[car home Industry] Perhaps from the perspective of some traditional aristocrats, it is not an exaggeration to call the arrival of the electrification era "the ritual collapse and the bad music". The luxury and high-end previously defined by the number of engine cylinders and horsepower are no longer an insurmountable threshold in the electrification era. How should luxury be interpreted in today’s era? Some enterprises may not have thought about this question, or they may have thought about it but could not get the answer. Therefore, after the market electrification scale began to appear, their hearts were a little stunned.
Take the medium and large SUV market as an example. In the past era of fuel vehicles, it was almost luxury brands that could survive in this field and achieve a certain sales scale. Even the price that is more close to the people is dominated by strong overseas brands such as Volkswagen. In today’s era of electrification, the market structure has already changed. Sales champions are basically monopolized by ideals, and traditional luxury brands can’t get a share.
From the price point of view, the boundaries between brand attributes have long been lost among various models. Strong overseas brand products can be sold more cheaply than China brands, and the price difference between luxury brands and products of the same level can be hundreds of thousands.
This kind of "ritual collapse and bad music" will be a severe test for some brands, but for others, it can also be called an opportunity for brand transition. Since Wei Xiaoli can take this opportunity to become a high-end brand, it is also an opportunity for some changing second-tier luxury brands to break the BBA monopoly on the new track and become a first-line brand.
Obviously, Volvo is trying to seize this opportunity. The (|), which was first launched in China not long ago, can be regarded as a signal flare for the brand to achieve class transition.
Volvo’s Transformation Logic
The growth process of a high-end new energy brand can be roughly divided into two routes. The first one is for new players, such as Tesla and Weilai. These companies are good at holding high first and then hitting low in the process from zero to one, that is, launching flagship models first, and launching models with relatively close prices after brands gain a foothold in the high-end field, harvesting sales and doing large-scale.
For traditional luxury brands, there will be another one before the above path-testing the water. Although in the early years, when traditional luxury brands launched the first batch of pure electric vehicles such as Mercedes-Benz EQC, BMW iX3 and Audi e-tron, they were always named "Tesla Killer" by the outside world.
However, it is obvious that BBAs themselves don’t think so. The original intention of releasing these models is to blow the horn of electrification transformation, so that consumers can intuitively feel and gradually accept the existence of pure electric products of these brands, not to compete directly with Tesla.
"Volvo XC40 New Energy"
Under the above demands, these car companies often build models from the starting point of seeking stability, such as adding pure electric versions on the basis of mature fuel vehicles. Volvo has done this before. The XC40 RECHARGE, the brand’s first pure electric vehicle, was launched during the 2020 Beijing Auto Show, and it was endowed with an iCPU intelligent interconnection system that better meets the needs of China consumers.
In the years since then, the sales volume of XC40 RECHARGE has gradually increased, with 848 vehicles sold in 2021, 1,836 vehicles sold in 2022 and 1,417 vehicles sold in the first four months of 2023, which can be regarded as a good completion of the water test. Volvo has also used this model for electric preheating in advance in the fields of production, supply chain, sales and after-sales.
After this step, for the traditional luxury brands in transition, the second step is to set a benchmark, that is, to integrate their understanding of electrification and intelligence into a model as much as possible to create a real flagship. Obviously, Volvo EX90 is such a brand flagship in the era of smart electric vehicles.
Volvo EX90』
Since it is the flagship of the new era, there are at least two tasks on Volvo EX90: brand and market. That is, we should not only pass on the brand concept in the era of intelligent electric vehicles, but also make this concept accepted by the market.
As mentioned earlier, the medium and large pure electric SUV market where Volvo EX90 is located is already a market where the traditional boundary has been subverted. Traditional luxury brands and new forces compete on the same stage, and the former does not seem to have an advantage at present. If you want to stand out in such a market, you still have to achieve "people have me, people have me", that is, products conform to the trend of smart electric vehicles, and at the same time find their own labels to achieve differentiated competition.
The Volvo EX90 Metropolis of the New Power Club?
Before the opening of the Shanghai Auto Show, on April 16th, the words of Qin Peiji, president of Volvo Car Greater China Sales Company, really made the Volvo brand and the Volvo EX90 a hit. At that time, at the press conference of "VOLVO TECH DAY and EX90 China First Show", Qin Peiji said that "the new forces will, and we learned it in three years; We will, and the new forces will not learn in ten years. "
Since then, Qin Peiji has also explained this "malicious words" to many media. He said that the most essential thing Volvo learned from the new forces is how to face consumers. Previously, many traditional car companies were prone to step into a misunderstanding in the process of transformation. They paid too much attention to electric vehicles and cars, but ignored intelligence, and even ignored the needs of consumers in China in the era of intelligent electric vehicles. Therefore, when the models that are as luxurious, comfortable and have a sense of control as those in the traditional era appear, they often fail to achieve the expected results.
Fortunately, under the advantage of backwardness, Volvo saw the mistakes made by its predecessor and made corrections. So on the Volvo EX90, you can clearly feel that this is a truly intelligent electric car.
First of all, from the electric dimension, the CLTC cruising range of the Volvo EX90 under comprehensive working conditions is 650 kilometers, and the acceleration time of 0-100 km/h is 4.9 seconds. As a medium and large pure electric SUV, it meets the mainstream standards of high-end products. From the point of view of intelligence, Volvo EX90 is obviously stronger than the products launched by traditional luxury brands, more like a new force model.
