On the evening of April 13th, at the launch of Ford Mustang Mach-E, Zhu Jiang, CEO of Ford Motor (China) Electric Vehicle Division, became the spokesperson of the new car. When it was crazy to bring goods, it also broke the rumors that it joined Didi to build cars.

　　A few days ago, some media reported that Didi had started a car-building project, led by Yang Jun, the vice president of Didi and general manager of Xiaoju Car Service, and said that Zhu Jiang might join. Regarding this, Zhu Jiang himself was a little angry, "Don't spread rumors to disturb our military's mind, this news is too false."

　　Although the rumors are false, the current situation for Zhu Jiang is really under pressure.

　　On June 1, 2020, Zhu Jiang formally served as the head of Ford's China Electric Vehicle Division, and was fully responsible for the business strategy, marketing, customer experience, user attraction and development, charging network and after-sales service of Ford China's electric vehicle business. Planning and implementation is almost a process from scratch.

　　As the king of the old age, Ford has been left behind by the "Tesla" in the electrification wave. From the perspective of the secondary market, Ford has been labeled as a traditional one, and it is the new cars that lead users to the combination of intelligence and electrification. As of press time, Tesla has a market value of US$731.715 billion, which is equivalent to 15 Fords (US$47.228 billion). Even NIO, which has only been established for 7 years, has a market value of more than US$60 billion.

　　In order not to fall behind in the new wave, Ford began to make efforts, and Mustang Mach-E became Ford’s first answer to the electrification era. But the road of "rejuvenation" has never been so easy.

　　Source: Ford China

　　The muscle car is electrified, can it still be "wild"?

　　According to Ford China's official disclosure, after the press conference on the evening of the 13th, perhaps because of the influx of orders, the Mustang Mach-E order backstage collapsed. Until the early morning of the 14th, Zhu Jiang was still replying to users' questions in the WeChat group.

　　"As a century-old factory for Ford, we have lost our previous burdens to operate. In fact, this is even more difficult than building a new enterprise." Zhu Jiang told Future Auto Daily. But confidence is not lacking. He said that judging from the current order volume, the expectations for the Chinese market are still quite large.

　　Ford Mustang Mach-E is positioned as a pure electric SUV, with a cruising range ranging from 470 kilometers to 600 kilometers, and the price range is between RMB 265,000 and RMB 379,900. Among them, the top model GT First Edition is a limited edition, and this model has the exclusive GT-exclusive star-grazing blue body color.

　　Ford put its first pure electric SUV under the Mustang banner, with its own considerations.

　　For car owners who are familiar with Ford, Mustang is the representative of American muscle cars. As early as 1964, the first generation of Mustang had been unveiled in New York, and its name was to commemorate the legendary U.S. P-51 Mustang fighter during World War II. Unlike most muscle performance cars at the time, Mustang shared the platform with Ford models to reduce costs. The goal was to provide young people with a high-performance sports car at a lower price, and the price was controlled at US$2,368. .

　　With the positioning of a cost-effective sports car, the Ford Mustang sold more than 100,000 vehicles in the first three months of its launch. This result is still eye-catching even today. To date, Ford Mustang has sold more than 10 million vehicles, and it also occupies a strong brand high ground in the hearts of consumers.

　　Now Ford has developed this classic sports car brand into an electric brand, and at the same time it has reduced its price to 265,000 yuan for sale. It is adventurous and ambitious.

　　Source: Ford China

　　After 　　 "electric shock", the Mustang Mach-E has changed the traditional design of the fuel version Mustang. The closed front grille design allows people to see the identity of the new energy vehicle at a glance. The side of the body adopts the shape of a slippery back, and the door adopts a design without a door handle. There are four buttons on the side of the window, and the door will automatically pop open when pressed. The length, width and height of the new car are 4739/1881/1621mm respectively, and the wheelbase is 2984mm.

　　The 　　 rear styling pays tribute to the Mustang design. The classic three-column LED taillights are retained, but a long and narrow light band is added to the center of the interior.

　　The interior of the new car also subverted the shape of the Mustang and began to follow mainstream new energy vehicles. The 15.5-inch multimedia screen and the 10.2-inch full LCD instrument give Mustang Mach-E a good sense of technology. Only a few commonly used physical buttons and knobs are kept in the car, and the settings of other functions are integrated into the central control screen, and the overall layout is relatively regular.

　　Source: Ford China

　　Mustang Mach-E provides 4 versions: standard rear-drive version, long-endurance rear-drive version, long-endurance full-drive performance version, and GT version. The long-endurance full-drive performance version uses dual motors, and the cruising range can reach 540 under CLTC conditions. More than kilometers. The long-endurance rear-wheel drive version has a maximum mileage of more than 600 kilometers, the standard rear-wheel drive version has a maximum mileage of more than 470 kilometers, and the GT First Edition has a maximum range of more than 480 kilometers. The official 100-kilometer acceleration can run within 4 seconds.

　　It is worth noting that He Long, chairman of BYD’s Ford Battery, also appeared at the event. According to Ford China insiders, Mustang Mach-E will use BYD’s 811 ternary lithium battery.

