Author 丨 Kevin Liu
Editor 丨Hao Qiuhui
Core ideas
Commercial vehicles will become the next trillion-dollar market size canaan land like the current new energy passenger cars, and electrification, intelligence and autonomous driving will bring more imagination space;
It is precisely because of the riveting efforts to do practical things, the pace of Qianchen Automobile under huang Chendong's operation is very Internet in terms of strategic goals, model planning, and research and development of automatic driving technology;
For Huang Chendong, starting a business in the new energy commercial vehicle track is a spiral from 0 to 1, which also provides the industry with more perspectives on the humanistic care of users.
April 10 was the third day that truck driver Mr. Wang was trapped under the bridge.
Originally sending supplies from Anhui, he was stranded in Shanghai due to the epidemic. At this time when vegetables were in short supply, the remaining materials after unloading became Mr. Wang's capital to "show off", and while filming the video, he said: "Let you see my family property." ”
But the next morning, except for the 500 yuan "transaction money" on the ground, the vegetables that were originally ventilated under the bridge hole were all gone. Mr. Wang said: "Now Shanghai has money and can't buy vegetables, which is understandable. ”
Behind the play terrier, the helplessness and bitterness of this group of people were only lifted to the tip of the iceberg.
Walking thousands of miles and listening to the sound of country bugs sounds a bit of primitive and rough romance. But 18 hours a day, the spirit is always highly tense, when running on the road, it is rare to eat hot food, can not take a hot bath, nor can not sleep peacefully, is from the mountains, rivers, lakes and seas, but confined to day and night, kitchen and love of their real life.
In a dialogue with Yiou Automobile, Huang Chendong, founder and CEO of Shanghai Qianchen Technology Co., Ltd., admitted that he also had a period of time with the car. "The experience of following the car during the high school holidays was really hard, there was no air conditioning, and all life was solved in the car, which left a very deep impression on me. Even if you compare it to the present, the life of a truck driver has not changed much in essence. ”
In the digital and intelligent transformation of car companies, this old face in the new forces of car manufacturing and the "scientific entrepreneur" who bet on the intelligent electric commercial vehicle track is personally cultivating the Canaanite land of trillions of blue oceans.
01 trillion blue ocean, commercial vehicles into the new Canaanite land
Today, "carbon peaking" and "carbon neutrality" have pointed out the basic compliance and basis for industrial transformation for the commercial vehicle industry.
In the context of double carbon, Qianchen Automobile's entry into the new energy commercial vehicle track has also promoted the construction of the "National 123 Travel Traffic Circle" and the "Global 123 Fast Cargo Flow Circle", and has personally participated in promoting the goal of reducing vehicle fuel consumption by 30% (or pure electric), reducing vehicle carbon emissions by 30% (or zero emissions), and improving freight efficiency by 70% in 2025.
As China's carbon emitter (the carbon emissions of each commercial vehicle are more than 20 times that of passenger cars) and the main force of transportation, but also a powerful grip to promote the automotive industry to achieve carbon peak carbon neutrality goals, the transformation of new energy vehicles has been urgent, superimposed on the rise in crude oil prices, heavy-duty diesel vehicles China VI emission regulations and other factors, more and more car players are enthusiastically joining the new energy commercial vehicle track.
Caambique pointed out that in 2021, the sales volume of new energy commercial vehicles was 197,000 units, an increase of 51.4% year-on-year, and the penetration rate reached 4.2%.
According to the Data of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in 2021, China's new energy heavy-duty trucks will sell a total of 10,448 vehicles, an increase of 298.9% year-on-year. Among them, the sales of pure electric heavy trucks were 9650 units, an increase of 273.3% year-on-year, accounting for 92.4% of the market share of new energy heavy trucks.
As Huang Chendong said in his speech at the 8th Electric Vehicle 100 Forum held on March 25-27: "When the industry and the market expect zero emissions, TCO (Total Cost of Ownership, that is, the cost of vehicles in the whole life cycle) is reduced, intelligent driving makes vehicles safer and reduces the cost of drivers, operational efficiency is higher, path planning can be carried out, intelligent scheduling can be done, intelligent management, asset management and traffic monetization can be carried out, and the car came into being. ”
It shows that it is no accident that it chose to enter the new energy commercial vehicle track.
