How are domestic car companies embarrassed to sell 200,000?」
Seeing that there is less than a week left in 2023, there is such a message in the background of Geekcar. The reason that surprised me is that in recent years, domestic car companies have been configured, and the technology has been rolled, and the life and death still can't get rid of the impression that there is no core technology and the definition of cost performance in the hearts of some people.
Once caught in the whirlpool of the ** war, consumers only expect cheaper, not the cheapest. Rather than this, it is better to give up the **war and resist hard**.
The one who realized this earlier than me was Li Bin. At this year's NIO Day, NIO unveiled an executive flagship sedan ET9 with a pre-sale price of 800,000 yuan. Although now the million-level has become a frequent visitor to the press conferences of various car companies, but it is one of the few that dares to move the million-level mind, not to mention that the ET9 is still a ** that will be launched a year later
Who gave NIO the courage to be so high-end?Why is ET9 worth 800,000?
What does a domestic administrative flagship look like?
First of all, let's summarize the core product strength of NIO ET9:
The car is very large and the configuration is very administrative;
Still nt 20 family design language;
Chassis, architecture, three-electric system, intelligent driving ......There are applications of new technologies in almost every field.
It can be said that although the NIO ET9 is still a year away from being launched, the top technology of the flagship model on the market a year later has been announced at this ET9.
As the first product of the NIO 9 series family, the first feature of the NIO ET9 is that it is large enough . The length of the car is more than 53m (5,325 mm), width of more than 2 m, wheelbase of 3,250 mm. But it may not be very vivid in terms of data, so you might as well add a comparison:
In comparison, the NIO ET9 is similar in size to the BMW i7 (long wheelbase), which is also a D-segment electric sedan, and is one lap larger than the Mercedes-Benz EQS. It can be said that in terms of size, the NIO ET9 is still capable of fighting.
The presence of a battery pack gives the ET9 a very high ground clearance of 200mm;In order to meet the needs of comfort and space, the body height is 7cm and 11cm higher than that of the BMW i7 and Mercedes-Benz EQS, respectively, making the NIO ET9 look less like a traditional executive sedan. Judging by the thickness of the front face and rear of the car, it is similar to that of the NIO NT 2The SUV models under the 0 platform have a fight.
This is also a trend in the era of electric vehicles, where the vehicle structure leads to the evolution of the body shape, so that the executive sedan is between a sedan and an SUV, with enough spacious riding space and enough convenient ways to get on and off the car.
In addition to the large space, the most important thing as an executive-class sedan is actually the scene-based design for the attribute of executive. Therefore, the NIO ET9 adopts a native executive four-seat layout. In other words:The body architecture of the NIO ET9 is built for four-seater models.
At the same time, the NIO ET9 is also equipped with NIO's self-developed first-class seats in the back. The forward and backward movement of the seat cushion can be linked to the backrest, and a wide range of backrest angle adjustments can be realized. Those who have been in the first class of the plane must be able to understand that this design is indeed very first-class.
At NIO Day, Li Bin also highlighted the administrative bridge and Skye Island designed by the NIO ET9 in the cockpit.
Almost the entire length of the cockpit of the executive bridge reaches 195m, it not only integrates 20 subsystems, has more functionality, but also realizes the function of spatial partitioning.
In the second half of the administrative bridge, the NIO ET9 designed an executive table that can achieve 360° stepless adjustment. And the small table has almost become the standard configuration of today's executive models of independent brands. In addition to the small table, the executive bridge also integrates a smart refrigerator with temperature control ranging from -2 degrees Celsius to 55 degrees.
Behind the front seats, the NIO ET9 is also equipped with two 14s5-inch OLED panoramic interconnected executive screen, although it is no longer strange that the rear row has a screen, but what is more interesting is that the angle of these two screens can change the screen angle with the position adjustment of the seat, so that the rear occupants can have a more comfortable use experience in any posture.
It can be seen that this time NIO ET9 has put a lot of effort into the back row in order to cater to the title of executive car.
If the large space, high configuration, refrigerator and color TV sofa determine the appearance of a flagship model, then the key to making an executive flagship sedan recognized and become a flagship benchmark lies in whether it has a technical flagship. Only the core technology is the real moat.
So what core technologies did NIO demonstrate in ET9?
Champagne Challenge:
Finally, some domestic car companies have made efforts to the chassis
Intelligent cabin, intelligent driving, and three-electric system are the focus of the competition between domestic car companies. As for the chassis suspension handling experience of the car itself, the most common publicity we see is still European Master Tuning .
