhiji L7, which once galloped in PPT, will be officially listed, with a starting price of 368800 yuan, and will be delivered from May. However, according to the auto industry data service platform Grand Search Zhiyun, Zhiji sold only about 500 cars in May. In contrast, Tesla sold 57500 vehicles in May after the Shanghai epidemic.
Zhiji L7 It may be inappropriate to compare the sales of a new brand with that of an "old" brand, but it is really hard to see Zhiji's confidence in "building China Tesla" in terms of such initial sales.
In the face of "bleak" sales, an obvious problem is Zhiji's brand influence on the new energy vehicle track. As a latecomer of the market, Zhiji's brand "precipitation" is seriously insufficient.
For any new force brand that has no accumulation, brand marketing is crucial during the empty window period of releasing new cars and delivering products. Whether it's about concept or story telling, various marketing methods must keep up, strengthen the market's awareness of the brand, and build a foundation for expanding the number of users and market share in the future.
Nowadays, there are many brands of new energy vehicle racing track. Although they are not mature enough, users choose more influential brands, such as Tesla, BYD, Weixiaoli, etc.
As a latecomer, Zhiji has made only a few "appearances" in the market in nearly a year from the official launch of the model in the second half of 2021 to the official release of the price of L7 in April. Even if it appeared, it was just a few auto shows with little effect, and the first batch of 200 experience versions of Zhiji L7 were delivered offline at the end of last year.
It is worth mentioning that Liu Tao, the co CEO of Zhiji Automobile, also said that Zhiji L7 benchmarking was "the core models A6, 5 series and E class among BBA models". First Tesla, then BBA, continuously benchmarking "large flow" car companies, which inevitably makes people feel a little reluctant.
Apart from the new forces like "Weixiaoli" and "Naweiling", the active level of Jikrypton and Landu, also known as "the second generation of cars", is not a bit higher than Zhiji. In contrast, it seems that the market is forgetting that SAIC has a high-end electric brand.
Too hard, and users bite back
At different stages of development, enterprises will expand brand influence according to specific conditions.
Even on the positive side, Zhiji was immersed in technology and creating "perfect" products before the products were delivered. The "reduced allocation" products and "shrunk" services after the delivery proved that Zhiji was unable to support the "big cake" drawn previously.
From April 2021, in order to attract users to order cars, Zhiji Auto launched a "Angel Rights" promotion policy for the top 3000 car owners who booked Zhiji L7, which is also called "Angel Wheel Seats". Since then, Zhiji has launched "A round users" whose rights and interests are slightly lower than "Angel round".
Give users rights and interests in finance, car maintenance and other aspects. This kind of play is new in the automotive industry.
However, in less than a month, 102 Zhiji L7 "Angel Wheel" owners issued a joint statement on Zhiji L7 related rights and interests on May 28.
Statement of some Zhiji L7 prospective owners The car owners listed five major issues in the statement, including the rights and interests of the angel wheel version were exceeded, and the scarce seats were not scarce; The conditions for upgrading lidar and high-order energy battery are not clear; The 93kWh battery capacity advertised in the configuration table is inconsistent with the registration of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; A number of auto show press conferences and advertising campaigns have not been honored; There are five major problems in the chaotic management of the official APP community.
With the rapid development of technology, especially today when cars are becoming more and more intelligent, consumers attach great importance to the intelligent configuration of cars. However, compared with the configuration announced at the previous exchange meeting and other occasions, the configuration of Zhiji L7 is inconsistent with what the car owners have learned.
For example, HD cameras are reduced from 12 to 11; Five fifth generation millimeter wave radars are changed into four millimeter wave radars and one 4D millimeter wave radar. These two configurations are closely related to the advanced driving assistance function, and it is inevitable that the vehicle owner will worry about the impact on specific functions after "configuration reduction".
Zhiji L7 Press Conference Information In addition, 21+6 piston calipers have become 20+4 piston calipers, military grade ultra high precision inertial navigation has disappeared, vehicle wireless charging receiver has changed from standard configuration to optional configuration, kick type electric tailgate has "disappeared", and wireless charging pile has "increased price"
It only took about one and a half years from release to delivery. Zhiji L7 came too quickly. The short R&D cycle may be the fundamental problem that led to the model being dismissed as "reduced configuration".
In addition to the products, Zhiji's so-called "scarce and noble" owner's rights and interests are not scarce at all, let alone noble.