However, the car chose to start from scratch and "get on the car quickly", and the market that pays attention to economic benefits and high customization demand for commercial vehicles will also encounter many challenges.
Huang Chendong believes that unlike passenger cars that emphasize user experience, commercial vehicles appear more as production tools, so commercial vehicles will be simpler than passenger cars in terms of car building, but from the perspective of the entire ecosystem of commercial vehicles, it is more difficult than passenger cars at the enterprise end.
In fact, in recent years, new energy commercial vehicles have been highly dependent on subsidies. When subsidies decline, the ownership of road rights and technical competition become more and more intense, specific to market performance, consumers will choose to vote with their feet.
At present, China's new energy vehicles still have problems such as lack of cores, in Huang Chendong's view, subject to high manufacturing and operating costs, and consumers' more significant price sensitivity than oil vehicles, in the exploration of the intelligent electric commercial vehicle market, the large-scale penetration rate still has room to rise, and now the inflection point has gradually flashed.
He predicted that by 2025, the commercial vehicle market is expected to mature, when the ownership of smart new energy commercial vehicles will account for 20% of the entire commercial vehicle market.
Considering the influencing factors such as technology, supply chain, policies and laws and regulations, Yiou Think Tank estimates that the potential economic benefits of autonomous driving trunk logistics will reach 1404.5 billion yuan in 2030, and its market size will reach 853.9 billion yuan.
The nearly trillion-level market scale of the autonomous trunk logistics track attracts technology companies, OEMs, logistics platform parties and other parties to jointly dig for gold.
In Huang Chendong's eyes, commercial vehicles will become the next trillion-dollar market value of Canaanite like the current new energy passenger cars, and their imagination space is not only electric, intelligent and autonomous driving are the current competitive hotspots.
02 Entrepreneurial Game: A Song of Ice and Fire
As a doctor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan, Huang Chendong has engaged in aerospace at NASA, and has also been responsible for core businesses such as vehicle development, independent intelligent driving technology research and development, and electric power engineering, and has experienced the identity transformation from "deputy general manager of SAIC New Energy Division" to "senior vice president of NIO" to "former founder and CEO of Chenchen Automobile".
Huang Chendong, founder and CEO of Shanghai Qianchen Automobile Technology Co., Ltd
Influenced by his personality of loving challenges and not worrying about the status quo, after leading the team to build a system, making products and gradually making them mature, Huang Chendong came up with the idea of making something "different".
Even if his career path is not smooth to the end, mentioning the 19-year industry trough period, the stock has even fallen to more than one piece, Huang Chendong still has residual palpitations, using "painful experience" to describe.
But it did not prevent him from turning from an industry executive to an entrepreneur, entering the commercial vehicle field to build Qianchen Automobile and starting another "from 0 to 1" brave game.
At the same time, after the rich experience in research and development to a certain extent, Huang Chendong's humanistic background makes him think more and more frequently: When research and development is final, what is the end point of science and technology?
Huang Chendong's answer is "to create happiness for more people."
Whether it is a computer or a mobile phone, whether it is a high-speed rail or an airplane, it is an example of the convenience of science and technology. What Huang Chendong wants to do is to use his own scientific and technological background to help the commercial vehicle community.
If the mature logistics system that arrives every other day is the result of modern science and technology, then it is clear that this light has not yet shined on the nearly 30 million card friends in the country, and in their working environment, happiness and comfort are still lacking, and the living conditions of this part of the people need to be changed urgently.
The more technological commercial vehicle products represented by Qianchen Automobile exist for this purpose.
Slightly different from Weilai's user care mechanism, Qianchen Automobile pays more attention to the part where the user is more relevant to the car. With limited resources, focus on the improvement of product strength, while exploring the way to market customers.
