Image source @ Visual China
Text | Wise driving
On November 10, 2021, a new American car-making force called Rivian officially landed on the NASDAQ, raising nearly $12 billion on the first day of listing, setting a record for the largest financing scale in the automotive industry.
What is more interesting is that although a car was not delivered when Rivian was listed, American investors still had high expectations for it, and the company's stock price rose by 15.6% at one point, and its market value exceeded $140 billion at the highest, surpassing traditional car companies such as Ford and Volkswagen in one fell swoop and ranking third in the global car market value.
Rivian, who does not have a car, why can the market value be so high? The main reason is that the real highlight of Rivian is not the car, but the so-called "skateboard chassis", and Rivian's high market value comes from the fact that it has created a new outlet, with the concept of red.
How much magic is the skateboard chassis, a little look at the recent news can find that only two weeks after the 2022 Lunar New Year, there are Tuopu Group and Alter announced the entry into the skateboard chassis track, which shows its high popularity. So what exactly is a skateboard chassis? What are the possibilities for the automotive industry? And what are the possible negative effects?
01、What is the skateboard chassis?
The reason why the skateboard chassis is called "skateboard", purely because it looks like, there is no deeper meaning, and BYD's "blade battery", we first jump out of the more figurative term of "skateboard", and treat it as a kind of chassis.
The characteristics of the skateboard chassis are the vehicle's power, braking, steering, three electric modules, etc. integrated on the chassis to form an independent functional area, unlike other chassis, the skateboard chassis through the reserved electrical and body interface, to achieve the separation of the upper and lower body, and then the body and cockpit can be replaced according to demand.
To put it bluntly, skateboard chassis most boys have been exposed to as children, right in the four-wheel drive.
As we all know, the core module of the four-wheel drive racing car is integrated in the chassis, and what the toy company has to do is to create a "Stormtrooper God of War" or "Sonic God of War" on the basis of the same chassis. The skateboard chassis is the advanced version of the 4WD chassis, which can also be defined as a "shared" chassis.
From the 4WD we can understand the three key points of the skateboard chassis:
1. The core control modules related to the whole vehicle are integrated on the chassis;
2. The skateboard chassis can realize the separation of the upper and lower body;
3. You can switch between different body bodies at will.
If you are a friend who has been paying attention to the automotive industry for many years, you should be able to understand how subversive these three priorities are across the era, and after understanding the concept of skateboard chassis, we will next popularize some relatively hardcore things.
First of all, in order to achieve the upper and lower split type of car, the skateboard chassis must adopt a fully integrated + full-line control scheme, the skateboard chassis will be power, braking, steering, thermal management, three electricity, etc. integrated in the chassis, and need to achieve full line control, so as to facilitate the decoupling and separation of the upper and lower body. This is also the biggest difference between the skateboard chassis and the pure electric platform, taking tesla, Volkswagen MEB's pure electric platform as an example, their production and design are based on the body as the core, and it is impossible to achieve the real separation of the body and the chassis.
Secondly, after the realization of the upper and lower split car, the skateboard chassis also needs to have the ability of "upper and lower body co-bearing". When developing the chassis, it is only necessary to define the interface, and the design of the body is handed over to the car company, that is, the independent development of the body and the chassis can be realized, independent iteration, and the realization of "one chassis multi-purpose", which can not only accelerate the research and development cycle and efficiency, but also greatly reduce the cost of research and development. When the chassis and tops are assembled together, the entire vehicle is integrated into one load and movement for optimum handling, safety and comfort.
Finally, the skateboard chassis needs to have the ability to free up space in the cockpit and become a moving flat. At present, the chassis of some models can not be flat due to structural reasons, reflected to the specific model is that the cockpit ground will have some mysterious protrusions, which is not conducive to creating a moving space, and the skateboard chassis due to the use of full-line control technology, and the chassis integrated with the thermal management system, the cabin above the entire skateboard chassis has become a large flat layer with a high room rate, and can achieve a variety of combinations, changing different scenes, creating a huge imagination space for the future design of the inner cabin of the car.
The above three points are the characteristics of the skateboard chassis, from these three points we can get a skateboard chassis key attributes - sharing, chassis and body separation, car companies only need to "outsource" the chassis out, they focus on marketing, channels, services, user experience, obviously, cross-border car companies have the most such appeals. The division of labor is more clear and meticulous, professional people do professional things, for this reason, cross-border car companies can not only improve the efficiency of vehicle research and development, but also reduce heavy asset investment, in fact, is a very win-win situation.
