A week of car troubles: a sudden change in the situation? The decline of the car, the war of words and the battle of intelligent driving

Momentum Media

2024-06-24 15:50Posted in Beijing Automotive Creators

汽势Auto-First|撒马尔

In the past week, the EU imposed punitive tariffs, layoffs, price wars, Great Wall BYD and other car companies fought war of words, Chery and Jaguar Land Rover joined hands in electrification, Tesla's FSD countdown to China, CATL's "896 work system" and other news have fermented one after another, becoming the focus of public opinion.

It seems to be a few things, but in fact, it is only about China's auto industry entering 2024, and the reshuffle of the second half of new energy is already on the line. Not only the price war is fierce, the production capacity is cleared, the intelligent driving is end-to-end, and the joint venture 2.0 is opened, which means that the knockout competition has fully begun, and the industry will enter a period of integration.

For example, layoffs, Tesla, Li Auto, and Guangqi Honda started layoffs. It is widely rumored that Guangqi Honda has formulated a set of "N+2+1.8" compensation plans for employees who are about to leave, which has caused many employees to take the initiative to leave. The overall layoffs are expected to continue until August, driven by Guangqi Honda's sales in May, down 41.31% year-on-year, and 24.30% year-on-year.

However, the most eye-catching thing last week was the decline of the two god cars, the war of words and the imminent battle of intelligent driving.

The war of words is really not strange today, but at the launch conference of Great Wall Motor's new generation of H6, it was brought to an unprecedented realm. For example, Great Wall Motors CGO Li Ruifeng's shouting:

"The market competition in the automotive industry is like playing cards at the table together, and you must choose whether to play cards according to your own strength...... If you can't keep up, you can shout 'over'. But if someone is 'out of the table', the Great Wall will issue a warning, stand up, 'knock on the table', or even 'flip the table'. ”

The rift between Wei Jianjun and Wang Chuanfu seems to be growing.

Behind this is the decline of the national god car.

The two major fuel vehicles led by Corolla and Haval H6 are the most lost models in the context of the entire gasoline-electric switching.

The peak of Haval H6 appeared in 2016, when 580,000 units were sold, exceeding 80,000 units in a single month, accounting for more than 50% of the overall sales of 1.07 million units of Great Wall Motors.

It can be said to have entered the established mode of "Haval H6 wins, Great Wall wins". However, by January ~ April 2024, the cumulative sales of Haval H6 will be 74,000 units, and the average monthly sales have dropped to less than 20,000 units.

The decline of the god car and the failure of the Great Wall's new energy transformation have also suffered setbacks, which has also led to a war of words at the scene of the launch of the new generation of Haval H6. Replacing the position of Haval H6, it is BYD Song PLUS, obviously, behind it is the industry changes that have changed.

The other is from the Japanese Corolla. In fact, the status of Corolla's global popular models is difficult to shake by models, however, boiling frogs in warm water, the situation has changed abruptly. In the official promotion of 618 car companies this year, FAW Toyota announced on its official micro that it would implement time-limited comprehensive preferential measures for Corolla models, the main force of sales, with a preferential amount of 43,000 yuan and a price as low as 80,000 yuan.

When Corolla yells at selling cars, selling cars at serious discounts, you know that the sky has indeed changed. The former god car is now lowering its price, low eyebrows and pleasing to the eyes, and condescending to the market, which is an unprecedented "scene".

FAW Toyota did not forget to use the words "Super BeYonD Quality" in the poster to "connotate" BYD, the reason is that Corolla, as the "pillar" of FAW Toyota, has encountered serious sniping from BYD Qin PLUS. According to third-party platform data, the monthly sales of Corolla models in 2023 have always been between 12,000 and 18,000 units, but the monthly sales of this model were as low as 2,743 units in February this year, and only 7,693 units were sold in May. The sales volume of BYD Qin PLUS reached 48,700 units in May, which is seven times that of Corolla.

At the moment of the decline of the god car, the second half of the new energy track has started an end-to-end competition.

There are several strong signals that are supporting this.

The first signal, DJI's official entry into the game.

On June 21, DJI officially changed its name to "Zhuoyu" and launched a new LOGO. Zhuoyu started in 2016 as DJI's Automotive Division. Don't underestimate DJI's expansion in the automotive industry, a technology company that once almost built cars, has never been deeply involved in the field of automobiles, especially intelligent driving.

By the end of 2023, Zhuoyu has more than 1,000 core R&D personnel, covering professional fields such as perception, decision-making and planning, high-performance computing, functional safety, and system engineering, and has reached extensive cooperation with Volkswagen, SAIC-GM-Wuling, Chery Automobile, China FAW, Dongfeng Motor and other enterprises.

The second signal, Wei Xiaoli collectively adjusted the intelligent driving team.

Coincidentally, Wei Xiaoli's intelligent driving team collectively ushered in the change of senior management and team adjustment, which is behind the change of technical paradigm, end-to-end has become the consensus of the industry, and Tesla's end-to-end FSD V12 demonstration effect is obvious.

Industry analysts believe that from the perspective of technical nature, the change of technical architecture will inevitably lead to the change of organizational structure, which will inevitably cause personnel turmoil.

Specifically, recently, NIO has adjusted the structure of the intelligent driving R&D department, and the perception and regulation team under the original R&D department has been merged into a large model team, and the original integration team has been reorganized into a delivery team.

The intelligent driving team has been greatly impacted by the large-scale layoffs of Ideal Automobile, which has been reduced to less than 1,000 people, and it is reported that there are currently about 800 people.

As for Xpeng Motors, Yuan Tingting, the former head of the autonomous driving laboratory operations of Alibaba DAMO Academy, has just joined Xpeng Motors as a senior director of autonomous driving products. At the same time, Park Yishu, the head of Xpeng Intelligent Driving North America, has recently resigned.

The third signal, BYD increased the self-research of intelligent driving, and set up a separate "Tianxuan" development department.

It is reported that BYD last week stripped the self-developed team of the intelligent driving R&D center of the Planning Institute, and set up a separate "Tianxuan" development department, which is headed by Xu Lingyun, the former director of intelligent driving of Gaohe Automobile, and the organizational structure of the development department is at the same level as the intelligent driving center.

The fourth signal, Tesla and Huawei must have a battle?

In fact, due to Tesla's position as a pioneer in autonomous driving, industry insiders also compare Tesla to the "industry light" of autonomous driving, plus Huawei, which has a strong strength halfway, and Xiaopeng Motors, which has always taken autonomous driving as a label and has good strength, or BYD, which is riveting and trying to catch up, including Weilai, Li Auto, etc., this is destined to be a tragic head battle.

All kinds of signs show that Tesla's FSD entry into China seems to be in an orderly manner, once the "wolf comes", Tesla FSD will not be invincible in the market like the Model 3 and Model Y that were entered back then.

Another question is, who is the most powerful in intelligent driving? Tesla, Huawei, Xpeng or others.

Steam Potential:

It seems that a new round of technology war is about to start. And the war of words will not stop either. At the 50% tipping point of the gasoline-electricity switch, anything can happen.

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