In order to create a unique "Lotus model", Mao Jingbo handed over the phased answer sheet through "three things", successfully integrated "control" into the brand concept, and promoted the Lotus brand with value as the guide. In late autumn, if you comment on the "flower city" Guangzhou with the color of the flower, the purple red color from the rhododendron will have a place. These purple-red clusters are widely used in the greening of bridges here, and bloom on viaducts and pedestrian bridges on Dongfeng Road and other sections of Guangzhou, winding between high-rise buildings, becoming a series of eye-catching and beautiful scenery.
For the author, flower viewing is by no means a "pastime" to come to Guangzhou, but there are indeed scenic spots worth paying attention to. This year's Guangzhou Auto Show is coming as scheduled, and focusing energy and thinking on this is the first priority of this trip to Guangzhou. First of all, let's take a look at the overall situation. The total number of vehicles on display at this year's Guangzhou Auto Show reached 1,132, including 59 world premieres, 20 concept cars, and 469 new energy vehicles, and the overall exhibition scale hit a new high since 2019. Obviously, new energy models are still the "protagonists" of this auto show, according to data from the China Association of China, from January to October 2023, domestic new energy vehicle sales will complete 7.28 million, a year-on-year increase of 378%, with a market share of 304%。
In this regard, many exhibitors have "taken out" the latest new energy products, technology platforms and focus directions that can show the present and future, in order to "emphasize" their respective labels and positioning through a press conference competition, or focus on the "champion model", or rely on brand interpretation, or both. The Lotus booth brought visitors a third style of presentation.
At the Canton Fair 5In Hall 2, the most beautiful color is Lotus's "Champion Yellow". In the booths of a number of brands at the Guangzhou Auto Show, Lotus deserved to be the most eye-catching presence in the pavilion with this bright color, which is really eye-catching.
Here you can see the theme of Lotus's booth called "The Art of Driving", and the simple deconstruction of this theme can be understood as at least having two meanings: one is the brand proposition "for the drivers" that Lotus adheres to: everything is for the drivers, and the other refers to the new ** art exhibition of the same name at the booth. Of course, one of the most important "exhibits" is the culmination of Lotus's 75-year-old brand genes - the million-level pure electric supercar eMEYA.
Here's the official statement: "As the flagship model of Lotus's luxury pure electric life car product matrix, the EMEYA inherits Lotus's 75 years of technical heritage and highly innovative supercar design". On the one hand, Lotus wants to "outline" the differentiated first impression of Emeya to consumers: unlike Eletre's focus on ultimate driving control, Emeya should have more performance and artistic beauty, which is also a concentrated embodiment of Lotus's comprehensive transformation of electrification and intelligence. On the other hand, I want to "make cars into art". "With our artistic communication language and immersive scene experience, we bring EMEYA into the field of vision of luxury consumers, and accurately attract the circle of art lovers and more female users," said Feng Qingfeng, CEO of Lotus Group, in an exclusive interview after the press conference.
Of course, the interpretation of the theme of the booth can actually be regarded as a "response": as the "decisive year" of the vision80 ten-year brand revival plan emphasized by Lotus from beginning to end, 2023 is coming to an end. Go both ways with drivers who really love driving.
Do three things well this year".
As early as April this year, Ms. Liu Yan, deputy secretary-general of the China Association and president of the "Auto Vertical" magazine, mentioned in the column "Liu Yan: Mao Jingbo's "Good Things Come Three" and Lotus's Decisive Year" that Mao Jingbo, President of Lotus China, wants to do three things for Lotus are "brand revival", creating champion products and building "Lotus Ultimate Driving Experience Center". As Mao Jingbo's best friend and well-known auto columnist, Liu Yan analyzed how Mao Jingbo will start the first year of the Lotus brand by doing the above three things well, and she is full of confidence and expectation between the lines. Now these three things are steadily advancing under the strong leadership of Mao Jingbo, helping Lotus to deliver a phased high-score answer sheet with "visible to the naked eye" market performance. In Mao Jingbo's view, there is no template for Lotus's success path to copy, and there is also no standard to refer to, "you must find your own success password and live as you want." Therefore, she believes that the key to Lotus brand building is to come up with the foundation and the things that are best at communicating with users. Therefore, in order to deeply integrate "driving" into the Lotus brand concept, Mao Jingbo's "building 'Lotus Ultimate Driving Experience Center'" was once again extended to three, continuing her style of "starting with one and becoming three". Or "three things", just to successfully push Lotus to be a good driver.
