On the night of April 17, Zhiji L7 was launched in the form of online live broadcast, and Zhiji employees stationed at SAIC Lingang Intelligent Factory witnessed this milestone moment by watching the live broadcast of mobile phones. Since the beginning of this year, due to the impact of the epidemic, major car companies have reduced production or even stopped production, and the news of the postponement of the listing of new cars has emerged in an endless stream. SAIC's "No. 1 Project" Zhiji Automobile chose to be officially listed before this key node, which also indicates that SAIC Motor has begun to prepare for the resumption of work and production.
At a time when the automotive industry is in a critical period of transformation and change, and the competition is fierce and complex, time is competitiveness and living space. As the largest automobile group in China, SAIC Motor's need to resume work and production is undoubtedly extremely urgent.
Since April 18, SAIC Motor and other vehicle, parts and logistics enterprises have focused on personnel support, supply chain support, logistics support, closed production management and epidemic prevention measures, and launched the stress test of resuming work and production. "In the future, we will comprehensively consider the trend of the epidemic situation, stress test results, etc., and formulate a further dynamic plan for the resumption of work and production." SAIC motor said.
On April 19, SAIC Motor rolled off the production line for its first vehicle at the Lingang Passenger Vehicle Plant under the stress test of resuming work and production. It is understood that with the opening of the curtain of SAIC Motor as a whole to resume work, Zhiji Automobile will make full preparations in terms of supply chain support, logistics support, personnel protection, closed production management and epidemic prevention measures.
Up to now, Zhiji L7 has officially released two configuration versions of L7 Pro and L7 Dynamic, of which L7 Pro is priced at 408,800 yuan and L7 Dynamic is priced at 368,800 yuan.
The 400,000-yuan automobile market targeted by Zhiji has long been firmly controlled by the traditional luxury brands (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi) of first-line luxury brands, which is a market that is difficult for Chinese brand fuel vehicles to reach. Even at the moment when the sales of electric vehicles are blowing up, there are very few brands that dare to hit this price point.
Zhiji Auto's choice to impact the 400,000 yuan market is a big deal and a risky bet. For other electric vehicle companies positioned at 300,000 yuan or more, because the market capacity is large enough, even if the product is not so strong, there is a chance to harvest considerable sales. The 400,000 yuan market has come to the hinterland of traditional luxury brands, this market is lucrative, but the total scale is relatively limited, if the product can not quickly establish advantages, the entire brand is easy to be questioned by the market.
From the current point of view, only Weilai has gained a foothold in the 400,000-yuan high-end electric vehicle market. However, Weilai's increasing sales volume does not completely rely on the vehicle products themselves as a selling point, and service is the most conspicuous label of Weilai Automobile. Grabbing the market share of traditional luxury brands by playing the "service card" is a roundabout way of playing, and it is not completely head-on.
Zhiji's ambition is to challenge the strong old luxury brands from the most essential product experience. This is a path that Chinese brands have not been able to follow in the era of fuel vehicles.
What is the most essential product experience? For cars, good use is the most fundamental thing. In the past, whether it was good or not was equivalent to whether it was good or not, that is, the driving control dimension; and at present and in the future, the evaluation criteria for good or bad use added an intelligent dimension.
In recent years, whether it is a low-end or high-end electric vehicle, it has fully proved the absolute advantages over fuel vehicles in the intelligent dimension. In other words, the fuel vehicles of traditional luxury brands are unable to compete with electric vehicles in the intelligent dimension, but their riding in the driving control dimension is still a solid cognition in the minds of many consumers, which is also the root of the traditional luxury brand's current strength.
As a car company that has entered the 400,000-yuan market, Zhiji hopes to form an advantage for traditional luxury brands on the basis of strong competitiveness in the intelligent dimension and at the driving control level. In the words of Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile, "we are far higher than the competitors in terms of performance and handling."
Zero hundred kilometers of acceleration time, many electric vehicles rely on this data to prove that they have the power advantage of crushing fuel vehicles. Although users rarely encounter scenes that require speed of hundreds of kilometers per hour in their daily lives, the sense of speed shown by this indicator intuitively affects the user's driving experience all the time.
The result of Zhiji L7 is that the zero hundred kilometers accelerate by 3.87 seconds, for a C-class car with a length of more than 5 meters, in the same level of electric vehicle competitors, it has been regarded as a benchmark level, and the advantages are more obvious compared with the same level of fuel vehicles.
With the advent of the era of electrification, electric vehicles easily run into the "4-second club", subverting the rules of the game set by traditional luxury brands and accumulating technical advantages for hundreds of years. However, acceleration capability is not simply linked to driving performance. If it is the design of "traditional electric vehicles" and the whole vehicle architecture, it is impossible to stably support the doubling of power and acceleration performance. It's like mounting a car engine on a horse-drawn carriage, which is fast and has the consequences of overturning.
Of course, zero-hundred acceleration cannot be simply and directly linked to the performance of the driver. In Liu Tao's view, the power and handling performance of the car is not just a zero-hundred-speed parameter. The chassis, power, transmission, brake control, steering, roll control of the whole car, it is a very complex, super multi-variable, super multi-degree of freedom dynamic system.
On April 17, Zhiji Automobile announced the results of the Zhiji L7 challenging the longest drift distance of electric vehicles - 43.646 kilometers, 258 laps, 1 hour and 6 minutes. Continuous, uninterrupted, long-term drift is a comprehensive test of vehicle balance, stability, driving characteristics and dynamic performance. Obviously, Zhiji hopes to prove the super driving ability and fun of electric vehicles through drifting.
However, drift is too far away from the average user. In everyday life scenarios, the handling of u-turns is very unfriendly to the car. As the C-class car, the Zhiji L7 has a turning radius of 10.8 meters, compared with the C-class BMW 5 Series turning radius of 12 meters, while the A-class Volkswagen Golf turning radius is also 10.9 meters.
Another detail is that the previous drift record holder of the Zhiji L7 was the Porsche Taycan, which is not an option, and the price range of the naked car is as high as 870,000-1.8 million yuan, which is more than twice that of the Zhiji L7. By breaking the drift world record, Zhiji Car beat the old ultra-luxury brand Porsche with Porsche.
In the automotive industry, there are not a few companies with technical hard capabilities, but in the matter of car manufacturing, only by achieving the balance and unity of technology, cost and price can enterprises have the opportunity to succeed. But in a period of highly competitive change, trial and error are costly, and the blindfold can never go to the end.
As a high-end electric vehicle, Zhiji L7 is absolutely not cheap, and when the brand power is not comparable to the old luxury brand, Zhiji has chosen a route of differentiated competition, that is, to smooth out the shortcomings of the brand level with the relative advantages of price and performance. This is actually a common helplessness of Chinese brands on the road to soaring.
Liu Tao once bluntly introduced this style of play, "You may be a new brand, the price is closer to the luxury brand, but the new experience, new value, new performance provided by the new brand, the new configuration includes new technologies, must far exceed the original traditional luxury brand, consumers will give you a chance to choose." ”
It is worth noting that even if any new brand is sufficient, its impact on the high-end market ecosystem cannot be achieved overnight, but needs to be cut all the way in a long period of time. In the era of the confrontation of new and old forces, the old luxury brands that have lost the technological "moat" are also actively organizing counterattacks with strong brand assets. Therefore, establishing advantages at the product level is only the first step, and it is more important for new brands to use time and patience to create a real brand advantage.
Overall, the new car playing the "control card" of the zhiji car, has been regarded as a seed player on the high-end electric vehicle track, but whether this "seed" can be successfully sprouted and grown, still need to wait for the cruel market to give the final answer.