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I have recently discovered a new trend–many of the technology Internet talents who were acquired by traditional car companies in the past two years have “returned”, leaving traditional car companies and jumping back to new car companies, or they have to leave the automotive circle.

There are several cases like this around me, and I am curious what problems have been encountered in the innovation of traditional car companies?

Traditional car companies have high hopes for new energy vehicles. At that time, there were many opinions that once traditional car companies built new energy vehicles, except for Tesla, most of the new car building forces must be “cool” .

But the reality is that these traditional car companies, which have inherent advantages in terms of capital, production capacity, supply chain management, and technology accumulation, do not “roll over” new car-making forces. From the actual sales data, traditional car companies After experiencing the initial excitement, it seems that nothing has been gained in the new car. This area is still Tesla’s “one-stop ride”.

Why is this happening? Recently, I talked with some friends in the automotive industry. They think that traditional car companies can’t do well with new energy vehicles, and they may be wrong from the bottom of the mind.

Why can’t traditional car companies make new cars?

In the eyes of traditional car companies, building a car is an extremely serious and complicated matter.

First of all, unlike ordinary consumer products, a car is a big guy with a life cycle of more than 10 years and can carry people on the road at a speed of 100 km / h. This makes safety a priority for the automotive industry. In order to avoid any quality problems, traditional car companies have developed an extremely careful R & D and production style for hundreds of years.

This is the “rigorous logic” that traditional car companies have been telling. You may have heard them say it many times. But in fact this is just a dimension, they didn’t say the reason why it really matters.

Because the automotive industry involves a very complex supply chain system. At present, most OEMs only develop and produce the overall platform architecture and body structure parts of automobiles, including a small number of powertrains (referring to a series of components and components that generate power on the vehicle and transmit power to the road, including engines, transmissions, and drives Shafts, etc.), others are outsourced to large component suppliers, and large component suppliers continue to use the concept of outsourcing to outsource non-critical technologies and small parts to secondary small component suppliers. Car manufacturers are gradually becoming a platform integrator.

In order to manage such a complex industrial chain and business chain, and lead hundreds of suppliers to work simultaneously, traditional car companies have developed a very strict certification system and development system.Development management process, easy to not change.

These two characteristics have gradually formed a very unique temperament for traditional car companies, which is extremely rigorous and habitual progressive development. In other words, this is the so-called “inertia”.

This mindset has continued into the field of new car construction. A friend from the auto industry told me that the biggest problem for traditional Chinese car manufacturers when they build new cars is to get used to the idea of ​​”integration”. In their view, the new car is to add software functions to the original car body structure. However, most car companies do not have enough software capabilities. They follow the “integration” route, and then integrate these software into a vehicle system.

This itself brings the problem of “two skins” of software and hardware, and because it is not built in accordance with its own “worldview”, it always makes people feel that the experience is not smooth.

This “integrated” idea was okay in the original system, but it may not work in the field of new cars.

Why? We may have to return to a more fundamental question, which is where is the “new” of a new car?

Is the car revolution electric or smart?

In general, new cars have two focuses: one is electric and the other is intelligent.

Electrification is an upgrade of the vehicle power system, that is, the transition from the original fuel car to an electric car. In consideration of environmental protection, countries have actively promoted the transformation of fuel vehicles, and promoted the development of new energy vehicles from various aspects such as policy support and financial subsidies. Compared with other new energy types such as hydrogen energy, electric technology has the lowest cost and the most mature development. Therefore, the major transformation of major car companies has focused on electric vehicles, including Volkswagen, Audi, domestic SAIC and BAIC. Almost all automakers have their own electric models.

Compared with fuel vehicles, electric vehicles have many subversive changes. The most obvious is that the structure of the vehicle is greatly simplified. Fuel vehicles require N complex parts such as fuel engines, transmissions, and turbines to integrate. For cars, these parts may be eliminated in the future, which will greatly reduce the production cycle and production difficulty of the car. In the future, car owners can more freely upgrade the car’s core parts and firmware, as well as DIY. .