Huang Chendong believes that in today's market environment, it is difficult for enterprises to grasp the scale of "caring" for users, in fact, users themselves are referees.
Qianchen Automobile wants to meet the needs of universal products and services, not against the will of most people. Promoting user fission with word of mouth is the best example of its own strength.
Based on this, Huang Chendong hopes that the players who enter the track will do a good job in a down-to-earth manner before struggling to extend, and join forces with industry partners to achieve more efficient success.
Huang Chendong's insistence on technology is king and results-oriented has been visible from a long time ago.
Recalling his experience in the United States, he said to Yiou Automobile, "The most important thing at this stage is that my skills have been honed. When developing space vehicles, it is often "starting from zero, relying on existing data to imagine, calculate, analyze, and explore new states of matter." ”
At the stage of performing his duties for Ford, Huang Chendong further completed the development of automobiles, especially the accumulation of technology in new energy vehicles.
Huang Chendong joined Ford in 2000 and met with a Chinese delegation led by Wan Gang in 2003 to discuss new energy vehicle manufacturing. ”
Later, when it came to SAIC Motor, which has a stronger traditional energy foundation, Huang Chendong rebuilt the new energy system; to Weilai, there is no process to learn from, and it is completely built from zero, especially in the supply chain.
With these experiences, he had more confidence and confidence when he founded Qianchen Automobile. "Technology is my strength, and my experience in areas such as financing and product development is more helpful for me to start a business."
The ups and downs of the business sea for many years have not dampened Huang Chendong's enthusiasm for contributing to the social and humanities field.
After all, in addition to his more widely known entrepreneurial identity, his background is that of a scholar. "If it weren't for the entrepreneurship of Qianchen Automobile, it is possible that I would go to the university to become a professor," Huang Chendong said, "I want to pass on my professional knowledge to students and cultivate the next generation of outstanding practitioners for the society." ”
Huang Chendong believes that in the cultivation of industry talents, we must focus on training the ability to innovate and learn. Learning tools are more readily available in today's information age, such as compiling or solving a complex partial differential equation, but difficult to ask questions. "You need to see what others don't see, have innovative ideas, and this is more helpful for China now."
From talent training to technology output, Huang Chendong believes that more Nobel Prize-level scholars in scientific research are needed to promote the development of the industry.
Ice and fire have been experienced, and Huang Chendong's entrepreneurial revelations on new energy commercial vehicles have provided a new dimension of thinking for many startups to survive the bitter winter.
03 Riveting and doing practical things
Walking on the horizon, the future is unknown, but Huang Chendong is full of ambition.
Huang Chendong explained to Yiou Auto: "We hope that this track, the industry, including our own way forward, can be expected in the morning", and Newrizion is taken from the NASA Pluto probe (New Horizons) project he participated in, symbolizing the beginning and hope.
Up to now, Qianchen Automobile has obtained two rounds of financing, namely the A round of lightspeed China's exclusive investment, and the B round of Genesis Partner Capital (CCV) led the investment, with a cumulative financing amount of nearly 60 million US dollars. Huang Chendong told Yiou Automobile: "This year we are in a round of financing, and it may be carried out again in the second half of the year. ”
Money to spend on the blade, perhaps because of riveting enough efforts to do practical things, Huang Chendong's Qianchen Automobile, in terms of strategic goals, model planning, autonomous driving technology research and development and other aspects of the rhythm is very Internet.
Huang Chendong believes that since the establishment of Qianchen Automobile for a year and a half, it has been more technological, intelligent and humanized in terms of products; in terms of service, it advocates full-life cycle services, everything is not only about selling cars, but after selling cars, it is the beginning of qianchen to pass warmth to users; on the team, he advocates active innovation, with rapid decision-making and efficiency first.
"This is all closely linked to Qianchen Automobile's brand vision of "technology delivers warmth" and the brand mission of "creating the ultimate operational efficiency for users"." Huang Chendong said to Yiou Automobile, and then introduced the technical development and product matrix of Qianchen Automobile in detail.