It is understood that the owners of "Angel Wheel" enjoy the financial policy of 7% down payment, 2.99% rate and 72 periods of maximum repayment cycle, as well as the rights and interests of Angel Wheel users such as crystal welfare, "IM AD intelligent driving full function package", data equity exchange software and hardware upgrades. Customers of Zhiji Auto Group not only receive free IMCare brand auto insurance service package for the first year, but also enjoy 24 interest free loans and 36 low interest loans with a rate of 0.99%.
It must be mentioned that Zhiji's so-called group customers cover SAIC, Ali, Zhangjiang Group employees and their immediate relatives, with a number of hundreds of thousands.
In contrast, Zhiji not only provides interest free finance to group customers, but also can stack angel card rights. Therefore, there is also the transfer of the number of angel rounds on leisure fish, which means that if the group customer has the number of angel rounds, then the group customer can enjoy the group equity plus angel card equity.
In addition to the reduction of product allocation and rights and interests, there are also issues such as the reduction of battery capacity and the official community's "deletion of posts", which are also the focus that car owners need to respond urgently.
Looking back at the various high-powered issues in Zhiji's press conference, and then examining the various problems in current products and services, the contrast of each case proves that Zhiji's big cake has biased and damaged consumers' full right to know and their right to independent choice.
As the first model, the L7 is the "first battle" for Zhiji to enter the race track, and Zhiji needs to re-examine himself after a bad start.
Big factory cooperation is not reliable
In recent years, it has become a "trend" for Internet manufacturers to build cars together with traditional car companies. For example, Huawei has cooperated with Xiaokang Stock Co., Ltd. (M5) and BAIC Motor Co., Ltd. (Jihu); Another example is Baidu and Geely's Jidu Automobile.
As a "like" product, Alibaba, one of the leading players, is responsible for providing support in terms of user big data and smart ecology. Is Zhiji necessarily superior to other players in terms of half of Ali aura and half of SAIC aura? Obviously not.
Apart from the current market pattern and the brighter Huawei, the cooperation between SAIC and Alibaba alone may not be so smooth. As players with a set of "methodologies" in their respective fields, the cooperation between the two has always been incompatible.
Previously, Alibaba and SAIC had cooperated to develop the zebra network and put it on the RX5 model of SAIC Roewe. Later, Ali developed a zebra smart travel platform based on its own AliOS system, and SAIC launched it on nearly 1 million new energy vehicles.
However, the two sides have different opinions on the dominance of the zebra network. Alibaba is difficult to adapt to the "thinking" mode of SAIC's traditional enterprises and the lengthy management level, and SAIC is also difficult to accept Alibaba's "flying horses" Internet game. The final result is that the system update of relevant models is blocked, and SAIC has missed the golden development period.
The case of the zebra smart travel project is in front of us, which leads to the intelligent problem of Zhiji. SAIC Group's dominance is still highly concerned by the industry.
Interestingly, Chen Hong, the chairman of SAIC Motor Corporation, once proposed that automatic driving technology is the "soul" of car manufacturing enterprises in 2021. He firmly said that "SAIC Motor Corporation should keep the soul in its own hands", and refused to cooperate with Huawei in the field of automatic driving on this ground.
However, it is also the first model under the company. The sales volume of the Interworld M5 jointly built by Cyrus and Huawei exceeded 5000 in May this year, which is ten times more than that of Zhiji L7.
The Internet manufacturers, together with traditional automobile enterprises, are all emphasizing the research, development and deployment of intelligent vehicles. The reason is that we want to form differentiated competition with automobile enterprises and deploy our own operating system through the future intelligent terminal of automobile, so as to gain more voice.
SAIC, a traditional car company, naturally understands that developing its own operating system is an extremely time-consuming, labor-intensive, and money consuming project. At the moment of fierce competition for new energy vehicles, SAIC cannot afford to miss opportunities by developing its own system. It is undoubtedly an inevitable choice to balance the advantages and disadvantages with the help of the technological capabilities of Internet giants.
However, it is certain that with the continuous development of Zhiji Automobile, the competition between SAIC and Ali for the right to speak will become increasingly fierce. Whether Zhiji will become the next zebra is still unknown.
As one of the race track players, Zhiji Auto has been a big step slow since it failed to grasp the empty window marketing to build brand awareness in the minds of consumers. However, the storm of distribution reduction of the first product and the shrinking of rights and interests services have made Zhiji invisible outside the circle of consumer choice.
There is not much time and space left for Zhiji due to pressing problems and increasingly fierce market.
(Statement: This article only represents the author's view, not Sina.com's position.)
