"I will definitely go to Beijing to visit the auto show this year. China's auto show is now very large, and many new technologies and new products will be unveiled at the Chinese auto show." In mid-March this year, a Turkish automotive media person told China Business News the reporter said.

April 25, 2024, Beijing Auto Show, Hongqi Automobile booth.

Starting from the Shanghai Auto Show last year, China's local auto shows have become more influential than traditional internationally renowned auto shows such as Munich and Geneva. Executives and dealers from car companies in different countries have flocked to the Chinese auto show intensively. This year's Beijing Auto Show, the situation is even worse than last year.

While overseas dealers, investors, and R&D personnel flocked to the booths of Chinese car companies, foreign car companies were also busy promoting "in China, for China" and emphasizing the importance of the Chinese market.

"This year, we ushered in the important milestone of the Volkswagen Group's 40th anniversary in China. China has become the second home of the Volkswagen Group, and we are committed to maintaining our status as the number one international automobile company in China and continuing to rank first in the Chinese automobile market Top three," said Obermu, Chairman of the Board of Management of Volkswagen Group. During the auto show, Obermaugh brought the CEOs of Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini and other Volkswagen Group sub-brands to Beijing, and repeatedly reiterated the development strategy of "in China, for China" at "China speed".

Sean Green, President and CEO of BMW Group Greater China, and Oliver Löcher, head of Mercedes-Benz China R&D and Purchasing, successively gave speeches in Chinese to demonstrate the brand's emphasis on the Chinese market.

However, in the eyes of Chinese professional visitors, this year's Beijing Auto Show was "lackluster". Except for a few booths such as Bosch, CATL, Huawei and Jikrypton, which had some breakthrough products and technologies, there were many new cars on more booths. But it is far less than the 2020 Beijing Auto Show and the 2023 Shanghai Auto Show with so many dazzling innovative products and technologies.

Moreover, the direction of the 2024 Beijing Auto Show seems to be changing. With the overwhelming traffic brought by Lei Jun and Zhou Hongyi, public opinion has also paid more attention to which booth Lei Jun went to, which executive he chatted with; or which brand of smart electric vehicle Zhou Hongyi will buy. The real protagonists of the auto show - the products and technologies of each company did not receive much attention.

As much traffic as there is, innovation becomes so lonely.

Ten Thousand Kingdoms Come to Korea 2.0

On April 20, 2023, "car fans" organized a gathering of front-line electric vehicle store personnel. Founder Sun Shaojun asked everyone about their feelings about visiting the 2023 Shanghai Auto Show. One participant blurted out, "All nations are coming to North Korea."

As the first Shanghai Auto Show in the post-epidemic era, in April 2023, executives and dealers from car companies from different countries crowded into the Shanghai Auto Show pavilion. At that time, the Chinese automobile market was moving from the first half of electrification to the second half of intelligence, which made many foreign executives exclaim in disbelief.

In 2024, the Beijing Auto Show took over the baton from the Shanghai Auto Show, once again presenting the grand occasion of "all nations coming to North Korea".

"Since I first participated in a domestic auto show in 2010, this time Beijing has been the auto show with the most foreign faces." Cui Ye, a management member of the planning department of a domestic new energy vehicle company, told reporters that in addition to investors and dealers, There are often foreign faces holding notebooks and cameras at the booths of Chinese brands. After experiencing the exhibition cars, they always write down a long paragraph of text in their notebooks.

After visiting the exhibition, Sun Shaojun said that the characteristic of this year’s Beijing Auto Show is that there are so many foreigners, so many, so many. Behind the influx of foreign visitors is the rapid progress of Chinese automobiles in exports, technology and other fields.

In 2023, China's automobile export volume will be 4.91 million units, a year-on-year increase of 57.9%. Among them, the export volume of traditional fuel vehicles was 3.707 million units, a year-on-year increase of 52.4%; the export volume of new energy vehicles was 1.203 million units, a year-on-year increase of 77.6%. As the involution of the domestic auto market intensifies, many auto companies are competing to expand into overseas auto markets that are not yet fully competitive and can provide better profits.

"After an overseas inspection, the boss of a domestic supplier told me, 'There is money everywhere overseas.'" Zhang Feng, the R&D director of a well-known global supplier, told reporters that a large number of Chinese suppliers are now considering going overseas. In the past, In the past year, he has helped many Chinese suppliers connect with overseas resources.

On April 25, the auto show media day, more than a hundred European dealers and industry association people came to the Leapmotor booth to observe this new Chinese car company that is about to enter the European market; the auto show media will be held on April 27 , a special train full of overseas dealers and partners drove from Beijing to Wuhu to visit Chery's factory and test drive products. In 2023, the export volume of this Anhui car company has reached nearly one million units; one day later, on April 28, More than 1,000 overseas investors, dealers and users went to the Great Wall test track in Xushui, Baoding to experience in depth the products of all brands of Great Wall Motors.

