On May 4, the 2024 (18th) Beijing International Auto Show (referred to as the 2024 Beijing Auto Show) with the theme of "New Era and New Cars" closed at the Shunyi Pavilion of the China International Exhibition Center.

Figures provided by the organizer show that nearly 500 companies from 13 countries participated in the exhibition. During the 10-day exhibition, China International Exhibition Center Shunyi Pavilion and Chaoyang Pavilion attracted a total of 892,000 visitors.

On April 25, the first day of the Auto Show’s Media Day, a total of 23,000 media reporters were attracted to the scene for reporting, including 1,148 foreign media reporters from 131 countries.

This day is also the day when Lei Jun and Zhou Hongyi become the focus of traffic at the auto show.

Second Hand Rose is not my favorite rock band, but their collaboration with Huang Ling on "Little Red Little Green" gave me an unknown impact.

Some people commented that this song is a masterpiece of absurdity in this world.

I saw an answer on Zhihu: "I feel a strong philosophical meaning from the cheerful songs. Sexy men and green girls are a kind of identity, green, fat, red and thin are a kind of fate, and feasting and feasting are a kind of life."

Back to reality, at the 2024 Beijing Auto Show, when Lei Jun, who was wearing a fluorescent green T-shirt, and Zhou Hongyi, who was dressed in red, were surrounded by huge crowds wherever they went, the heated scene made people worry that this was the last feast for the automobile industry. This image and the impact of the song strangely overlapped.

On April 25, 2024, in Beijing, Lei Jun, founder, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Group, appeared at the 2024 Beijing International Auto Show.

disappear them

Lei Jun and Zhou Hongyi are well-known entrepreneurs and new faces at the Beijing Auto Show.

Also participating in the Beijing Auto Show is a well-known entrepreneur who is also a new face at the Beijing Auto Show. He is Huang Hongsheng, the founder of Skyworth Motors and known as the "King of Color TVs."

Many people have seen Skyworth color TVs, but most people have never seen Skyworth cars.

Huang Hongsheng is 68 years old this year, and he is still full of fantastic ideas about cars, such as "Sleeping in the car can cure diseases and maintain health", etc., which makes me curious about how he made Skyworth TV into the first camp in the industry.

Participating in the Beijing Auto Show for the first time, Huang Hongsheng brought a new idea - "Opening a new era of mobile energy replenishment". Inspired by the scene of electric vehicles being unable to charge due to traffic jams on the highway during the Spring Festival, Skyworth Motors announced the development of super-charging models, preparing these trams to replenish energy for those cars that are running out of power.

This made me curiously ask him a question again: "This is the first time for Skyworth Motors to participate in the Beijing Auto Show. Are you worried that this will also be the last time for Skyworth Motors to participate in the Beijing Auto Show?"

My question was a bit offensive and he responded with grace.

"This concern is completely understandable." He said that in 2017, there were more than 1,200 companies registered in China with licenses for fuel vehicles or electric vehicles, but now, "you can count them yourself and participate in this Beijing There will be no more than 50 car brands at the auto show.”

I didn’t press where his data came from. Because the data may not be completely accurate, but everyone does agree on the trend.

GM China President Bai Li is a British man working in an American company and a "China expert" who has lived in China for 18 years.

Julian Blissett, executive vice president of General Motors and president of General Motors China

In the past two years, General Motors has bid farewell to its upward trend in China. This time, Baili is the platform for General Motors' high-end imported car platform, Lange.

Dolange is also a new face at the Beijing Auto Show.

After participating in two CIIEs, Dolange finally came to the Beijing Auto Show for the first time. The first introduced model, a purely American full-size SUV, the Chevrolet Tahoe, made its domestic debut and started pre-sales.

I asked Bai Li what he thought of the current competitive situation in the Chinese market. He said, "This is the most intense game I have seen in the world since my career." I asked him again: Can Xiaomi cars impress him? I was considering buying a Xiaomi car. He, who can understand Chinese, immediately guessed my intention of probing, and laughed and said, "I am a GM boy, Only buy GM cars."

Perhaps because he was a little downcast when he saw that I had not achieved my goal, he added in Chinese, "More than 400 brands have disappeared from this market. Let's wait and see again in three years."

I found a comparison chart of the new car-making forces participating in the previous two Beijing Auto Shows compiled by "Waterdrop Auto" in 2020. Looking back at the 2018 Beijing Auto Show, it was the first year that new car-making forces gathered at the international Class A auto show. In this turbulent era, they were quite likely to compete with traditional car companies.