However, the chassis of an electric car is different from a gasoline car, and European masters do not necessarily understand Chinese electric vehicles. What's more, the rapid development of automotive electronic architecture in recent years has almost pulled various car companies onto a new starting line. Instead of relying on the endorsement of European masters, it is better to spend more time on the chassis and endorse yourself yourself.
This time, in order to be worthy of the title of flagship administration, NIO ET9 has put a lot of effort into the chassis, such as the impressive Skyride intelligent chassis system, which is also the only fully controlled intelligent chassis in the world.
As the brain of this fully drive-by-wire intelligent chassis, the VMC intelligent computing platform is connected to intelligent driving and various actuators, integrating the three core hardware systems of steer-by-wire, rear-wheel steering and fully active suspension.
First of all, the steer-by-wire system, which is widely used in the aerospace field, adopts telecommunication transmission between the steer-by-wire steering wheel and the steering motor, without the constraints of traditional mechanical structure, and the control accuracy is higher and the corresponding speed is faster. Moreover, the transmission mode of the telecommunication signal is more convenient for the high-end intelligent driving system to drive the vehicleThe rear-wheel steering system further enhances the car's handling, with a maximum steering angle of 83°, so that this one is withdrawn from the field more than 53m, wheelbase more than 3The big guy of 2m achieves a minimum of 109m of turning diameter.
Secondly, the fully active suspension system is on the car, and NIO can be said to be the first to eat crabs.
Not long ago, Porsche released the third generation of Paramela, which can be equipped with the optional Porsche Active Ride hydraulic active suspension system in the plug-in hybrid model, which is to independently control the height of the four tire suspensions through the non-integrated active suspension to improve the vehicle's handling and sporty attributes. This time, the NIO ET9 adopts a more integrated full-active suspension system, each shock absorber is highly integrated with an independent electro-hydraulic pump and a brushless DC motor, the suspension system can complete information processing, calculation and response within 1ms, can make 1000 torque adjustments per second, and the four wheels can be controlled independently.
Unlike Porsche, which uses active suspension to improve the vehicle's handling and sporty attributes, the NIO ET9 uses a fully active suspension system to enhance driving stability and comfort, and to carry out the extreme comfort of an executive sedan to the end.
Sounds crazy, but how does it behave?NIO DAY also**A verification of a real car**,It's this picture, it's a bit familiar:
That's right, it's Champagne glasses again, and it's also an old friend in the automotive world. The most famous is that the Lexus LS has successfully challenged the Champagne Five-Story Tower on a tilting horsepower machine;Then there is the Nissan Altima who has come up with the same challenge, but it is the Champagne Four-Storey Tower.
This time, NIO ET9 first successfully challenged a wave of Champagne three-story towers, and then successfully challenged a wave of champagne four-story towers. In terms of the number of champagne glasses, it is really not good, but there is one thing worth noting:
The NIO ET9 is a challenge to complete while driving, and it is also facing a road surface with continuous speed bumps.
If in the past, we still needed to use the chassis technology of foreign car companies to add points to our own products, then NIO's Tianxing intelligent chassis system redefines what the ultimate chassis technology of the next generation of electric vehicles looks like.
The self-developed intelligent driving chip was unveiled, NVIDIA's cross-border rival
This time, with the debut of NIO ET9, NIO's first self-developed intelligent driving chip, the Shenji NX9031, also ushered in the debut, and NIO's goal is to use one Shenji NX9031 to achieve the capabilities that can only be achieved by 4 NVIDIA Orins.
Listening to this tone, why are the chips also rolled up by the OEMs?
The Shenji NX9031 uses a 5nm process, which is still a 7nm product compared to the NVIDIA Orin chip. In terms of the number of transistors, the Shenji NX9031 has more than 50 billion transistors, which is also far more than the 17 billion of Nvidia's Orin chips.
The Shenji NX9031 uses NIO's self-developed inference acceleration unit (NPU) to achieve high-performance computing, and has a CPU computing group with super concurrent task processing capabilities and abundant memory access bandwidth to achieve fast and stable processing latency. At the same time, through the self-developed image signal processor ISP, the full-link super sense is enhanced, and various AI algorithms can be run flexibly and efficiently. It is a chip born for the AI era.
At the same time as the updated self-developed intelligent driving chip, the ET9 is also equipped with NIO's self-developed ADAM20 platform, including two Shenji NX9031 smart driving chips. In terms of sensors, two side and rear lidars are integrated on the fenders on both sides for lateral close-range high-precision detection, and the shortest detection distance is shortened to 10cmAt the same time, it is equipped with 4D millimeter-wave radar, which can also have good perception ability in extreme weather.