While Chinese car companies are competing to go overseas, overseas car companies such as Volkswagen and General Motors, which have been deeply involved in the Chinese car market for decades, are considering how to stop the decline and rebound faster.

In the era of fuel vehicles, German, Japanese, American and Korean cars were similar to the Seven Heroes of the Warring States Period. Among the 10 Chinese car companies with sales of more than 1 million vehicles, joint ventures once accounted for 7 of them. In March 2024, the top ten rankings of passenger car wholesale sales have shown a trend of offensive and defensive exchanges. Among the top ten, there are only three non-independent car companies: FAW-Volkswagen, SAIC Volkswagen, and Tesla China.

"We launched a new plug-in hybrid product at this auto show. This model was once a 'unicorn' in the market segment. Foreign leaders felt that after adding hybrid, the competitiveness increased sharply. But At the Beijing Auto Show, after Chinese colleagues saw competing products from other competitors, they all felt that it would be difficult for this car to regain its monopoly leadership in the past few years. The reason is very simple. Our new car has no obvious advantages in terms of price, configuration, and quality. "After viewing all the exhibition halls, Zhang Di, the product manager of a joint venture car company, told reporters.

Fuel vehicle products have stagnated, the texture of the interior is no longer high-end, and the advantages of performance, quality and fuel consumption are also being overtaken by Chinese car companies; the progress of intelligence and electrification is slow, and the product competitiveness is insufficient, which is considered to be a problem for joint venture car companies. An important reason for falling behind in this round of changes in the automobile market.

More and more overseas car companies have seen the differentiated advantages of China's automotive industry chain in the field of smart electric vehicles. During the Beijing Auto Show, Renault, which has withdrawn from the Chinese market, was revealed to be negotiating with China's Li Auto and Xiaomi on smart electric vehicle technology. Renault highly recognized the outstanding achievements of Chinese companies in the field of electric vehicles and intelligent connected vehicle software development, so they expressed expressed a strong desire to learn from Chinese automakers.

Stellantis Group CEO Tang Weishi once said at a forum that China's electric vehicles have formed advantages across the entire industry chain. The development and production of the same vehicle in Europe is 30% more expensive than in China. When it is difficult to directly compete with Chinese automobile companies in terms of cost and efficiency, many overseas giants have turned their attention to localized research and development or cooperation with local car companies to "exchange the market for technology."

One week before the auto show, Mercedes-Benz Shanghai R&D Center was officially unveiled. Oliver Löcher, head of Mercedes-Benz China's R&D and procurement, said in Chinese: "We will leverage the advantages of (China's) local talents, accelerate local innovation, and lead more global R&D projects. At the same time, we will continue to deepen and The cooperation of local technology companies contributes to technological innovation in the entire industry.”

Mercedes-Benz is considered the inventor of the automobile. The R&D layout of this century-old German luxury car company in China has entered the third stage: in 2005, Mercedes-Benz started localized R&D in China. At that time, R&D work mainly served production; in 2010, Mercedes-Benz's R&D in China has begun to enter the second stage, using local R&D to serve local products; starting in 2024, Mercedes-Benz's R&D branch in China will enter the third stage of R&D in China and feeding back to the world, and China's R&D results will begin to be promoted globally.

Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz's "hometown", is even more radical. In the past year, Volkswagen and Xpeng Motors have signed multiple agreements to cooperate in many aspects such as vehicle platforms, procurement, and electrical architecture. Among them, Xpeng Motors has It plays the role of technology output in this cooperation; Mercedes-Benz's "old rival" BMW also announced during the auto show that it plans to invest an additional 20 billion yuan in the Shenyang production base to lay the foundation for the local production of BMW's "new generation" models in 2026. .

"The Volkswagen Group has achieved great success in China for 40 years. Today, we have about 50 million customers in China. In the next 40 years, we will firmly implement the development of 'in China, for China' and continuously improve our local R&D capabilities. We will join forces with leading local technology companies and automobile manufacturers to accelerate development at 'China speed'. We will launch a new generation of models every three years, upgrade the electronic architecture every two years, and conduct OTA remote upgrades every month. This is a new rhythm for the Volkswagen Group in the Chinese market," said Bei Ruid, Managing Director of Volkswagen Group China Business and Chairman and CEO of Volkswagen Group (China).

Feast of traffic

At about 2:00 pm on April 25, Lei Jun came to the NIO booth at the Beijing Auto Show. Later, NIO founder, chairman and CEO Li Bin personally introduced to Lei Jun the new car ET7 executive version released by NIO. The NIO booth was crowded with people. . Less than 2 minutes after Lei Jun left the NIO booth, Li Xiang, chairman and CEO of Li Auto, also arrived at the NIO booth, once again setting off a frenzy of crowds.