From Shuidi Auto

Five years later, let’s look at it again. For the Beijing Auto Show, the nine brands that appear in this table are Byton, Aiways, Qiantu, Singularity, Zhengdao, Yundu, Xinte, Gaohe, and Tianji. The first show is the final show. And brands like Bordrin, Sailin, Green Packet, and Reading disappeared before they could accumulate enough strength to participate in the Beijing Auto Show.

Guinea pigs and traffic is king

There is also a very typical new car-making force in the above table, WM Motor, which participated in the two Beijing Auto Shows.

Compared with other new forces that went bankrupt without selling many cars, WM was completely shut down in 2023. Before founder Shen Hui left the United States, its overall sales exceeded 80,000 units and it tried to go public several times, but failed.

Information on Baidu shows that according to incomplete statistics, WM Motor's cumulative financing amount has reached 35 billion yuan. Baidu, Tencent, Li Ka-shing Fund, Stanley Ho family, etc. are all strong investors in WM Motor. A prospectus of Weimar shows that from 2019 to 2021, its losses totaled 17 billion yuan.

At the 2024 Beijing Auto Show, a former WM employee told me that when he saw another new car-making force participating in the Beijing Auto Show for the first time, he always felt very much like the WM from back then: it was already covered in wounds on the inside, but the surface was still... Grand and prosperous.

WM Motor is a case that has been frequently discussed during exclusive interviews with car company executives in the past two years. One of the sentences impressed me deeply. What should the users of WM Motor do now? Are the users who choose new cars guinea pigs?

“Users cannot be treated as guinea pigs.” On April 15, Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, said this during his first online live broadcast.

But in the face of the reality that Chinese car companies have become global role models due to rapid innovation, it is difficult for this kind of voice to occupy the minds of consumers.

At the Beijing Auto Show where Lei Jun and Zhou Hongyi appeared, everyone lamented that it was hard to hear the voice of innovation.

Wei Wen, a reporter from "China Business News", wrote a report for the 2024 Beijing Auto Show, which said: "How carnival the traffic is, how lonely the innovation is."

"With the overwhelming traffic brought by Lei Jun and Zhou Hongyi, public opinion has paid more attention to which booth Lei Jun went to and which executive he chatted with; or which brand of smart electric car Zhou Hongyi will buy. The real protagonists of the auto show are the companies Our products and technologies have not received much attention,” the article said.

On April 25, 2024, Beijing, Zhou Hongyi, founder of 360 Group, appeared at the 2024 Beijing Auto Show.

This article impressed me deeply, but there are still products and technologies that impressed me at this Beijing Auto Show.

That was the world premiere of the new Mercedes-Benz pure electric G-Class off-road vehicle, when it performed reversing uphill (45 degrees).

At that moment, the words "Your uncle is still your uncle" suddenly came out.

The G turn technology that can turn around 360 degrees on the spot is also amazing, but because I watched U8 perform it first, the shock level is weakened.

However, the poem written by Duan Jianjun, President and CEO of Beijing Mercedes-Benz Sales and Service Co., Ltd. on the spot was very charming: "There is no way out, but G turn is here to help."

After the press conference, the electric big G was surrounded by media who watched the car in circles.

In the sea of people, I saw a colleague who had switched from traditional media to self-media squeeze into the passenger seat of Big G. So, after he got off the car, I expressed my admiration.

He said to me very humbly: "Now is the era when gangsters are in power. If someone like Mr. Duan, who is gentle and reciting poetry, comes out to do it on his own, he will not survive the second episode."

This sentence makes me feel emotional.

Duan Jianjun is the first Chinese person to serve as the "top leader" of a Chinese sales company among luxury brand car companies. He is a marketing CEO that almost every luxury brand wants to poach. His ability goes without saying. However, in this era where traffic is king, , he will inevitably make people worry.

Duan Jianjun, President and CEO of Beijing Mercedes-Benz Sales and Service Co., Ltd.

White hair and quick-acting Jiuxin pills

Duan Jianjun has been working in the automobile industry for more than 30 years, and his hair has become significantly grayer in the past two years.

There are many executives like him in the automotive industry. At this Beijing Auto Show, Chery Automobile Chairman Yin Tongyue's "white hair" became a hot topic, and he even contributed a famous saying: "Although he has gray hair, he still fights."

Yin Tongyue is 62 years old this year. Another hot search topic of his is "Sixty-year-old man forced to live broadcast." Before the Beijing Auto Show, he frankly admitted that he learned from Yu Chengdong and Lei Jun, and personally went on the live broadcast to test the long-distance, high-speed and high-end intelligent driving capabilities of Star Era ET.

On April 25, 2024, the Beijing International Auto Show Media Day, Yin Tongyue participated in the Chery booth event.

As the helm of a traditional car company, he was the first to take the lead, adding a CEO's commentary to this most exciting era of the automotive industry that focuses on technology, intelligence, and price. Someone joked, "Before Lei Jun built cars, the auto shows were full of car models; after Lei Jun built the cars, the auto shows were full of CEOs."

