Under the background of the rapid development of new energy vehicles and increasingly fierce market competition, the pace of automobile product development is becoming faster, and the product cycle of seven or eight years of replacement and three-year facelift in the previous era of fuel vehicles has been compressed by half, and fast food has become the characteristic of the times. However, the verification issues involved are rarely mentioned, and even the "competition for training" model has appeared under the slogan of "three years must be online", leaving the responsibility of product verification to the user, regardless of the speed and quality.
As everyone knows, car companies that practice long-termism have no room for compromise in product verification, as the test engineer of SAIC-GM said: "SAIC-GM also wants to be fast, but the standard card is here, and a car must not be listed if the test cannot be completed." But then again, in the context of the era when cars are gradually becoming fast-moving consumer goods, if you are not fast, you can only fall behind or even go out.
How do you find a balance between speed and quality? SAIC-GM has also recently given its own answer - RoboTest unmanned vehicle intelligent test platform. This is the only robot test system independently developed by domestic and foreign OEMs and systematically applied to the vehicle test and certification process, and its core significance is to significantly improve the test quality and verification efficiency with the high precision and strong durability of the robot, and provide the best guarantee for the performance consistency of mass production models.
From one small clue one can see what is coming! In the most lazy part of car manufacturing, SAIC-GM has chosen to use innovative technology to maintain a balance between quality and speed, and in the "invisible places" such as safety and other links, SAIC-GM is obviously more trustworthy. It should be mentioned that at present, it is in the throes of the transformation of joint venture car companies, and under the pressure and unhealthy atmosphere, it is more difficult for SAIC-GM to maintain rationality and original intention.
To find a balance between quality and speed, SAIC-GM has brought intelligence into the vehicle verification process
In the increasingly competitive automobile market, many car companies have accelerated the pace of product development, and even some car companies have only taken two or three years from establishment to the launch and delivery of new cars. Compared with the "slow" cycle of joint venture manufacturers, this kind of food efficiency is difficult to love, however, in the case of car companies overly pursuing short construction periods, is it efficiency that is like a divine help, or omitted some links?
When some new energy vehicles have various problems soon after delivery, when the "150,000-200,000 kilometers of the entire life cycle" has not been completed after the vehicle is delivered...... The answer to this question is leaning towards efficiency, and it may be clear whether to leave out the link if it is helped. It should be mentioned that in the whole development cycle of the new car of the joint venture manufacturer, the time-consuming part of the vehicle verification is the whole vehicle.
But the paradox is that the fiercely competitive market requires automakers to serve faster in order to adapt to the changing market. How to improve speed while ensuring conscience has become a difficult problem for those high-standard car companies. SAIC-GM for example, all of its new cars have to undergo durability tests, "three highs and one low" limit tests and road tests, with standards of more than 6 million kilometers.
To this end, SAIC-GM has come up with a way to bring intelligent technology into the vehicle test link. Since 2020, SAIC-GM has begun to use the RoboTest unmanned vehicle intelligent test platform in the vehicle test and certification process, which is composed of two core parts: vehicle end and cloud, the vehicle end controller integrates the driving robot system, positioning perception equipment and control module, and the cloud control center is responsible for the test specification, remote configuration of the test path, real-time monitoring and management, as well as wireless transmission and analysis of test data to ensure the efficiency and accuracy of the test.
Due to the use of the robot system, compared with the traditional human driving, it has the characteristics of high precision and strong durability, which can significantly improve the test quality and verification efficiency, and provide the best development guarantee for the performance consistency of the model. For example, it eliminates the influence of human factors and equipment errors to improve the accuracy and precision of the test, and at the same time, the 24-hour robot also replaces the 8-hour driver, which naturally greatly improves the efficiency and can shorten the test cycle while ensuring the quality of development.