"Li Bin is not only high-end, but also very down-to-earth. He has pioneered the live broadcast of car company bosses." Lei Jun said at the NIO booth.

Behind Lei Jun's praise is a battle for traffic at the Beijing Auto Show, with car company bosses competing to gain more attention for their brands.

In the past few years, executives from new car-making forces such as Li Bin, Li Xiang, and He Xiaopeng were once at the top of the automotive industry. Li Bin's "gasoline smell" and Li Xiang's "stinking of technology" and other remarks have caused a stir in the automotive industry. widespread discussion and dissemination. But starting from the end of 2023, the top traffic in the cycling circle will shift from these "old and new forces" to "new and new forces".

At the Beijing Auto Show, crowds of people surged wherever Lei Jun passed; Zhou Hongyi, the "red cannon" who recently sold his Maybach in exchange for a domestic smart electric car, became the "oldest car model" at the auto show. The photo of him climbing on the roof of the Warrior 917 was widely circulated .

In order to cope with the "top flow" of new and old traffic, Chery Chairman Yin Tongyue, who calls himself a "60-year-old man", gave an open class to the students at the auto show; Great Wall Chairman Wei Jianjun, who has always shown a serious face, not only interacted with Lei Jun again, We also interacted with internet celebrities on the Great Wall booth.

"The launch event of Xiaomi SU7 on March 28 can be called the Spring Festival Gala in the automotive industry this year. People inside and outside the industry, those who buy cars and those who don't buy cars, are all paying attention to the price and configuration of Xiaomi SU7." Cui Ye told Reporter, under the overwhelming traffic, Xiaomi SU7 has also delivered an impressive report card. As of April 25, the number of locked orders for the car reached 75,723 units, and the delivery volume in the first month reached 5,781 units.

Lei Jun even bluntly stated that the delivery target of Xiaomi SU7 in 2024 will exceed 100,000 units. 100,000 vehicles has always been the threshold for new car manufacturers. Second-tier new forces such as WM Motor and AIWAYS have already found it difficult to sustain their businesses before they have delivered 100,000 vehicles. Now among the new car companies that have temporarily gained a foothold, , it took Tesla 12 years and NIO 3 years to complete the delivery of 100,000 vehicles.

Before Xiaomi, Wenjie was another profiteer with massive traffic. Thanks to Huawei's empowerment and the frequent words of wisdom from Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei Consumer BG and Chairman of Huawei Smart Car Solutions BU, Wenjie, which was born in December 2021, now has sales of nearly 300,000 vehicles.

Some people in the industry joked that Yu Chengdong can save hundreds of millions of advertising fees for the industry a year.

Lei Jun showed a new way of playing to the traditional car circle on Xiaomi Auto. Starting from the technology conference in December 2023, Lei Jun continued to convey to the outside world the information that Xiaomi SU7 was relatively expensive. In the following three months, , the industry and public opinion continue to discuss the pricing of Xiaomi SU7. By March 28, Xiaomi SU7 launch event will finally become the Spring Festival Gala of the automobile industry. Everyone is looking forward to how much the "a bit expensive" SU7 will cost.

In the following nearly a month, Lei Jun appeared in live broadcasts many times and answered questions online, making the car's popularity everlasting.

Li Bin, who was praised by Lei Jun, set the precedent for his boss to live-stream the goods in person. Today, traditional automobile executives such as Great Wall Chairman Wei Jianjun and Chery Chairman Yin Tongyue have started live broadcasts and interacted with traffic figures such as Yu Chengdong and Lei Jun to bring more attention and traffic to the company and products.

"The fragrance of wine is also afraid of the deep alley. Xiaomi and Huawei have huge traffic, which means that their products have their own 'halo' and can gain more attention. At the moment when the auto market is inflamed and knockout competitions are on the rise, traffic and products Together, we can become the winner of sales,” Zhang Di said.

Zhang Di described car sales as a funnel. The thicker end of the funnel represents traffic, which means how many users will be able to pay attention to the product. The higher the customer acquisition efficiency, the greater the number of customers; the thinner end represents the channel, and the narrower the channel. Strong, the more users who miss out and make transactions, the faster it will be.

"This means that under the overwhelming traffic, even if the product is only 80% or 85% of the level of its competitors, more potential customers can enable Xiaomi to achieve sales that are difficult for its competitors to achieve. However, in the car market elimination competition, it will lose traffic and Attention would be a terrible thing," Zhang Di said.

Judging from the previous products, channel layout, organizational structure adjustments and sales volume, the pattern of "two superpowers and multiple strong players" in China's new energy vehicle market has emerged: Tesla and BYD are still far ahead, and the product layout of traditional car companies such as Changan and Geely has emerged. Gradually improve and become the new leader in the new energy vehicle market.