So much so that even Luo Yonghao couldn't help but comment on the live broadcast, saying that these CEOs shook hands and exchanged greetings in a "fake manner" that he couldn't stand, and that they were "smiling tigers."

The CEO's papers can be seen by everyone, but there are also some papers that may not be visible to everyone.

An executive of a joint venture once told me that they discussed with the Americans to develop an "in-car nap" model. The Americans couldn't understand this at all. They asked him if he wanted to go home and lie down in bed more comfortably, why should he take a nap in the car? Sleeping in the car.

At that time, I remembered that a Geely employee told me that sometimes it was already three o'clock in the morning when I finished work. I thought about going home for three hours and then coming back to work again, so I would just sleep in the car for a while instead of going home to disturb my family. .

Another time, a friend felt unwell and looked pale, and an auspicious person immediately took out a quick-acting Jiuxin Pill from his body. Only then did I know that because of the high intensity of work, long hours, and frequent business trips, Suxiao Jiuxin Pills were a necessity for these car people to carry with them.

2024 will definitely be a very difficult year for car companies. However, China's automobile industry is also in this extreme situation, and with the silent dedication of many people, it continues to extend its golden age.

Some people commented that it was the most popular era and also the best era.

One of the emotions everyone feels at this Beijing Auto Show is that there are so many foreigners. Among so many foreigners, more than 3,000 were invited by Chery Automobile and more than 1,000 were invited by Great Wall Motors, including 900 overseas dealers and 200 overseas media.

On the second day of the media day, Chery specially used a high-speed train to bring a team of more than 3,000 foreigners to Wuhu, Anhui Province, allowing foreigners to go to the global headquarters of Chery Automobile and continue to have an in-depth understanding of this car company. strength and development strategy. Great Wall Motors also took those foreigners to Baoding, Hebei Province, the global headquarters of Great Wall Motors.

Huang Weichong, Assistant General Manager of Chery Brand Marketing Center, is on a special train taking foreigners to Wuhu

On the train, Huang Weichong, assistant general manager of Chery Brand Marketing Center, made a live broadcast to let everyone know how well Chery has done in internationalization. In 2023, Chery Automobile's total export volume will exceed 900,000 vehicles. In the first quarter of this year, export volume has reached 253,000 vehicles, which has exceeded BYD's export volume in 2023.

Great Wall Motors' overseas sales last year were 314,000 vehicles. "Thirteenth Automobile Industry" interpreted Great Wall Motor's 2023 financial report and found that their export profits in their largest single overseas market last year reached 1.5 billion yuan. For the whole year of 2023, Great Wall Motor's net profit attributable to the parent company was 7.022 billion yuan.

Mu Jun, President of Great Wall Motors, said in an exclusive interview with the media that the market is indeed very volatile, but we need to see what is the essence behind the volume? In his view, the essence is change, which is electrification and intelligence. From one dimension, this change has completely shattered the brand structure and market structure. No brand, including BBA, has a solid brand premium.

Mu Jun, President of Great Wall Motors

In this process, Chinese brands are full of opportunities.

At the 2024 Beijing Auto Show, 117 new cars made their global debut, creating a record number. There were 278 new energy models, which also set a record.

General Motors China President Bai Li said that competition has positive significance for both the industry and consumers. For the industry, it can inspire automobile companies to explore new opportunities; for users, it will bring more consumption options. “In fierce competition, innovation can bring opportunities.”

Whether it is Lei Jun or Zhou Hongyi, they are also looking for opportunities.

Faced with Lei Jun’s massive traffic, many Autobots are looking for the secret that so many people like Lei Jun, so Xiaomi’s customer acquisition costs are extremely low.

Many people believe that car companies should learn from Lei Jun and learn from him to shift from an engineer's thinking to a user's thinking.

Take Lei Jun's four-hour speech at the Xiaomi SU7 launch conference. Many people in the industry and media feel that this is common knowledge in the industry, so why waste everyone's precious time repeating it here. But some people say that this is Lei Jun's user thinking. He is not talking to people in the industry, but to consumers who don't know much about automotive products.

Some people think that Lei Jun's sincerity and humility in being able to open the door for the car owner in person are very touching.

"Our senior leader is still waiting for you to open the car door for him, and he will scold you if you don't open it well." An industry insider joked to me.

Lei Jun was able to realize his dream of building a car in three years, while Apple gave up after thinking about building a car for ten years. To a certain extent, it also reflects the strength of the entire electric vehicle industry chain of China's automobile industry.

Whether Lei Jun can make the suppliers in this chain make money will, to some extent, determine whether Xiaomi Motors can survive.