Based on this, the smart electric light truck launched earlier, THE EC1, has been mass-produced and sold. "At present, sales are still good, and it is expected to go up 1,000 steps this year."
The car was jointly built by Qianchen and Sinotruk Haixi, using a self-developed electrified chassis and BMS battery management system, with a maximum loading volume of 18.3m and an actual full load endurance of more than 230km.
Different from the traditional commercial OEMs that strive for excellence on the chassis of fuel vehicles, the pure electric platform is the advantage of the layout of commercial vehicle automatic driving in the morning. Huang Chendong pointed out that compared with the same type of platform, the electrified chassis can be used on the light trucks, large vans and pickup trucks in the morning, achieving a weight reduction of 400 kilograms, an increase in operational efficiency of 20%, and a 200% increase in reliability.
At the same time, Qianchen Automobile has also developed another future-oriented intelligent electric light truck iC1, which is expected to be released in September this year and open for booking.
Huang Chendong said that many heavy trucks are not developed in a positive direction, especially new energy heavy trucks. The company will enter the field of heavy-duty trucks early next morning and will develop and bring to market new energy smart heavy-duty trucks equipped with L4 autonomous driving.
Qianchen Auto intelligent electric light truck iC1
When visiting the iC1 mass production concept car, Yiou Automobile observed that the iC1 is equipped with an L4 level automatic driving system, using 1 millimeter wave radar, 5 solid-state lidar and 18 cameras, and equipped with relevant sensors and face recognition systems inside and outside the cargo box to achieve intelligent operation process.
Huang Chendong believes that the commercialization of autonomous or driverless commercial vehicles may be faster than that of passenger cars.
Because the commercial vehicle scene is mostly a point-to-point fixed transportation route, such as mines, docks, it is easy to land, and passenger cars face more complex road conditions, the difficulty will increase.
In Huang Chendong's view, in fact, many companies are now doing commercial vehicle automatic driving, promoting them to land as soon as possible.
On March 7, Qianchen Automobile announced that it has obtained an L4 level autonomous driving test license certified by China Automobile Research Institute. This means that the new car-making force in the commercial vehicle field, which has been established for less than two years, has been driving on the fast lane of commercial vehicles.
Today, in the era of intelligence, the industrial system is accelerating change. Autonomous driving system integrators have entered the whole vehicle manufacturing, and OEMs have begun to develop full-stack automatic driving technology.
In this regard, Huang Chendong believes that a benign competitive atmosphere is conducive to the development of the industry, but considering that autonomous driving technology companies are better than software, the lack of hardware "genes" will bring greater challenges to car manufacturing, so the more feasible idea is from "car" to "automatic driving", rather than "automatic driving" to "car".
The landing of automatic driving, in addition to finding the right direction, the talent reserve must also keep up, Huang Chendong laughed and said that his team has the genes of special forces operations.
Even if the establishment of Qianchen Automobile is not long, the employees recruited are experienced, some are from the Weilai team, some are out of the auto or other new forces team.
Huang Chendong described the team as having extraordinary skills, which made the company's wings more and more plump, and it could win the battle with strong team combat effectiveness. This also enables Qianchen Automobile to form a project-driven management model and give full play to the enthusiasm of each employee.
Huang Chendong's office has always been open, and he said spontaneously that the company promotes initiative and everyone can come to him for direct communication. "I don't want people to passively listen to instructions, but to take the initiative to think about why and how to do it." For example, after the popularization of new energy vehicles, there are safety problems in power batteries from time to time, and we will explore in depth how to better and actively control vehicles. ”
At this point, Huang Chendong insists that life safety is more important than Taishan, and the lesson of blood tells us that the occurrence of accidents is the superposition of a variety of factors, the first thing is to ensure the safety of the battery material itself, in order to ensure the safety of the system. At the same time, the electronic monitoring system is also a big weapon, it can analyze the changes in the battery through big data analysis.
Sometimes although the material and system selected at the beginning are good, the chemical properties of the battery determine that it will constantly change during use. "For example, the mismatch between the vehicle and the consumer's local power grid will cause problems such as slow charging, and our after-sales staff will immediately come to the scene to modify and upgrade the supporting software to solve the problem."
