In October, Diss invited Musk, who "invaded the Wolfsburg", to teach 200 executives of the Volkswagen Group in the name of "accelerating electrification." At Volkswagen’s “doorway”, Musk changed his previous slightly flamboyant style and humbly regarded Volkswagen as the benchmark of the auto industry, his “idol” and Tesla’s biggest challenger.

　　In the eyes of many people, Musk, who is "a guest" at Wolfsburg, is just politely saying "kind words". After all, on the battlefield of new energy, Tesla has taken the lead and inserted into the hearts of global giants like a sharp knife. How can a revolutionary who came to "subvert" praise the people it aspires to "subvert" Woolen cloth?

　　ID. Family's counterattack

　　Yes, judging from the global sales of new energy in the first half of this year, the Volkswagen Group’s 170,000 score is less than half of Tesla’s. There seems to be a certain gap between the two, but the year-on-year growth rate of 165% is also silent It shows that the hysterical "ALL IN" electrified public will not be easily defeated, and it is gaining momentum to start a "counter-offensive" frenzy.

　　Wolf Castle must be great again.

　　The 63-year-old Diss broke through the resistance of the union and has initially opened a door to a new era for the public, and has won internal support. The location of the counter-offensive and decisive battle is 8,000 kilometers away in China.

　　For this turbulent country, Musk said that China's GDP will be 2-3 times that of the United States. Diss also hurriedly stated that we need to promote broader cooperation in China to have a more far-reaching impact, rather than doing the opposite.

　　"Battery costs reduced by 50%, annual sales of 2 million vehicles, 4 years to become the world's leader in electric vehicles", when Diss was optimistic in March, he must have extremely high expectations for the Chinese market.

　　However, when the Lavida, Passat, and Tiguan still maintain an unquestionable lead in the traditional Chinese fuel vehicle market, the ID. series seems to be a little unfavorable. Throughout the first half of the year, the cumulative sales of ID.4 CROZZ and ID.4 X were only For more than 6000 vehicles. In an instant, Volkswagen’s previous transformational rhetoric pushed the Volkswagen ID. series to the forefront.

　　I have to say that spectators in some markets still underestimated the ID. series, underestimated Diss’ determination to transform, and underestimated Volkswagen’s unmatched global scale and manufacturing capabilities.

　　Faced with doubts, after several months of running-in period, and the ID. family quickly rolled out five models in the Chinese market, a relatively complete and competitive product matrix was formed, especially the ID.3 landing, which represents The offensive of traditional car companies led by Volkswagen on new energy has ushered in a new situation.

　　The market potential of the ID. family has also been continuously released in the reinforcement of the product line. The monthly sales volume smoothly exceeded the 10,000-unit level in September, and reached 12,726 units in October. This level continued in November, with the delivery volume reaching 14,167 units. , The cumulative delivery volume is about 57,000 vehicles. And all of this is the result of natural market selection under adverse conditions such as core shortage and limited production capacity.

　　In response to this result, Diss can confidently reassure Volkswagen employees in his internal speech, "In China, their sales of electric products in the third quarter were 60% more than the total in the first half of the year."

　　This hard-won achievement is inseparable from the strong technical support formed by the Volkswagen MEB modular electric drive platform. "MEB is better than all competitors' pure electric platforms. With the delivery of ID. series models, the decline of the Volkswagen brand in the Chinese market (new energy) will be wiped out." Feng Sihan once proudly said.

　　After the release of 　　ID.3, "the only joint venture model with a pure electric platform within 200,000 yuan", such a name spread like wildfire, and it became a battle in the joint venture market full of "oil-to-electricity".

　　From an architectural point of view, the MEB platform does have its own unique advantages. It removes the horizontal design, front engine, and front-wheel drive layout required by the traditional fuel vehicle chassis. From the beginning of the design, the battery, motor and other three-electric layout are considered. Improved space design not only achieves an excellent counterweight structure through uniform load distribution, but more importantly, the space utilization is improved, which greatly improves the endurance level and has a wider internal space.

　　Take the internal space as an example. ID.3 is 10mm shorter than the e-Golf, and the wheelbase is still 134mm longer than the e-Golf. The space advantage is self-evident.

　　In terms of battery life, whether it is ID.4 or ID.3, the Germans’ understanding of “stableness” and the practice of electric travel do not allow them to “endlessly” endurance and roll in, and the endurance of thousands of kilometers at every turn is not allowed. Not what the public is currently pursuing. In fact, the essence of battery life anxiety has always been energy replenishment anxiety, and the significance of long battery life is indeed open to question.

　　Perhaps, Volkswagen’s "Buddha" in battery life has made it temporarily unable to take the lead, but the Volkswagen ID. series is "real" in terms of battery life accuracy. There have been tests in the industry that the test mileage of the Volkswagen ID.4 is 2.3% more than the displayed mileage, while the test score of the comparison model is indeed 36.7% lower. Reliability is one of the reasons why Volkswagen has always been loved by the Chinese market.

　　In addition, the MEB platform was designed with safety as the top priority at the beginning. Whether it is passive safety or active safety, whether it is the safety performance of the body structure or the battery system, it is very good. It can be said that safety is the most embedded in the MEB platform. The underlying genes.

