At Huawei’s spring new product launch conference on April 11th, Huawei’s managing director, consumer BG CEO and chairman of Huawei’s smart car solution BU, who have been nicknamed "Big Mouth", changed their high-profile in the past and became much restrained.
In the audience’s "far ahead" booing, he didn’t pick up this quarrel at all.
Only when talking about the HarmonyOS cockpit of Zhijie S7, he couldn’t help but send out a soul torture: "Why do you want to install a mobile phone bracket in the car? I have never thought about it."
The interaction between giants is always warm and affectionate. Minutes after Mr. Yu raised the question, Lei Jun, founder, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi, responded in Weibo. Mr. Lei, who has always been smiling at the question, also sent a vote conveniently, which attracted almost 110 thousand people to vote at once.
On the other hand, the second release of Zhijie S7 is indeed an equal competitor to Xiaomi SU7. The two cars are almost the same in size, and their intelligence and ecological aspects are also different.
This pair of old enemies of smart phones, smart ecology and the Internet of Everything is now going to fight in the field of smart cars.
Wisdom S7, can you win Xiaomi?
As early as November 28th, 2023, Zhijie S7, the first smart car jointly built by Huawei and Chery, held a listing conference in Shenzhen. As the first car product of "Huawei X World", Zhijie S7 won more than 20,000 orders as soon as it went public. However, because the production capacity could not keep up with the demand, it was not until March this year that the delivery of this car began to really increase. In the long waiting cycle, many users chose to unsubscribe.
This is why Huawei chose to make a second release of Zhijie S7 before the Beijing Auto Show on April 25th. On the one hand, from the perspective of "helping car companies build good cars", as the first product of cooperation between Huawei and Chery, Zhijie S7 must achieve a bright result. On the other hand, under the background of Xiaomi SU7 killing all sides, Yu Chengdong and Huawei must not let Lei Jun’s life "go too smoothly".
So, what is the competitiveness of the "new" intellectual S7?
As a pure electric car, this model launched five price configurations in one breath. Among them, except for the starting price of the Pro rear-drive long-life version, the prices of the Max and Max+versions of the rear-drive long-life intelligent driving models have been lowered by 20,000 yuan.
As the lowest entry-level model, the Pro rear-drive long-life battery has increased to 82kWh, and the CLTC battery life has increased to 705 km. At the same time, this car is also equipped with Huawei’s visual intelligent driving "HUAWEI ADS Basic Edition" for the first time, which can realize the NCA intelligent driving navigation auxiliary function of high-speed and urban expressway.
Huawei tries to avoid backstab for old car owners. The matching fund of 25,000 yuan and the matching fund of 15,000 yuan for interior and exterior decoration at the time of the first listing have now shrunk into a "rejuvenation right" of 30,000 yuan. At the same time, Huawei also provided 3,000 yuan MagLink tablet computer set and 10,000 yuan cash-filled red envelopes to the old car owners. Combined with the 10 thousand yuan discount that many old car owners got when they were waiting to pick up the car, the rights and interests in the inside and outside were also a decline.
According to the author, many old car owners are quite satisfied with this.
However, compared with Xiaomi SU7, this car is not competitive enough in pricing. In the same lowest configuration, the Pro rear-drive long-life version of Zhijie S7 is nearly 34,000 yuan higher than the standard long-life intelligent driving version of Xiaomi Su7. Although the intelligent and comfortable configurations such as intelligent driving and seat adjustment have been upgraded, the cruising range, body size and motor power of the two cars are basically the same.
In terms of high-profile models equipped with lidar, air suspension and dual-motor four-wheel drive, the starting price of the Max RS four-wheel drive performance version of Zhijie S7 reached 329,800 yuan. The Max version of Xiaomi’s four-wheel drive is only 299,900 yuan, which is also a big step.
In my opinion, as the "skirting line" model of Huawei Smart Car, the company did not intend to let Zhijie S7 directly take the cost-effective route to play hand-to-hand combat with Xiaomi SU7 and even Geely Galaxy E8. After all, Huawei still doesn’t want to build a car directly, so it needs to maintain a certain price bottom line in the smart car selection business, so as to leave a profit margin for smart car software and hardware solutions such as ADS Smart Drive and HarmonyOS Cockpit.
In other words, because of the extra cost and profit brought by the incremental parts of smart cars, Huawei has to let the smart car take the "boutique route" and leave enough living space for Xiaomi SU7. Combined with Huawei’s higher brand image and premium compared with Xiaomi, Zhijie S7 may not become the number one competing product of SU7 at the terminal.
Needless to say, there is a big gap between Zhijie S7 and Xiaomi SU7 in the definition of vehicle products. Compared with the latter, it emphasizes the labels that young people care more about, such as sports and sense of technology. The former actually works harder on comfort.
By comparing the side views of vehicles, it can be seen that the D-pillar of Zhijie S7 falls further back, and the triangular window area is larger than that of SU7. Therefore, S7 should give more ample space for the head space and seat back angle of the rear passengers. Xiaomi SU7 is bound to choose the interior space for the lifting tail and duck tail shape at the tail.
Therefore, the author believes that although many auto media will compare these two cars, at the terminal level, there are not as many users who really choose them as competing products as the outside world thinks.
In fact, the biggest challenge before Yu Chengdong is not to turn over the millet, but to help Chery.
Can Huawei help Chery?
As mentioned above, Zhijie S7 completed its first release on November 28th and received 20,000 orders within 24 hours. However, after that, Chery, Huawei’s manufacturing partner, has been delayed in getting on the bus, resulting in that the car has not delivered 20,000 orders so far.