　　At the press conference, Ford also announced its cooperation with Weilai, and stated that its car owners can use Weilai's charging network in China, and Ford will also access other brands of charging stations. In the sales network, Ford will build brand experience stores in 20 cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Chengdu, etc., and choose the direct sales model to reach users.

　　Source: Ford China

　　This may be related to Zhu Jiang’s previous work experience. Previously, Zhu Jiang served as the vice president of user development for NIO, and he created the foundation for NIO's user experience and community co-creation and operation. Now "user-centric" will also become the core of Ford's new model.

　　In cooperation with Weilai and the State Grid, Ford intends to solve the problem of charging difficulties for car owners. Mustang Mach-E users can access more than 300,000 public charging piles covering more than 340 cities across the country through the App, including more than 160,000 fast charging piles. Zhu Jiang made it clear at the scene that Ford will not build its own charging piles in the future.

　　In addition, car owners' service reservations, car pickup and delivery, etc. can be completed online, through the online "five-star appraisal" and other service processes, with direct feedback from the market to achieve reverse management of business partners and their own operations.

　　Can it compete with Model Y?

　　After selling more than 10,000 yuan a month, Tesla Model Y has completely stimulated the potential of the pure electric SUV market. It seems to be for precision strikes. At the press conference, Ford mentioned Tesla and Musk more than once, and even "moved the Ford founder Henry Ford to the front". The words were full of gunpowder between guns and sticks.

　　However, in the wave of software-defined cars, Tesla has firmly occupied the high ground of technology and public opinion by virtue of autonomous driving and intelligent network technology. Prior to this, Thomas Ubridge, Volkswagen's board member in charge of the electric vehicle business, had taken the lead in "showing weakness", saying that Tesla had been ahead of its competitors in manufacturing electric vehicles and developing software for a full 10 years.

　　Source: Ford China

　　Ford chose to avoid its edge and lower the barriers for car owners by cooperating with local Chinese technology companies. Mustang Mach-E has created a SYNC+2.0 smart mobile interconnection system for Chinese consumers, which is equipped with Baidu's smart ecosystem. Different from the overseas version of the SNYC4 system, the SYNC+2.0 intelligent vehicle linkage system is more suitable for Chinese consumers.

　　Among them, apps frequently used by local Chinese users such as iQiyi, Himalaya, and QQ Music have been linked to the car system, which can be found on the central control screen. Sitting in the car, you can directly buy movie tickets and subscribe to audio content. The entire process from opening the system to completing the payment can be completed by voice interaction.

　　In fact, it is not only Ford, but many other joint venture car companies will choose to join hands with Chinese local technology companies in the choice of intelligent routes. For example, when Volvo is building its car-machine intelligence strategy, its pure electric version of Volvo XC40 has successively cooperated with iFlytek, AutoNavi and Alibaba to integrate a large number of third-party services and applications on the car-machine side.

　　At the same time, Mustang Mach-E also adopted the idea of ​​"stacking materials" in terms of intelligent driving. The new car is equipped with 6 cameras and 17 radars as standard, and all intelligent driving assistance hardware is front-mounted to support the continuous improvement of Mustang Mach-E's intelligence level through OTA. The new car is equipped with a new generation of Ford Co-Pilot360 intelligent driving assistance system, including full-speed adaptive cruise, congestion assisted driving, high-speed assisted driving, lane centering assist, lane keeping assist and other systems, which can realize L2 automatic driving. This is a Ford China product The first model in the camp to be equipped with this function.

　　Source: Ford China

　　In addition, users can also choose to install the Co-Pilot360 intelligent driving assistance upgrade package, through the BlueCruise active driving assistance function, to achieve "quasi-autonomous driving state" on specific highways. The official said that in the future, through OTA remote upgrade, many new functions such as ALC automatic lane change assistance can also be realized.

　　"Tesla has established a first-mover advantage in the electric vehicle market, and now we are a challenger." Zhu Jiang once said in an interview that Ford will continue to launch new pure electric vehicles in the future.

　　As Ford’s first smart electric car, the importance of the Mustang Mach-E is self-evident. It was first released at the 2019 Los Angeles Auto Show. In the US market, the first batch of Mustang Mach-E has also begun delivery at the end of 2020. When this car was first launched, it was called the most powerful model to challenge Tesla Model Y by many American media. So far, Mustang Mach-E has begun to help Ford regain its lost ground.

　　Not long ago, the US investment bank Morgan Stanley revealed in a research report that in February 2021, Tesla’s sales share of the US pure electric vehicle market has fallen from 81% in 2020 to 69%, and Tesla Almost all of the lost market share was eroded by Ford Mustang Mach-E models.

　　Now that Mustang Mach-E skips imports in China and directly produces it in China, we can also see the urgency of Ford's offensive in the Chinese market. However, the monthly sales of Model Y, which preceded its listing, have exceeded 10,000 in China. Can Mustang Mach-E replicate the success of the US market?