02. Does the skateboard chassis cause the car to lose differentiation?
Before answering this question, a realistic question is encountered:
The skateboard chassis can be sold to different car companies, allowing car companies to create different bodies according to the chassis and user needs. The problem is that it is easy to fall into a dilemma, the research and development cost of new cars has indeed declined, but different brands and different models share a chassis, how to reflect their own differentiated advantages? For example, Porsche and Wuling share a skateboard chassis, even if Porsche is willing, I am afraid that Porsche owners are not happy, right?
At this point, let's look at another question - do today's consumers still look at chassis technology when buying a car?
If it is the era of fuel vehicles, it really does not work, because one of the core differences in the era of fuel vehicles is the chassis, but adults, the times have changed. In June 2021, when asked if she would consider cooperating with third-party companies such as Huawei in autonomous driving, Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC, said the more sensitive "soul theory" issue of major car companies, saying: "In this way, Huawei has become the soul and SAIC has become the body." For such a result, SAIC is unacceptable and must take the soul into its own hands. ”
It can be seen that in the cognition of traditional car companies, the soul of a car has changed from three major parts such as the chassis to software technology based on automatic driving.
Morgan Stanley estimates that 60% of the value of smart cars in the future will come from software, we once thought that the chassis is a large part of the car, must be done by the car companies themselves, but the new forces and the latest user trends tell us the opposite fact, Tesla, new forces, BYD these car companies, have not strictly copied the traditional auto industry giant's industrial chain layout, but they have succeeded.
We will not give up the purchase because of the texture of Tesla's chassis, at most it is just a spit, the core reason is that the purchase point of our choice of car has changed. Today's users buy cars and cars, the most attractive to them, the most enjoyable for them to experience, is the more and more functional screen, is the car and mobile phone interconnection and coordination ability, is the hands-free voice assistant, is the interior, is the appearance, but not the chassis. In fact, most ordinary consumers today may not even be able to say what the texture of the chassis is.
Just like buying a mobile phone now, the most attractive thing is the screen, the system, and the camera, but not the call quality. Since we talk about mobile phones, we will take mobile phones as an analogy: the emergence of the Android system, the result is that mobile phone companies have achieved the "common prosperity" of the mobile phone circle, and a number of Android-based smart phone companies from China have emerged, which has promoted the development of the mobile Internet. Android lowers the threshold and cost of developing a smartphone operating system, allowing mobile phone brands to focus more on doing things outside the system.
The skateboard chassis can be seen as a "hardware Android", which is a product of the new environment and new elements of electric vehicles, intelligence, electrification and software in the new era.
Every year on the car chassis, the entire industry spends tens of billions of dollars on research and development funds, and it can be said that this money is not spent on the blade. Skateboard chassis can allow car companies to liberate their hands and feet and do some more meaningful industrial chain attempts, such as the Internet of Vehicles, bodywork, self-operated retail, etc. Because of this, the emergence of a professional skateboard chassis company is more valuable.
At the 2022 China Automotive Supply Chain Summit, Li Peng, founder and CEO of Yo-Run Technology, said: "But any car factory that regards the chassis as its own housekeeping ability is estimated to be eliminated by the market in the next 5-10 years, because they still think that they are an engineering company, and the car factory in the next 5-10 years must be a technology company, must be a user company, and it can only be an engineering company.
The emergence of the skateboard chassis is to tell the car company: rest assured to be your technology company, the chassis is handed over to me.
Back to our question, will the skateboard chassis cause the car to lose differentiation? The answer is no, the main point of competition of the car has changed from the traditional three major pieces, to intelligent, appearance, interconnection and other factors, the difference between car companies is also reflected in the intelligence, not the chassis, so there is no need to worry about homogenization, in fact, car companies and even the entire automotive industry also believe that the future of car intelligence is more important than the chassis.
Of course, chassis standardization does not mean that the chassis texture will be sacrificed, and the premise that enterprises are willing to "outsource" the chassis must also be recognized by consumers for the sense of principle nature of the chassis.
03. Who will pay for the skateboard chassis?
The ideal is very full, the reality is very bone, and although the skateboard chassis is subversive, it still faces the problem of "who is the customer". Traditional car companies have created chassis for decades or even hundreds of years, it is impossible to impulsively consume because the skateboard chassis can be "separated from the car disk", at least before the texture of the skateboard chassis defeats the traditional car company chassis, the core customers are by no means the traditional car companies that are big and big.