According to the author’s understanding, there are two main reasons: first, Chery’s internal pull on production capacity resources; Second, Chery wavered at first about what attitude it should take to cooperate with Huawei.
Let’s talk about the first point. Just like Wen Jie M5 was born out of Celestial SF5, Zhi Jie S7 is also based on the OEM’s own model-Xing Ji Yuan ES.
As Chery’s first C-class pure electric car for the high-end market, Xingjiyuan ES uses E0X platform, which cost 10 billion yuan, and is equipped with a series of new configurations that are unfamiliar to Chery, including smart chassis, air suspension and zero-gravity seats.
According to Chery’s plan, this car will form a high-low collocation with Zhijie S7, with two flowers inside and outside the wall. The problem is that Chery, which has been building models below 200 thousand yuan, is also the first time to build high-end cars, lacking running-in This brings a series of challenges to R&D, production, sales and service.
What’s more, the release rhythm of Zhijie S7 has been advanced at the request of Huawei. Originally, the prototype car of this car was produced in Chery’s Intelligent Networked Super One Factory, and the production car was not produced until the "Super Two" (formerly known as this) factory was completed in December of that year. However, the time is tight and the task is urgent, so this car has to be put in a factory to produce in line with the fuel car like Star Map and Moon.
This brings another question: Should the limited production capacity be reserved for the "pro-son" Era ES, or for the adopted "proton" intellectual S7?
The author doesn’t know what happened in this, but from the final result, the sales volume of Xingyuan ES is a tragedy. Since its delivery in December last year, this car, together with the test drive, has delivered less than 2,500 vehicles nationwide, which is even worse than the sales of Zhijie S7 in March.
In fact, according to a document entitled "Proposal on" All Marketing and Total Growth "of Star Map Marketing Center" obtained by the author, starting from January 29th, the department from the general manager to the ordinary employees needs to complete the sales task of 10 to 2 new cars in Star Age every year, and a total of 404 people need to complete the sales of 1,170 new cars in the whole year. In this process, each subdivision department will also make statistics and report on the car sales of department personnel on the 2nd of each month.
It is included in the KPI of all staff. To the author’s surprise, Chery even needs every employee to apportion the sales volume of these 1170 cars, which is enough to show that it has no confidence in the prospect of Xingji ES.
Of course, Huawei is not without help. At the beginning of January this year, the company also had a problem with the supply of spare parts for smart cars. The MDC 810, a computing unit used in the high-level intelligent driving assistance system, could not be supplied due to the shortage of parts. Affected by this, Aouita 12 also suffered.
It can be seen that in the cooperation of Huawei’s intelligent car selection, whether the two parties can guarantee each other not to drag their feet directly affects whether the new car can achieve the sales target. In this process, what attitude and resources should car companies use to cooperate with Huawei is the decisive factor.
According to online news, on January 29th, Han Biwen, deputy general manager of Chery Automobile and general manager in charge of the manufacturing division and in charge of docking with Huawei, resigned. It is said that the reason for his departure was "due to the lack of cooperation from Huawei, the delivery of Zhijie S7 was delayed in a large area and was under great pressure". Although the company spokesman denied this statement, this explanation is obviously not enough to convince everyone.
However, some insiders revealed to the author that Huawei’s attitude in the process of cooperation with Chery is quite strong, with high requirements on manufacturing and quality, and frequent contradictions between the two sides. However, the problems in Chery’s production of intelligent S7 are not solved by Han Biwen on his own. Therefore, in the end, he had to leave his job to end his career at Chery.
Now, at the press conference on April 11th, Chery showed unprecedented attention. Yin Tongyue, the chairman of the company, personally went to the conference platform, saying that Zhijie is already the most important project of Chery. He and Yu Chengdong "have face-to-face communication once a month, online communication once a week, and send WeChat communication every day."
In the course of the speech, Yin Tongyue also defined Huawei’s smart car selection:
"In China, building a good car is inseparable from Huawei technology!"
Obviously, now that both sides have paid attention to the intellectual world, the next step is to see how the intellectual world S7 and the brand’s next SUV model can sell.
Write at the end:
Some people in the industry are optimistic about the steady-state sales of Zhijie S7. Zhu Kai, general manager of Jielan Road, told the author that in the process of user research, they found that many car owners spoke highly of the driving experience and chassis texture of Zhijie S7. "Some dual owners of Xiaomi SU7 and Zhijie S7 said that the latter is more’ virtuous’ than the former. When driving at high speed, the body can be firmly sucked on the ground. "
Therefore, he believes that the steady-state sales of this car will be better than some people think, "about 3,000 vehicles a month is not a problem."
But the author is curious about how many automobile products Huawei’s brand potential energy can radiate. After all, according to the existing successful cases, it can be seen that if a car is only equipped with Huawei’s intelligent driving or intelligent cabin solution, it is not enough to help it achieve big sales. Only by putting the car into Huawei’s terminal stores for sale, like the brands of Wenjie and Zhijie, can its sales volume get a qualitative leap.
However, the size of Huawei stores is also fixed. In addition to the car, Huawei mobile phones, tablets, smart screens (TVs) and various smart home products have to be put inside. Whether the subsequent models can enjoy this kind of "blessing" is obviously unknown.
From this point of view, whether Huawei can defeat Xiaomi with Chery and other car companies is determined to some extent by the interior area of Huawei exhibition hall.