It is worth noting that the RoboTest platform has entered mature applications. At present, the RoboTest platform has been widely used in multiple benches and road test rooms of the Pan Asia Automotive Technology Center, including bench tests such as durability, noise, emissions, thermodynamics and performance, as well as road tests such as Belgian roads, road steaders (G0 class) and hazard projects, and so far, the mileage of endurance bench tests alone has reached 1.5 million kilometers.
At present, the focus of the automotive industry is on price and flow, but not on R&D strength and industrial skills, but SAIC-GM can still have strict requirements for quality verification in a chaotic market, reflecting the responsibility and responsibility of large manufacturers. At the same time, when more car companies focus on consumer-level functions, SAIC-GM brings intelligence into the verification process, which also provides another direction for the intelligence of the automotive industry.
I have succeeded in long-termism, and I understand the meaning of long-termism better
In the process of transformation of new energy vehicles, the market share of joint venture manufacturers is declining, and the market position is being challenged.
However, SAIC-GM did not, still insisted on strict verification standards, and in the face of chaos and the "unhealthy wind" brought by friends, it also embarked on a road of "speeding up" that takes into account quality, and used more advanced industrial skills to improve efficiency. The reason why this is so is nothing more than because SAIC-GM, as a successful and high-peak car company, understands the principle of long-term development of the enterprise - long-termism.
In the past 27 years, SAIC-GM has sold more than 24 million vehicles, which is outstanding among many domestic joint venture car companies. The reason is not only that we have eaten the dividends of the times, but also that we have adhered to the concept of long-termism.
Unlike many early car companies that focused on sales and light on R&D, SAIC-GM has a unique focus on technology R&D and product verification since its inception, and the Guangde test site put into operation 12 years ago was the largest test site in Asia at that time, which not only helped SAIC-GM complete the development and verification of many products, but also made great contributions to the product development of many friends; In the era of electrification, it has also provided a solid foundation for SAIC-GM's transformation, not only completing the local adaptive development of the Autoneng intelligent electric platform, but also launching a new generation of PHEV intelligent plug-in hybrid system with full stack self-development.
At the same time, SAIC-GM, as a car company that has stood at the peak of the domestic automobile market and has the trust of 24 million users, also understands the importance of responsibility. In the context of the chaotic volume of the industry, SAIC-GM still takes the all-round and whole-process safety protection for users as the goal of vehicle development, and after entering the new energy era, it has also adhered to the industry-leading development specifications for a long time, covering six stages: scene definition, target setting, safety layout, parts testing, simulation development and test verification.
In terms of battery safety, the battery pack of SAIC-GM's Autoneng platform and the battery pack of the new generation PHEV plug-in hybrid system are also developed and designed around the "battery life cycle safety", especially in terms of verification and testing, for example, the battery cell test of the Autonen platform has accumulated more than 3.2 million hours; The battery thermal diffusion test also far exceeds the national standard, such as the extrusion test is 3 times the national standard requirements; The number of temperature and humidity cycles of the battery cell is more than 90 times that of the national standard......
In addition, in the face of industry chaos, SAIC-GM, which has seen it, is also more able to stay online on the technical route, for example, in the PHEV technology route, many car companies focus on fuel consumption and battery life but rarely mention the power performance of the lack of electricity, while SAIC-GM's PHEV sees the shortcomings of the current PHEV technology route, and can achieve a one-stop full power shortage in performance.
Involution is a problem that car companies must face at present, but how to roll and how to have quality volume tests the wisdom and determination of car companies, especially the adherence to long-termism. Moreover, whether it is a joint venture car company, a foreign-funded car company, or an independent car company, in the final analysis, it is still a "corporate citizen", and it should bear its own social responsibility, industrial responsibility and responsibility to consumers. SAIC-GM's response to the accelerated pace of product development by upgrading industrial skills is obviously more reliable than car companies that omit certain links to achieve faster product advancement. In the automotive industry, which is full of chaos such as cutting corners, cutting leeks, and short-sightedness, SAIC-GM is using its long-termism to solve the problem of involution.