With the support of 2 self-developed chips, adam2The 0 platform can support the computing functions of 6 major sections: intelligent driving, intelligent cabin, intelligent chassis, body, power, and cloud domain, and cross-domain sharing of resources between intelligent cabin and intelligent driving, and the integration of vehicle electronic systems is higher.
All-domain 900V high-voltage architecture
It's higher, and it's stronger
For electric vehicles, the core must be the three-electric system. As a result, this time NIO also released a global 900V high-voltage architecture.
NIO's 900V high-voltage architecture includes core electronic and electrical components such as batteries, motors, wiring harnesses, air conditioners, DC-DC, and on-board chargers, and adopts self-developed and self-produced 1200V silicon carbide power modules and permanent magnet synchronous motors with W-PIN continuous wave winding process, which can be said to be a true global 900V architecture. From the point of view of parameters, this architecture has a maximum voltage of 925V, a charging peak power of 600kW, and a charging peak current of 765A.
In terms of performance, it is equipped with a permanent magnet synchronous electric drive with 925V continuous wave winding process, with a peak power of 340kW and a pre-prime asynchronous motor power of 180kW. The all-wheel drive combination produces 520kW of power and is only 70% of the size of a conventional electric drive system, leaving plenty of space in the ET9's cabin and front trunk.
In order to match the charging peak, the ET9 is equipped with a self-developed 46105 large cylindrical single-cell for 900V and a battery pack, with an energy density of up to 292Wh kg, a battery pack capacity of 120 degrees, and a charging efficiency of 5C for the supercharging and quick-change battery pack.
With the ET9 equipped with large cylindrical batteries, there is one more car company in the industry that takes the route of large cylindrical batteries after Tesla and BMW, and higher safety and higher energy density also determine that more car companies will join this ranks in the future.
It is said that the high-pressure platform is a good medicine to solve the anxiety of energy replenishment. In contrast, NIO, which takes the rechargeable and replaceable route, has a natural advantage in terms of extreme stubbornness and anxiety.
On the one hand, NIO's third-generation battery swap station already supports 900V high-voltage battery pack swapping
On the other hand, at present, NIO supercharging piles support 500kW fast charging, and this time NIO also released *** battery swap station and 640kW fully liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging pile, which can fully meet the overcharging needs of ET9 5C batteries.
At the same time, in 2024, NIO will build 1,000 new battery swap stations and 20,000 charging columns to further expand NIO's energy replenishment network. You must know that the ET9 car will not be available until 2025, and I believe that at that time, NIO's rechargeable and replaceable energy network will be dense enough that users will not feel the existence of the word "energy replenishment anxiety".
Finally
500,000 yuan, this is the current watershed in the domestic new energy vehicle market: below 500,000 yuan, it has basically been occupied by domestic new energy vehicles, and the remaining market share is only a matter of time;However, in a market of more than 500,000, fuel vehicles are still indestructible.
The reason is very simple: the play method of domestic car companies cannot solve the problem of brand value that more than 500,000 markets care about;And BBA, which has brand value, is really pulling its hips in the field of electric vehicles. This leads to a market of more than 500,000, which is still the world of BBA fuel masters.
For this point, what NIO has done is to follow the old path of traditional car companies, so that traditional car companies have no way out.
On the one hand, the flagship model is stacked with technical barriers.
From 2016 to the present, NIO has invested nearly 40 billion yuan in R&D. In the NIO ET9 car, we have seen how much NIO's low gross profit and high R&D money has been spent on over the years. Whether it is a self-developed chip, a self-developed full-wire-controlled intelligent chassis, a 900V high-voltage architecture, or a 150kWh semi-solid-state battery that Li Bin personally broadcast and brought goods to the goods not long ago, these self-developed technologies cannot be learned overnight, nor can they be piled up by relying on the ** chain, and require the accumulation of R&D funds, talents, and time.
On the other hand, the route of the technology flagship is destined to be a route that cannot take shortcuts, unable to rush to a wave of high sales in a short period of time, but at the same time it is also a slow even fast road.
Because the moat created through technology can help NIO build a barrier in the next few years, and it can also make the 900V high-voltage architecture, fully active suspension, and centralized electronic architecture for intelligent cabin intelligent driving computing power sharing become a new competition point for the next stage of competition.
It is said that third-rate companies sell technology, second-rate companies do brands, and first-class companies set standards, and in ET9, we see NIO's ambition to define standards, or to define the ambition of flagships in the era of electrification.