It is reasonable to say that choosing the right material, coupled with the monitoring system, can basically eliminate the safety accident of the battery, identify and eliminate hidden dangers, and ensure the safety of users.
But there are many kernel cases of autonomous driving, and sometimes it is impossible to predict all the problems in advance, but to collect enough data to try to predict what may happen in advance. Therefore, Huang Chendong pays special attention to improving the ability of vehicle supervision and service.
Huang Chendong stressed that collecting data can not only overcome technical barriers, but also strengthen marketing promotion. In the future, Qianchen Automobile not only provides intelligent and connected new energy commercial vehicles, but also includes solutions covering the whole life cycle, and Qianchen Automobile's marketing method has gradually changed from "striving for quantitative growth" in the past to "realizing value growth".
He elaborated on his thinking: it is not right for commercial vehicles to focus only on sales, but should be car-plus services. After a series of marketing marketing or advertising, we will invest less energy, but will pay great attention to how to obtain customers online, offline transactions, through digital marketing and dealer system to promote vehicle sales.
Qianchen Automobile currently adopts a combination of B2B and B2C models to promote SaaS on the car. Through its front-end APP, consumers can directly book a new car and have it taken by a staff member to see or test drive. Consumers can learn the basic situation of the model on the APP and exchange points for gifts or important company information.
The morning before, it is mainly through online customer acquisition, first from the APP to create public domain traffic, spread among acquaintances, further develop private domain traffic, and promote user sinking. Based on existing users, Qianchen has carried out in-depth cooperation with some B-end logistics companies and dealers, and combined with online digital marketing and other promotion products.
In 2022, Qianchen Automobile plans to further expand sales channels starting from Shanghai, where the right of way policy of new energy electric vehicles is relaxed, and is expected to complete the layout in 46 cities by the end of this year; Huang Chendong has set an annual sales target of 3,000 units and plans to bring more new products to the market; financing plans will also keep up with the company to provide a steady stream of ammunition to fight more "winning battles".
In order to achieve the vision of "New Horizon", in addition to the above short-term goals, in the long run, Huang Chendong hopes to combine cars with intelligence, open up the entire ecological chain, form a smart Internet of Things, and accelerate the transformation of the logistics industry.
Consistent with its development goals, Qianchen Automobile is currently accelerating cooperation with many chip companies, autonomous driving companies and charging and replacing companies to form a linkage collaboration.
04 Conclusion
"You can't go to the moon by fantasy, you have to build a rocket first." Huang Chendong said that the goal of Qianchen Automobile can be very ambitious, but the realization of smart Internet of Things is inseparable from the step-by-step mature evolution of smart cars, and jointly embracing this ecosystem will benefit the entire industry.
Bold when standing on the Flag, landing to work hard, Huang Chendong focuses on the current Internet characteristics to guide all aspects of his cognition.
On the one hand, from the previous year to the beginning of last year, the development of China's electric vehicle market showed Chinese speed, and many of the prejudgments of decline were falsified; in terms of market share, compared with European and American countries, the performance of China's electric vehicle market is also very outstanding; the new forces that continue to emerge are even more dazzling.
Commercial vehicle track, long slopes with heavy snow. Huang Chendong is a scientific entrepreneur and a practical dreamer.
On the other hand, the user base of commercial vehicles is actually relatively concentrated, and China's 30 million card users are still trapped in a space of several square meters, running all the way.
"I think the lesson of similar blood is a wake-up call to the industry," Huang Chendong sighed, these drivers are telling the world with their lives that we need to care, which is the real thing with humanistic value. He hopes to make a difference in the industry through his efforts, even if it makes them feel 10% happier.
In the process of car building, car sales, car use, car maintenance and car transfer, many car companies are busy studying user experience, in fact, "grounding gas" will make the efforts of the car in the morning more meaningful.
The world is not sweeping the snow in front of the door, each is obscure and pure, and the voices of this group of people also need to be heard.