　　Data shows that the ID. series products of the MEB platform need to pass 338 stringent enterprise tests, which is nearly 7 times the 53 requirements of the national standard. Recently, the ID.4 X security evaluation results of China Insurance Research and Development also corroborated this security attribute.

　　Although it is tested based on the more demanding new version of the test standard, ID.4 X has excellent evaluation results on the four major indexes of crashworthiness and maintenance economy, car occupants, pedestrians outside the car, and auxiliary safety, setting a record in the history of China Insurance Research. Best results.

　　Of course, the breakthrough development of Volkswagen ID. is not only the transformation of technology and products, but in the final analysis is the adaptive adjustment of the entire organizational structure, management system and corporate strategy.

　　The war that the public has never experienced

　　"Volkswagen must change the way it sells electric vehicles in China to deal with the problem of poor sales of electric vehicles in the world's largest auto market." Before that, Diss looked at the gap between China and Europe and was obviously worried.

　　The Chinese team led by Feng Sihan also adjusted its action strategy in due course. It can be seen that starting from the second half of the year, Volkswagen’s resources in China have been consciously tilted like the ID. series. Not only is the production capacity priority higher, but also a set of agents has been established. System marketing model.

　　By utilizing and strengthening the channel advantage of Volkswagen in China, the agency marketing model is essentially a disguised "direct operation", which is different from the direct operation model of new car manufacturers and the traditional 4S store model. It's somewhere in between. Accompanying the agency marketing model is the ID. Digital City Showroom, which is similar to Nio's Nio house, bringing new marketing touchpoints to the public.

　　In this way, this new marketing model avoids the cost of OEMs opening large-scale new direct-operated stores, avoids competition with existing dealers, and revitalizes the resources of existing dealers.

　　Under this model of operation, on the one hand, it can realize direct interaction and efficient communication between OEMs and consumers, and on the other hand, it can also realize a national unified price system, enabling agents to reduce inventory risks and obtain new profit points.

　　The challenge is to change from a sales function to a service function. The mutual transformation of the two modes requires dealers to work hard to change their way of thinking to adapt and digest the new service mode. "The ideology must be changed from the bargaining."

　　"The next golf must never come from China" Diss's voice is especially in my ears. Volkswagen is working hard to accelerate the sinicization in all links of the entire value chain system, and quickly deploy in an effort to innovate China's technology, brand and channel advantages. Judging from the effect of the current ID. series, the effect has begun to appear.

　　It must be admitted that the public has an indisputable advantage in the value chain system of manufacturing process, brand influence and channel ability, but the times have changed. Times not only change the public, but also change the market's criteria for judging the public.

　　The core of competition has shifted to chips, autonomous driving systems, smart cockpits, and FOTA, especially based on big data competition. The so-called "barriers" that traditional forces such as "manufacturing process" and "brand" are proud of seem a bit embarrassing.

　　Passivity at the software level, Volkswagen and Diss will never avoid it. Diss said frankly in an internal exchange meeting, "It is much more difficult to integrate powerful software into the new model of Volkswagen than to power up the car."

　　The public has become more and more aware that the speed of software iteration in the future will dominate the pace of automobile evolution. If car companies cannot establish an organizational structure dominated by software capabilities, the R&D progress and product rhythm will inevitably be limited.

　　So, it can be seen that in the new round of the 5-year plan announced by Volkswagen at the beginning of this month, Volkswagen will invest 89 billion euros in the research and development of software and electric vehicle technology, which is 56% of the total investment.

　　"What do we have? We have the money!" At the end of March, Xiaomi finally came to an end after countless plundering the market. The incarnation of "Rebs" "Resker" simply and roughly described the capital advantage of Xiaomi's car building. When countless people are crazy about Xiaomi, they seem to forget that the strong capital reserves are also the most proud driving force of transformation.

　　It is not easy for traditional car companies, especially industry giants like Volkswagen, who are stared at by countless eyes. It is not easy to get rid of decades of technological advantages and development paths. The elephant needs to rebuild from all aspects of the underlying architecture and move towards the future. Anxiety is inevitable in the competitive system.

　　But once the public bet all their pride and glory and set foot on this crazy place, who would dare to conclude that the "back wave" defense line built with software technology and Internet thinking will not be quickly breached?

　　"We are a leader in the world of internal combustion engines, but in the new world we call NEW AUTO, what is waiting for us is a war that has never been experienced before." Therefore, Diss is directly in charge of the Volkswagen software department CARIAD. business. Making up for the shortcomings at this stage, enriching the ecology in the next stage, and building a general operating system in the future are the three hurdles facing Diss.

　　In the face of the surging tide of new forces, the traditional forces, including the general public, were indeed slightly passive before, but there is an old Chinese saying that "the opposite is the movement of the Tao, and the weak are the use of the Tao." Things always go back and forth. When the huge body of the public starts to rotate and has its own inertia, the so-called traditional car companies will no longer be traditional, and the new car forces may no longer subvert.

　　You have to believe that if even Volkswagen is unable to complete the transformation, then it will not be good news for all traditional car companies.