"I estimate that each Xiaomi car loses 50,000 yuan. Before reaching scale cost, the more it sells, the more it loses. Lei Jun should be panicking now." A person who has worked in the auto parts industry for many years said, "I think , Innovation without a profit model is just rogue."

forever and nothing

I don’t know if Lei Jun always carries the quick-acting Jiuxin Pill with him.

At the Beijing Auto Show, everyone could see how hard Lei Jun worked. Moreover, surrounded by so many people at a car show, the air around you is relatively thin.

"Is this still an auto show? Is it looking at people or cars?" asked an old car person who has participated in almost all Beijing auto shows.

"This is not a car show, this is a performance art exhibition by Lei Jun and Zhou Hongyi." A senior automotive media person said.

"If after many years, everyone's impression of the 2024 Beijing Auto Show is only Lei Jun, it will be a huge tragedy for the automobile industry." Tang Liuyang, a reporter from China Business Daily, wrote in Moments.

When he wrote this sentence, there was only one Xiaomi car on display at the Beijing Auto Show, and there was a long queue to enter. Official data released by Xiaomi Motors shows that 150,000 people came to the Xiaomi Automobile booth during the Beijing Auto Show.

At the 2024 Zhongguancun Forum Annual Meeting held recently, Lei Jun talked about why Xiaomi only makes one car. He said that he visited many booths during the Beijing Auto Show and felt "quite desperate" after watching it because "every car manufacturer We all make a series of cars and just have a few good cars. Why do we need so many homogeneous cars?” He believes that the quality of car rims lies in homogeneity.

On the first day of May, Xiaomi Motors announced that its first-month delivery volume reached 7,058 units (the first delivery was on April 3), and the cumulative number of locked orders also reached 88,063 units. Lei Jun believes that there will be no problem in reaching 100,000 sales this year, which will set a new industry record.

Can Xiaomi have the last laugh in the automotive industry? A car company friend I know posted a post in Moments as evidence that he believes Xiaomi Motors will not survive for five years.

Although new forces are building cars fiercely, we still don’t know who will last forever and who will have nothing.

It is as magical as the repeated chants of "Little Red and Little Green": "I have two idols, one is Little Red and the other is Little Green; you have a hero, yesterday was Little Red and today is Little Green; we have no idols, no Little Red and no Little Green. "

Traffic has two sides. The higher it lifts you, the deeper it will step you down.

Today you are a hero, but tomorrow, you may become yesterday's flower.

However, micro companies, brands or idols may collapse at any time, but the macro market has huge visible certainty.

The public account "An Old Cannon" has an article about the Beijing Auto Show, titled "Who gave them the overwhelming traffic at the auto show?" ”, the article mentioned that he traveled to Thailand four times in the past year, and each time he went to a place, Rayong Industrial Park. Chinese car companies are gathering here. BYD, Great Wall, GAC, Guoxuan Hi-Tech and other companies have factories in the area. There are also companies such as Nezha, CATL, SAIC and other companies in the surrounding area.

As the ninth largest automobile producer in the world, Thailand, the traditional back garden of Japanese automobiles, is being closely fought by Chinese automobile companies. The Japanese have been working in Thailand for nearly 60 years, and their lead is deeply rooted. Before, whether American car companies, European car companies, or Chinese car companies, they all tried to challenge the Japanese, but they all ended in failure.

However, data from "Nikkei Asia" shows that Thailand's total car sales in 2023 will be 775,780 units, with Chinese car companies' share reaching 11%, 2.2 times that of 2022, while Japanese car market share is 78%, down 8% from the previous year. point.

The article said, "It is definitely not the fuel vehicles that defeat the Japanese. Chinese car companies now dare to go to Thailand with a big investment because they have seen the certainty of the advantages of new energy vehicles compared to Japanese fuel vehicles." It also concluded that in Thailand, Chinese cars It is only a matter of time before it replaces Japanese cars.

Tesla founder Musk, who just visited China again, said that he is a "super fan" of China. When answering a question from a China Daily reporter about how he viewed the development of electric vehicles in China, he said that he was very happy to see electric vehicles. With China's rapid development, he believes that all cars in the future will be electric.

Going back to my opening question about Huang Hongsheng and his final reply, to some extent, this also made me understand why Skyworth TV can be among the first in the industry.

Huang Hongsheng, founder of Skyworth Group and Skyworth Automobile

"I'm sure this is not the last feast." Huang Hongsheng said that global car sales last year were more than 90 million vehicles, and this number will reach 200 million vehicles in 2030. What's more, because of the low cost of vehicles, there are still 2.5 billion existing fuel vehicles waiting to be replaced by electric vehicles. "Such a huge market is worth taking the risk."