"I will leave China", this is a sentence thrown to the media by Feng Sihan, CEO of China Volkswagen Group, at the end of last year, which is also a response to the storm about his departure. However, feng Sihan then said that he did not leave immediately, and the top level would gradually adjust. Why did Feng Sihan, who made great contributions to Volkswagen in the era of oil trucks, also come to the point of being forced to "adjust"?
This has to mention the dilemma of Volkswagen's pure electric model ID series in China. Throughout 2021, under the premise that Volkswagen product releases continue to accelerate and a number of new models such as ID.3, ID.4, and ID.6 are launched within a year, the ID series has only sold about 70,000 units in China. In such a vast market in China, it has not been able to achieve the minimum target of 100,000 annual sales, and Feng Sihan is naturally to blame.
Volkswagen's failure is not a marketing or policy mistake, but ultimately the competitiveness of volkswagen's ID series is not prominent in the variety of new energy models. The advantage of Volkswagen pure trams is still in the driving texture, especially in terms of throttle and chassis. Volkswagen ID because of the throttle and chassis comfort tuning, driving is very close to the oil car, especially the throttle almost will not appear to tap the feeling of channeling, I believe that the test drive of the small partner feels very deeply about this.
In terms of intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving, the Volkswagen ID series is even more unable to keep up with the times, although it cancels many physical buttons, it looks full of scientific and technological sense, but consumers who have really experienced it know that this is "a false table", and even there has been an ID.4 scandal that the air conditioner cannot be turned on due to the inability to start the car, and the lack of physical buttons has reduced the whole vehicle experience to the freezing point.
Although the autonomous driving of Volkswagen ID models with an average price of more than 150,000 yuan has L2-level auxiliary driving capabilities, it is no longer at the same level compared with L2+, which is commonly a new domestic car-making force at the same price. Typical L2+ can achieve functions such as hands-free, automatic lane change, and automatic in and out of ramps. As for Volkswagen's belief that tesla's FSD, the largest pair of pure electricity, is already L2++, which can achieve L2-level assisted driving in urban areas.
Volkswagen China Group has seen the crux of the ID model and recently launched a project to upgrade the intelligent driving capability of the MEB platform model, and opened a tender in China. This time to empower the MEB platform is only for domestically produced models, that is to say, this is Volkswagen's Chinese special edition, it is precisely for this reason, from the project details, it can be seen that Volkswagen requires additional hardware to be added to the original model to achieve the purpose, and can not move or reduce the original things of the Volkswagen ID model.
A total of 13 Chinese companies participated in the bidding, and the bidding scheme of volkswagen MEB was the 6V5R1D driver assistance system. Referring to 6 assisted driving cameras (excluding the round-view fisheye camera), 5 millimeter wave radars (1 forward medium and long-range and 4 angle radars), and 1 DMS driver monitoring system, unfortunately there is no lidar related project.
Can this project make up for Volkswagen's shortcomings in intelligent driving and even help Volkswagen ID take off all the way? Hard! In fact, from the specific plan of the project, it can be inferred that this time Volkswagen has joined the L2+ level of automatic driving solutions for the MEB platform, similar to xiaopeng's X Pilot 3.0, that is, it can achieve NGP highway auxiliary driving, but now Weilai NOP and Xiaopeng NGP have been mass-produced on the car.
Volkswagen predicts that the implementation of this project will be in 2025, which is too slow for the rapidly changing new energy market. Not to mention that Volkswagen's current new project is something that others have already played, just take the time horizontal comparison, Xiaopeng has clearly stated that this year will launch a mature X Pilot 3.5, that is, to complete the pilot assistance driving function that is perfectly covered from high-speed to urban and parking three major scenes, far exceeding Volkswagen's planning.
In addition to Xiaopeng, who is at the forefront, the head of the intelligent electric enterprises Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal, Huawei HI, and Zhiji will push the pilot auxiliary driving function of the three major scenarios of urban, high-speed and parking around 2023, and Tesla has even gradually completed the localization of FSD and built corresponding research and development centers and data centers.
Volkswagen now seems to have a feeling of "knowing shame and then being brave", but in the fiercely competitive new energy market, this "post-courage" seems to be somewhat backward or even insignificant. In the field of trams, Volkswagen has obviously become a catch-up, and if the chasers are still afraid of their hands and feet, still immersed in their own oil car empire and slowly advancing, it is difficult for Volkswagen trams to see the dawn of the future.