Xiaomi has become the "X factor" in the auto market. Although it is a latecomer, after the delivery of its first product, there have been various problems such as paint peeling off, fenders falling off, and car and machine lags, but the huge traffic and profound Driven by capital, Xiaomi, which has strong supply chain control and product definition capabilities, may become a new pole besides Tesla and BYD.

A little loneliness after the hustle and bustle

"Although Jiuxiang is also afraid of deep alleys, I believe that in the end, the product will speak for itself. We should do our best, because I will definitely not be able to live broadcast, there will not be such a large traffic. Only by making our own products good It's the direction." When answering a question about Xiaomi Auto's huge traffic, Zhu Jiangming, chairman of Leapmotor, said.

Although it considers that there is not much traffic, Leapmotor's booth still received a lot of attention. At this auto show, Leapao launched the C16 model. This ideal three-row SUV has a pre-sale price of no more than 200,000 yuan. In the past year, new energy vehicle price wars have occurred frequently, and the market's meat grinder has continued to turn on. As a "price butcher", Leapmotor has entered the upward channel with its high cost performance. In 2023, Leapao will enter the top three sales of new forces, and its gross profit will become positive ahead of schedule.

Zhu Jiangming has repeatedly emphasized Leapmo's "all-area self-research", that is, through self-research and production of parts and components, thereby reducing the cost and selling price of the vehicle. In Leapao's self-developed four-leaf clover electronic and electrical architecture, a Qualcomm 8295 chip can already meet the computing power needs of smart cabins and basic smart driving, realizing the integration of cabin and driving. At this Beijing Auto Show, traditional supply chain giant Bosch also brought its latest integrated cabin-driving solution. This solution that can handle smart driving and smart cabins with only one chip is expected to be mass-produced in 2026, and The current dual-chip solution for smart cabins and smart driving can reduce costs by 30%.

"But other than these, the Beijing Auto Show did not have the same impressive technologies and products as the previous Shanghai Auto Show and Guangzhou Auto Show." Cui Ye said. At last year's Guangzhou Auto Show, he produced a thick exhibition manual for the group CEO. It has more than 50 pages, including more than 30 must-see Chinese and foreign products. At this year's Beijing Auto Show, the number of pages in the visitor's manual has been reduced by nearly one-third, and the number of must-see models has been reduced to less than 20.

Many people in the industry have raised questions that traffic may also bring backlash. For example, at this auto show, the attention paid to new cars and technology itself is actually being weakened.

In the ongoing price war, car companies have begun to pay more attention to benchmarking successful models, and homogeneous products are emerging on the market: at this Beijing Auto Show, almost all Chinese car companies launched 7-seat new energy MPVs, and many Many companies have launched new energy off-road vehicles, and "ideal-like" family daddy cars have also become a key market segment for car companies.

In terms of technology, smart driving, smart cabins, etc. seem to have also entered a bottleneck period.

2023 is hailed by the industry as the first year for the popularization of many new technologies, including urban NOA, 800V electrical architecture, central computing electronic and electrical architecture, etc. Behind these technologies, there are also 4D millimeter wave radar, lidar, silicon carbide Power semiconductors, Orin-X smart driving chips, 8295 automotive chips, etc. are subdivided. However, in the exhibits at this Beijing Auto Show, there was no qualitative breakthrough in the above-mentioned technologies.

But this bottleneck period will not last long. "In the past few months, we have been considering and discussing user needs. Later, we found that many market segments that are not large in size are not because users have no needs, but because the products are not extreme enough." Cui Ye told reporters , his company has already laid out a number of products to fill the gaps in the current product matrix. In this batch of products, they will mainly focus on user thinking, and may not even consider family-oriented designs, and everything will be market-oriented. .

In terms of overseas car companies, after a long-term layout, the first batch of truly "in China, for China" localized R&D products will be launched in 2025-2026, combining the many years of car manufacturing experience of overseas car companies with the technology and intelligence of Chinese companies. Whether technological products can reverse the current weakening trend of joint venture car companies, and whether the locally developed hybrid products of Volkswagen and General Motors can defeat BYD, Geely and other Chinese car companies, will become potential hot spots at the technical level in the future.

In addition, with the dawn of Tesla's FSD landing in China, discussions on technologies such as pure vision and fused perception, end-to-end and regulation and control will surely continue during this year, and car companies such as Weilai and Ideal have also launched major initiatives. With models and GPT on the car, we can still expect that after the hustle and bustle of traffic, Chinese car companies can roll out more and newer technologies.

(The original title is "2024 Beijing Auto Show: Feast of Traffic, Loneliness of Innovation | Annihilation and Rebirth")