How should the "new species" in the automotive world be defined?

    According to Yang Xiaodong, vice president of SAIC Motor, general manager of SAIC Passenger Vehicle Company and chief co-creation partner of R Auto, the "new species" in the automotive industry is to do "what Tesla can't do, but Apple still wants to do."

    On March 18, SAIC R Auto held the "R Brand Co-creator Ecological Conference" in Shenzhen. At the meeting, the brand-new R-TECH technology brand "R-TECH high-energy intelligent body" was officially released, including cutting-edge technologies in the fields of intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, and three-electric technology.

    At the same time, a new model equipped with R-TECH technology-the pure electric coupe SUV ES33 also ushered in the world's premiere. The model is planned to be produced at the Shanghai Lingang Digital Factory and is expected to be officially launched in mass production in the second half of 2022.

    Customize the car in the way of "Pin Lego"

    "R car is not afraid of Apple." Yang Xiaodong said vowedly at the beginning of the conference.

    The reason for the comparison with apples, Yang Xiaodong said: "The entry of apples will definitely bring new ideas to the industry. Although it is not clear what species it is, it must be a ‘new species’."

    According to Yu Jingmin, deputy general manager of SAIC Passenger Vehicle Company and CEO of R Auto, the "R-TECH high-energy smart body" released by SAIC R, "This is not a traditional architecture and platform. It is also a New species." Yang Xiaodong further elaborated that the ES33 equipped with R-TECH high-energy smart body can realize pluggable, replaceable and upgradeable hardware, software can be bought or sold and can be defined, and the battery can be rechargeable, replaceable and upgradeable.

    Among them, in the hardware part, the new model is equipped with a SOA cloud-based full-stack software platform developed by SAIC Lingshu. Through AIoT intelligent hardware plug-and-play, it can customize its own car in a way similar to "Pin Lego".

    In the view of Jiang Hui, chief operating officer of R Auto, this function is closely related to user operations. "In the past period of time, the homogeneity of products has become more and more serious. There are more cars and many users are not very caring." For example, the glove box in the car is basically wasteful. In the future, users of R cars can rely on their personal needs. Choose to transform this part of the space into a vanity box or hot milk space in the mall.

    In addition, R Auto has created a full-stack self-developed high-end intelligent driving solution PP-CEM™, which will be reflected in the new model ES33. Yang Xiaodong said that ES33 will use a set of six sensing systems consisting of lidar, 4D imaging radar, 5G-V2X, high-precision map, vision camera, and ultrasonic radar.

    The Luminar lidar solution carried in the ES33, Yang Xiaodong said, makes the vehicle seem to have opened the "eyes of the gods of Erlang". Compared with conventional lidars, Luminar lidars can generate fine three-dimensional point cloud information, use 1550 nanometer light source that meets human eye safety, detect distances up to 500 meters, over 300 lines, and can see farther and clearer , The recognition accuracy of obstacles is higher.

    Unlike the current lidar devices commonly used on Robotaxi's body, Luminar lidar will be integrated on the roof of the car, "the volume is only equivalent to four packs of cigarette boxes," Yang Xiaodong said.

    In the millimeter wave radar part, R cars will be equipped with PREMIUM 4D imaging radar. Compared with conventional millimeter-wave radars, 4D imaging radars have the ability to measure height, and the accuracy is improved by an order of magnitude. "Vehicles using PREMIUM 4D imaging radar can detect Coke cans 140 meters away." Yang Xiaodong said.

    And all this is attributed to the "brain". R car will take the lead in mass production using NVIDIA DRIVE AGX OrinTM computing power chip, with 500 to 1000+TOPS computing power, with the full-stack self-developed super environment model algorithm, to achieve perception that is fusion, and improve the safety of intelligent driving.

    In terms of battery life, ES33 has a variety of R-TECH energy supplement measures, which can realize charging, battery replacement, battery upgrade, and two-way mutual charging to ensure battery life. In addition, according to R Automotive, the battery assembled by the ES33 can achieve L0-level thermal runaway management technology. Through the cloud real-time monitoring and active warning, the probability of thermal runaway caused by battery cell problems is controlled within an infinitely close to zero range. , So as to never spontaneous combustion.

    R car boundary

    As the largest automobile group in China, SAIC Motor has been far ahead in terms of sales volume and market value. However, since 2019, SAIC Group's sales and revenue have begun to decline.

    Transformation is imminent. In May 2020, SAIC released a new R label focusing on the mid-to-high-end new energy vehicle market, and subsequently announced the independence of the R brand at the Guangzhou Auto Show. Soon after, on November 26, SAIC teamed up with Ali to build a Zhiji car.

    However, Yang Xiaodong said that multi-brand is not a problem. “The market for electric smart cars is still a blue ocean. There are not many brands now, and both traditional and innovative runways must be occupied.”

    Yang Xiaodong believes that scale is of the utmost importance in the traditional runway. "At present, Roewe and MG have begun to take shape." In the innovation runway, it is the stage of R car and Zhiji. "According to the traditional road paving speed will be slower, so it must be'freed the cage to change the bird'".

    Although Yu Jingmin said that "the R car and the Zhiji car have different users and operating modes," it is an indisputable fact that both brands are targeting the high-end new energy car market. It remains to be seen whether a "brother fight" situation will form in the future.

    Prior to this, Zhiji Automobile had already shown its ambitions. The first round of financing for Zhiji Automobile, which was established in November 2020, reached 10 billion yuan. On January 13, 2021, Zhiji Auto, which has only been two months after the signing of the three parties, launched two new cars. The first smart pure electric car will be launched at the end of 2021, and the smart pure electric SUV will be launched in 2022.

    Yang Xiaodong said frankly that traditional tracks seize the scale, while innovative tracks need to cater to C-end users. Looking at the popular models that have a place in the sales ranking of new energy vehicles, almost all of them use their unique products to grasp the C-end users. Among them, Tesla Model 3 has gained a large number of fans with the sense of science and technology; Wuling Hongguang MINIEV has become popular with its accurate market positioning and cost-effectiveness; BYD Han has used blade batteries as a selling point, and its sales have exceeded 10,000 for three consecutive months. .

     For SAIC, in the current competitive environment, it is not easy to achieve corner overtaking. In the face of the influx of competitors, will the "new species" ES33 unveiled this time become a sharp sword for R cars to enter the target market?