But electrification is just an automotive hardware system, that is, an upgrade of the mechanical system. For consumers, its essential attributes have not changed, and it is still a transportation tool.

What is the intelligence of the car? End of februaryThe “Intelligent Innovation Development Strategy” issued by the NDRC in conjunction with 11 ministries and commissions provides a clear official definition for smart cars: Smart cars are smart cars that are equipped with advanced sensors and other devices and use new technologies such as artificial intelligence. A new generation of cars in mobile space and applications.

From this definition, we can see that the car will not only be a mobility tool, but a “third space” that can be moved in addition to homes and offices. In this space, people will be freed from the shackles of driving, saying that the complex point is called intelligence, and that the direct point is actually two words-good driving!

On this basis, cars can become platforms or portals for various services and third-party applications, thereby becoming a new ecosystem. People can connect with offices, homes, and public facilities at any time in the car, and they can entertain. , Social, work. Of course, this dream is still far away.

In other words, the smart car must first change the car’s tool experience for people, and finally change the attributes of the car and reconstruct the relationship between people and cars.

From this perspective, “intelligence” is the most important “background color” of new cars.

Why many auto companies are unaware of this and focus on “electrification” and even “scratch ears” on intelligence. I see a lot of new models of traditional car companies. When they can connect to the Internet, they say they have “smart”. They have back-up assistance, and vehicles that deviate from the L2 level even if they are autonomous driving … These are just simple upgrades based on traditional cars. , Far less than what can be called a “smart car”.

This is not just a matter of their publicity strategy, it is likely to be a matter of cognition.

In fact, the real intelligence is the upgrade of the car software system and the upgrade of the car experience. For example, Tesla first changed the driving experience through autonomous driving. It is difficult for companies worldwide to surpass this point. And then rethink the interaction in the car, this is an uninhabited area that needs to be explored.

These obviously not only test the hardware integration capabilities of car manufacturers, but also comprehensively test the core capabilities of software + software of car companies. The car will inevitably become a software and hardware integration, similar to the “giant terminal” of computers and mobile phones. The integration of traditional car systems can be easily achieved.

History is rhyming

To understand today ’s automotive industry, we can go back to the analogy of the mobile phone industry 10 years ago.

In 2007, Apple released the first iPhone, which opened a new era of transition from feature phones to smart phones. For consumers in the past, mobile phones were just a communication tool. Reliability, durability, and cost were the battle between the various mobile phone manufacturers.

And when the smartphone first came out, there were controversial routes, such as the success of Apple’s touch screen route? Or the success of the “Universal Personal Computing Center”? For this matterThe understanding is similar to the different judgments of whether the core of a new car is “electric” or “intelligent.”

If it is judged to be “electric”, it is just an upgrade of a hardware solution. It seems that traditional enterprises have a chance to surpass it. But if it is “smart”, then it may be necessary to see how the mobile phone became a mobile microcomputer that integrates communication, entertainment, leisure, and work after the advent of the smartphone. How does Apple rely on more than hardware and parameters? , But the comprehensive experience of “hardware + software + ecology” leads the world.

At this time, you need to rely on the “triathlon” of software + hardware + services, and eventually you need to integrate the core chip, software operating system, and innovative technology functions like Apple, instead of using Traditional supply chain thinking is “splicing.”

Nokia, which hasn’t kept up with new thinking in the era of smart phones, has finally fallen. Even if Nokia also released touch screen phones, it will never have the opportunity to enter the door of the era of smart phones.

Now the same thing seems to be happening again in the automotive industry.

For traditional car companies accustomed to industrialized thinking, these are great challenges. Traditional car companies have inherently powerful capabilities such as capital, technology, and supply chain management that may not be directly “reusable” in the new car sector, but are subject to deep-rooted thinking habits. Therefore, the traditional car companies should really see clearly now, it is necessary to abandon the “confidence of the former”.

In the business world, there is not a new era. The “old guys” can work hard to leapfrog. Starting from subverting itself will always be the biggest test of the “cross-era” issue.