Volvo EX90』
This car is equipped with NVIDIA DRIVE Orin chip, and its computing power can reach 254 TOPS (trillions of operations per second). In contrast, BMW iX, the same level product, is equipped with MobileyeEQ5H chip with a computing power of 24Tops；; The upcoming Mercedes-Benz EQE SUV has not announced what kind of autopilot chip it uses, but from EQE’s point of view, its computing power performance is probably not as good as BMW iX. In addition, the same is true for Audi Q5 e-tron, LYRIQ Ruige and other models.
Although the level of intelligence can not be evaluated simply by the level of computing power, it can be used as the brain of a smart car. The computing power of the autopilot chip will directly determine the upper limit and plasticity of this car. And for consumers, chip computing power may be the only objective data dimension that can tell whether a car is smart or not. Coupled with the computing power of 254TOPS and the central electronic and electrical architecture, Volvo EX90 can continue to grow through the future OTA. You know, since 2021, the total number of Volvo OTA has exceeded 1 million times.
In the aspect of assisted driving software matching with the computing power of autopilot chip, the assisted driving system algorithm of Volvo EX90 comes from Zenseact, a 100% wholly-owned subsidiary of Volvo Cars. Thanks to this subsidiary of Volvo Autopilot Project, Volvo is the only traditional luxury brand that realizes full-stack self-developed algorithm. It is reported that in the next step, the brand will take the lead in launching navigation assistance functions based on high-precision maps in China according to the needs of users in China market.
In the intelligent cockpit, in addition to the "smart car standard" such as Qualcomm 8155 cockpit chip and large-size central control panel, Volvo EX90 is special in that it is equipped with DUS driver perception system with dual cameras in the car, which is the only one in the production car in the industry at present.
Compared with the single-camera scheme, the dual-camera DUS system monitors 60 frames of eye movements per second, which greatly reduces the false alarm rate and judges the driver’s state more accurately. With a capacitive steering wheel that can sense the contact area between the driver’s hand and the steering wheel, it will be difficult to deceive the system by means of self-deception such as hanging water bottles, oranges and "getting rid of artifacts".
Identify differentiated competitive labels
There are always people who say that the transformation of traditional car companies is unfavorable because of the so-called "burden". Indeed, due to the long-term solidification of brand image and the solidification of automobile understanding, many products created by traditional brands seem to be less "extreme" than those created by new forces, which also leads to a natural disadvantage in terms of attractiveness when electric vehicle consumers are mainly early adopters in the market.
But from another point of view, if these brands’ stubbornness and persistence in cars can be displayed in the situation of "smart electric", supplemented by the strong brand power and market appeal of these brands, the opportunities will come after the market segment users gradually change from "early adopters" to "mainstream groups".
In this regard, Volvo EX90 did just that. In an era when labels are king, this car not only chooses luxury labels that everyone wants to interpret but lacks objective support, but also adds safety labels that Volvo has always been good at and widely recognized. However, unlike what was emphasized in the era of fuel vehicles, the safety labels on Volvo EX90 are all presented in the language of smart electric, whether in the fields of active safety, passive safety or battery safety.
In terms of active safety, the industry has always regarded lidar as a stepping stone to achieve high-level assisted driving, even "automatic driving", but in fact, the Luminar lidar carried by Volvo EX90 wants to convey not the above-mentioned "futures", but real safety. It is reported that the detection distance of this lidar can reach 600 meters, and the sensitivity can even be 7.5 seconds in advance when the black vehicle 250 meters away is equivalent to 120 km/h at night. And has the ability to detect small objects ahead of the industry.
Its resolution is 0.08°x0.06°, and its imaging level is 4 times better than that of the mainstream 905nm wavelength lidar. What is more detailed is that it uses a groundbreaking wavelength of 1550nm, which will not cause damage to the retina of traffic participants outside the car.
In the most important battery field of new energy vehicle safety, Volvo may be the only brand of full-stack self-developed BMS among traditional luxury brands. The BMS system of Volvo EX90 adopts intelligent electromagnetic fuse, which can quickly cut off power within 3 milliseconds under the condition of high current. In addition, Volvo has done a lot of homework to ensure the safety of the battery system. For example, the sensors are connected by hardware to resist electromagnetic interference and avoid the risk of thermal runaway caused by signal loss. For example, the upper cover of the battery pack is covered with boron steel, which can achieve zero deformation when colliding at 60km/h, and so on.
In the field of passive safety, Volvo EX90 has developed its traditional advantages to the fullest. In this car, Volvo has come up with a new generation of cage body specially built for electric vehicles. The overall body structure uses a 19% lightweight aluminum alloy frame to reduce weight and absorb energy. Compared with XC90, the overall torsional stiffness of Volvo EX90 is increased by 50%, and the collision energy absorption capacity is increased by 20%.
Write it at the end
It is reported that Volvo EX90 will be listed domestically in Chengdu factory in 2024, and some people in the industry speculate that its price will be decentralized to the range of 500,000 yuan. If the above price is guaranteed, and considering the configuration and positioning factors, the competition space of this car will be great. BMW iX, Mercedes-Benz EQE SUV, Weilai ES8, and even Cadillac LYRIQ Ruige with a price of 400,000 yuan will become its competitors. Compared with traditional luxury brand products, Volvo EX90 will become its most powerful competitiveness in intelligence. Compared with the new power models, it will be the best way to seize the market to equalize the safety and brand power after intelligence.
For the new forces and other China brands, lane-changing overtaking in the era of intelligent electric power makes it possible for them to compete with the traditional strongmen. For Volvo, isn’t this an excellent opportunity to catch up with BBA and become a first-line luxury brand in the new era? (Text/car home Industry Commentator Nancheng Back Garden)