Who exactly can the skateboard chassis be sold to? We may wish to think of it another way, in fact, in 2002, the UTOnomy concept car released by General Motors proposed a similar concept of skateboard chassis, and in 2002 there was a related concept of skateboard chassis, why was it on fire at the end of 2021? This is because in 2021, a certain condition has been reached, which makes it possible for the skateboard chassis to land, and this condition is automatic driving.
The mobile intelligent space derived from automatic driving is fully in line with all the imaginations of the skateboard chassis. Because "the skateboard chassis can switch between different body bodies at will", this has derived more different mobile intelligent spaces.
The emergence of the skateboard chassis, so that there are four wheels are not necessarily cars, may also be built into entertainment venues, BYD - Fordy Technology Chairman Luo Zhongliang pointed out: "On the basis of the skateboard chassis can achieve a lot of things that could not be achieved before, both can put KTV on wheels, you can also put the café on the wheels, now the blockbuster is released to go to the cinema to see, but one day just at home to place an order, the mobile cinema to the doorstep, synchronous release of synchronous feelings, which has unlimited imagination space." ”
Therefore, the purchase of skateboard chassis of the enterprise, not necessarily the car company, may be Starbucks, may be the theater, can even be the Internet café, their purpose is to create a kind of mobile space that does not need to pay rent, the store price will not be outrageous, for example, in the future of the popularity of automatic driving scenarios, if we need to take a taxi, an ordinary model, and a car with a computer theater can also drink coffee, which one will you choose? I believe most people will choose the latter.
According to the normal rhythm, non-automobile companies want to create a mobile intelligent space, which is equivalent to re-running the road that our new forces have run, so that not only the cost of various types is higher, but also not conducive to the popularization of new species such as mobile intelligent space, after all, only large enterprises dare to do so, ordinary small and medium-sized enterprises can not afford to consume, which will lead to the final mobile intelligent space or those large enterprises in operation, the mobile intelligent space walking on the road will be very few.
The emergence of the skateboard chassis allows non-auto companies to achieve mobile smart space by purchasing a chassis, rather than starting from scratch, which means that companies such as Starbucks that focus on the third space only need to decorate the body to become a mobile Starbucks smart space.
The car will eventually become a mobile intelligent space, which is the future trend that we have been constantly mentioning in 2021, if the mobile intelligent space is the main line, then automatic driving, intelligent car machine, skateboard chassis, is the branch line, automatic driving is responsible for freeing hands, intelligent car machine is responsible for space intelligence, skateboard chassis is responsible for reducing costs, and finally all the branch lines will come together to complete the main line task of mobile intelligent space.
In addition, the future of the new forces car companies are also one of the target customers, the new forces through the use of skateboard chassis, greatly reduce the cost of car manufacturing, our current domestic mobile phone manufacturers are the Android system open source profiteers, through the system open source, these mobile phone manufacturers can save the cost of developing the system, so there will be such as Millet, Meizu such Internet mobile phones.
Will this lead to a mixed auto market, and anyone can build a car? The answer is inevitable.
The emergence of skateboard chassis has solved a major problem in chassis research and development, which is bound to attract more people to join the automotive industry. In a short period of time, the automobile market will be relatively chaotic, which is similar to the mobile phone market around 2010-2015, android open source led to many companies that have nothing to do with technology digital also launched their own mobile phones, more outrageous has Master Kang mobile phones, talk show actor Wang Zijian also officially announced that he wanted to enter the mobile phone market before, when the Chinese mainland existed mobile phone brands reached hundreds.
But don't worry too much, less than 3 years, the only brands left in the mobile phone market are only the few brands we are common now, OV, Millet, Huawei, etc., the market will eventually eliminate a number of gags rubbing hot enterprises, really do products with heart, consumers themselves will vote.
Therefore, the skateboard chassis will indeed lead to market chaos in a short period of time, but at the same time, it is also cleaning up the market, the skateboard chassis only reduces the cost of making cars, and the real ability to retain the market is still excellent product power.
04. Wisdom and action
The emergence of shared hardware such as skateboard chassis can be said to be a derivative of the development of the times, and the intensification of competition in the automotive industry will inevitably produce a "template" that can be universal and reduce costs, so that car companies can concentrate their energy on the main competition in the market and solve the problem of consumer pain.
This template is not necessarily "skateboard chassis", can also be "skateboard power system, skateboard fast charging, skateboard battery" and so on, but now the skateboard chassis ran out first, the emergence of skateboard chassis means that some small enterprises interested in building cars, can concentrate financial resources and manpower to develop other technologies, rather than wasting time on the chassis, as we predicted, when the skateboard chassis landed, a more lively, more flowery car market than now is coming.