A "little thing" that makes Li Xiang obsessed with

Author | Wang Xiaojuan

Edit | Zhou Zhiyu

From intelligent driving to battery technology, rim coiling technology has become a prominent science, and car companies have also held technology days to show their technical strength.

On July 26th, Ideal held a special NVH Technology Day. Through this exchange, the outside world was also able to get a glimpse of how this new force, which has only been established for 9 years, is gradually able to compete with the old luxury cars in the field of NVH.

NVH (noise, vibration harshness) is an important indicator of the quietness of a car's interior, and the more high-end the model, the more attention is paid to NVH performance.

The ideal of not being built for a long time has also been planted in NVH. Once, during the test drive event after the release of the Ideal ONE, some media said that the Ideal ONE did not perform well in NVH in "performance mode".

NVH has become a sore spot in Li Xiang's heart. Within Ideal, the NVH R&D department was also personally pushed by Li Xiang himself. On the first day of the 2022 New Year, the head of the regiment also issued a military order, "If you don't solve the problem, you will leave after the year."

The later results are as everyone knows, the ideal NVH capability, from being questioned when the ideal ONE was released, to the third-party test list, the ideal MAGE, the ideal L9 can already occupy the top two on the list. This is also a very specific case of ideal product polishing.

As soon as the user sits in the car, they begin to feel the sound from all over the place, including the sound of the car itself parts colliding with each other, as well as the sound from the external environment. Not to mention rest, even after getting in the car, you need a quiet environment to catch up on dramas, listen to songs, etc.

However, it is not easy to do a good job in NVH, especially for car companies like Ideal, whose products take the extended range route, which is inherently more difficult than those that take the pure electric route.

On the one hand, NVH is a huge systematic project, unlike indicators such as acceleration and top speed of 100 kilometers, which can be specifically evaluated, and there is a clear technical route that can be improved, in contrast, it is more difficult to improve the ability of NVH.

There are many NVH-related parts in a car, and there are more than 10,000 parts in a car, and more than 30% of them are NVH-related. Therefore, if you want to have excellent NVH capabilities, it is not that you can solve it by stuffing some sound-absorbing cotton.

In addition, there are many scenarios that need to be developed for NVH, including various driving dynamics, environment, temperature, weather, etc., which will affect the overall sound judgment.

What's even more difficult is that the perception of sound is always very subjective, and everyone's hearing and body perception are different, and sensitive people will perceive noise that ordinary people can't perceive.

For example, Ji Xiangdong, senior director of R&D and operation of Li Auto, complained that Li Xiang is a person with a sensitive sense of hearing, and he can always hear voices that many people in the team can't hear.

In order to stubbornly commit to NVH, Ideal has invested heavily in building many professional laboratories, such as sound insulation suite laboratory, modal laboratory, vehicle semi-anechoic room, intelligent listening room, etc., to test the ability of different materials to block sound. Many of these ideal laboratories are the first of their kind in the industry.

Even the winding, bumpy paths in the countryside near the ideal headquarters were part of the test. The engineers in the NVH department are very familiar with those roads, and when testing, that's an important scenario.

And, when it comes to improving NVH capabilities, the ideal engineer is always faced with some trade-offs.

When the development of the ideal L9 was nearing the end, when Li Xiang himself drove the L9 test car again, he found that the road noise on the rough asphalt road was very obvious, and the sound was not as calm as that of the BMW X7.

In the early stage of R&D, the NVH goal of the L9 was to benchmark against the BMW X7, and 85% of the NVH indicators were not inferior to the BMW X7. However, Li Xiang was still very dissatisfied with the noise of the L9 on rough asphalt roads, and insisted that the NVH index of the L9 should exceed the X7 across the board, not just meet the 85% level.

However, at that time, it was only two weeks before the market, and it was extremely difficult to find a solution that balanced the comprehensive vibration damping performance, weight, reliability, cost, and time.

During those two weeks, the NVH team worked on an hourly schedule, even in four shifts, and conducted 24-hour road tests to ensure the reliability of the solution. The last solution found was to use a resonant block, but if a resonant block was installed, it would be in a very prominent position on the upper wishbone, which would be the "imperfect" point of the ideal L9.

Fortunately, in the end, Li wanted to make a decision, he thought that if this problem was not solved, L9 could not be sold at all. Balancing and compromising between multiple indicators, Li Xiang finally chose comfort and installed a resonant block.

In the end, the L9 was under a lot of public pressure, but its performance in NVH was really good.

Of course, there are many more cases of balance.

The HISS sound of the air conditioner is actually inaudible to many people because the frequency band is very high. But in the end, the ideal decided to solve the optimization, because for some children, the sound in this frequency band is often more sensitive. It's just that this optimization scheme is placed on each car after the Ideal L9 starts mass production, which will increase the cost by more than 140 yuan.

In addition, the ideal is to improve NVH, not only taking into account the front row and the second row, but even the third row, in terms of sound blocking, it has not been spared.

In an ideal view, since the family is positioned, the third row is likely to be occupied by elders or children, which is a group that needs to be taken care of more.

Ideal volume NVH, not only for yourself, but also for suppliers.

The refrigerator, which is one of the ideal selling points, is also an element that affects the NVH in the car. According to the engineer of the ideal NVH department, when he first contacted the supplier's refrigerator, it was too loud to run, and there was no way to accept it, so he could only develop it with the supplier.

It is also the insight into user needs, the persistence of product experience, and the ideal from learning others to being learned by others.

In March of this year, the Ideal MEGA was launched in a cheer, but after the listing, the sales were sluggish, which also caused the Ideal to fall into a short-term morale slump, and even the facelifted L series was affected, and the monthly sales returned to more than 30,000. At the time, many people thought that the ideal might be in shambles, or at least be silent for a while.

But soon, the ideal sales returned to 40,000 units a month, and it did not turn around because of the MEGA. Behind this, the automotive industry is still a reflection of the fact that good products can still be favored by the market.

Li Xiang's dedication to the "little thing" of NVH is also a profile of the rapid rise of China's new energy vehicles.

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