Written by / Long Shihui
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Design / Zoi.
At a time when the auto industry is focusing on when to resume work and production, there is a new car that has slightly shifted its attention to the listing.
Before the online press conference, the organizer Zhiji Automobile played a video of Zhiji L7 refreshing the Guinness World Record for the "longest electric drift distance". At the Pegasus Hill Circuit in Shanghai, the "executive coupe" drifted for 1 hour and 6 minutes continuously, breaking the previous Porsche Taycan with a drift of 258 laps and a total of 43.646 kilometers, which set a record at the Porsche Experience Center in Hockenheim, Germany in August 2020.
The record was originally used to break, and the back wave pushed the front wave is beyond reproach; coupled with the era of electrification, the new domestic forces are fully capable of surpassing traditional car companies and century-old giants in the corners. So in the past two years, we are all used to the fledgling new force car, always love to show themselves in the zero hundred kilometer acceleration, automatic driving ability, price, etc., to beat those "imaginary enemies" who have long been famous.
However, the circle of this Zhiji L7 lies in the fact that what is surpassed is a Porsche pure electric sports car, or it breaks the Guinness World Record, removing the marketing rendering component, and it is enough to let the new domestic forces that have the heart of cross-level comparison after that "roll a volume" in terms of product power. But can we see from the wisdom L7 that the "sports gene" of the new forces is enough to challenge the traditional giants that are several times larger than their own?
"Tearing a Porsche by hand", who is the most eager to make a quick profit?
I'm afraid not necessarily, you can say that in 2022, domestic brands have money, market share, design styling and technical precipitation, but it is difficult to say how pure "sports genes" they are.
Even if Weilai EP9 brushed the world's major tracks fastest lap record has been 6 years, but today we mention Weilai, or more think of the "buy service to send the car" and intelligent driving system of various size problems, no one has ever bound the Weilai brand with the "sports gene", but for spending a lot of money to create EP9, Nio electric F1 team, Weilai has long recovered the cost, high-end, performance, intelligent human settings have long been standing, and no one will question why Weilai can sell cars to more than 500,000.
This is a good inspiration for the later high-end new forces, because want to "sell the car more expensive", in addition to the hardware product strength to increase the size, the material process is more in line with the luxurious temperament, some luxury brands can not see the characteristics, such as the brand's own story, to meet the user's excess imagination of the content, have to be created, and zero hundred acceleration, elk results, electric drift results these extreme things that daily driving will hardly do, just can give users super plump imagination, I bought this car can also have these abilities.
But to tie the relationship between a car brand and sports genes, not only the efforts of a car, but the generations of models of each car series, precipitated for decades, and then through marketing communication, market cultivation and brand building, little by little to create their own genes. So in the minds of consumers now, the first thing that comes to mind is BMW's control, Audi's full-time four-wheel drive, Honda's VTEC and Mazda's "human-horse integration". Dare to ask, which of the domestic new power brands you can think of can be labeled as "sports"?
Therefore, I believe that this time zhiji L7 is only to "the longest distance to drift" as the opening statement of the story, so as to make a high-profile debut. The official tone of the new car emphasizes the elements of "new world, driving control, performance", "sports element" is more than any of the previous domestic new forces, but whether it is the comparison or self-promotion of the earlier media, it also highlights the multi-screen intelligent interaction of the Zhiji L7, the high-end interior, and the high-computing intelligent driving system... It's clear that the ambition of the new car is to become an all-encompassing pure electric version of the Panamera, rather than a pure electric performance car like the BMW i4 that highlights the driving control.
Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile, also told the media at the launch of Zhiji L7, "There are still some young people who continue to immerse themselves in the traditional value system built by the BBA... For users who spend 400,000 yuan to buy fuel vehicles, in fact, I think they are very helpless, or to say too much, it is very tragic. This sentence is more direct and sharp than Li Bin's earlier argument that "I don't understand why some people still buy fuel vehicles".
Undoubtedly, the electric age has given the new forces more confidence, but the sports image displayed by "tearing Tesla by hand and kicking Porsche" is a "marketing event" created in order to establish sales and sound in the market as soon as possible. As a result, in the end, he did not create his own exclusive sports image, and he vigorously publicized that he "hanged" the predecessors on a single item, which was too eager to make a quick profit. The "traditional value system built by the BBA" is still worthless in the era of electric vehicles, and it should be judged by the market.
In the era of electric vehicles, BBA is still charming
This has a very "ironic" story, and the "handling" experience that has left me with an impressive impression in the past two years comes from the pure electric vehicles of the old car companies. Driving a BMW iX3 on the "MINI Kinkana" track last year, I can really experience that "driving an electric BMW" is no less fun than BMW fuel cars.
The car flexibly travels between the pile barrels, in addition to testing the delicacy of the electric door output, the precision of the steering wheel and the steering limit of the body bend, it does not win at absolute speed, but the happiness conveyed by the vehicle is real. The electric system makes the front and rear counterweights of the vehicle easier to adjust, without the engine and gearbox, the vehicle has more room for layout, and in today's global design tide, many chassis engineers and suppliers can participate in the development of a car, so pure electric vehicles are "born" with a sense of control.
These are the advantages of new forces and traditional car companies, and the tuning of the control ultimately depends on the team and model positioning, so there will also be pure trams that are not much about control in traditional car companies, but Porsche, BMW, Audi these brands, in order to defend the brand premium transferred from the era of fuel vehicles, are not soft on their own name.
And just yesterday, Mercedes-Benz launched a new EQS SUV in the world, positioning the full-size pure electric flagship SUV of the EQ family, if you compare Mercedes-Benz EQS, the price of this new car after listing should also be millions. The most interesting point, a list of EQS SUV selling points, will find that the power parameters can hit, interior luxury, air suspension, four-wheel drive system, rear wheel steering and other capabilities are absolutely excellent, but in essence and the fuel version of the GLS is not much different, intelligent cockpit and automatic driving capabilities, EQS SUV does not have much innovation.
Mercedes-Benz can not know that today's intelligence is in the way, if the first to carry lidar, high-computing chip on the shock of the old and new forces, but the intelligent configuration of the new car is still the same as the EQS car. In the final analysis, traditional luxury manufacturers are still confident of building brand barriers in the era of electrification, they may not choose the most radical technical route, but they will still build a set of rules and gameplay to ensure the premium of their products. Earlier, Mercedes-Benz announced in Germany that when the vehicle equipped with the L3-level Drive Pilot automatic driving system opened the driving assistance system, "Mercedes-Benz will bear legal responsibility for the operation of the car", walking in front of all car companies, such a commitment is far more reliable and admirable than the body equipped with 4 lidar.
Write at the end
After Taycan won the "longest drift distance" record that year, there were many voices criticizing this record as empty and boring, which made Taycan continue to brush a lot of records later, at that time, it seemed that only a happy move, did not expect to be rolled up.
If every new domestic force builds a car and "tears up the BBA", then it just proves that the right to speak is still in the traditional giants.
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