First, "from 1 to N" to create a unique driver-to-driver user experience concept in the industry. The main point of driver to driver is people, stories, and scenes. That is to say, Lotus has cultivated a group of "Lotus Drivers" who understand the brand heritage and pursuit spirit among the sales consultants, and share the brand spirit and driving enthusiasm of Lotus by telling the "Lotus story" instead of a single product explanation, and then combining the five scene modules of the store, including the moment of arrival, the ultimate test drive tour, Chapman living room, champion delivery, and driver club. Since September this year, the Lotus driver-to-driver user experience process has been gradually implemented. Second, create the ultimate driving control system of The Lotus Drive to achieve two-way in-depth interaction between the brand and users. For Lotus, who was born on the track, even in the era of electrification and intelligence, extreme driving control is still the "soul" of Lotus. In March this year, Lotus unveiled the Lotus Drive for the first time, establishing the iconic experience IP of the Lotus brand. Through three levels of city driving, experience driving and extreme driving, as well as immersive full-scene settings such as in-depth testing, professional tracks and characteristic mountain roads, The Lotus Drive provides users with a professional and comprehensive test drive experience. Taking in-depth testing as an example, Lotus has joined hands with professional tracks to establish long-term cooperative relations and hold advanced professional track experience camps. This year, Lotus held several rounds of beginner and intermediate track experience camps in the Shanghai Race, Xiamen Race and Zhejiang Race, attracting thousands of users to participate. At the same time, users are also invited to participate in the global automotive culture event, such as the Goodwood Festival of Speed and the Retro Festival, to deeply experience the brand history and driving charm of Lotus. Third, through innovative marketing, we will continue the journey of "brushing the circle" and "breaking the circle" to influence more potential users. The "version answer" that allows Lotus to play to its strengths and strengthen the brand label is actually intuitive enough - "brushing circles" and events. In 2023, Lotus will consolidate its "champion" label by continuing to brush laps on the track. Among them, the Eletre R+ and EMEYA R+ have successively set the fastest lap times for mass-produced electric vehicles and the fastest four-door SUV in Zhejiang Race. At the beginning of November, in the 70th Macau Grand Prix Greater Bay Area GT4 class, the EMRA GT4 won the championship and second place in the GT4 class with an absolute advantage of 12 seconds ahead of the third place.
Obviously, brushing laps and events have brought more online topics to Lotus, and deeply integrated "driving" into the Lotus brand concept. "From this year, Lotus will gradually return to the competition, and in the future, Lotus will do what it is good at to the extreme, and will make the 'brush circle' stronger," Mao Jingbo said, "We hope that in the era of electric vehicles, when it comes to driving experience or pure driving fun, the first association left for people is Lotus, and we hope to become the first brand of driving control of electric vehicles." At the same time, Lotus is also committed to "breaking the circle" interaction in the field of art, in order to improve more people's awareness of the brand heritage and the value of "beauty and art" on the existing basis. In addition to the "Art of Harnessing" exhibition at this year's Auto Show, Lotus recently collaborated with the Song Art Center to participate in the Art of Style, Elegance and Song Art Collection, which interprets the design aesthetics of EMEYA in an artistic way. In addition, it also joined hands with KEF and Dolby Laboratories to create a "6D super-sensing sound field" to reach the top circle of the "circle-breaking" action.
Emeya "unique".
I don't know if it's a coincidence, Lotus Emeya is also a car with a "flower language", according to Mao Jingbo, the name of Emeya, derived from the Hasaniya Arabic, meaning "flowers like dreams", symbolizing freedom and inspiration, energy and dreams. It is the second production model of Lotus in the electrified era, and it is crucial for the brand's "decisive year" and the execution of the second half of the Vision80 strategy.
Mao Jingbo believes that Lotus EMEYA has opened up a new market segment, electrification and intelligence have given EMEYA more extreme luxury performance, and the combination of "supercar gene + intelligent technology" has also set a new standard for million-level pure electric cars, "so strictly speaking, EMEYA is unique in the market." Well, let's "nag" emeya from the point of view of product power. Under the premise of the "driving" label, Lotus understands the product function of achieving "generational difference" leadership in the pure electric era as strengthening the powertrain, chassis tuning and aerodynamic design. Lotus Emeya's power figures show that its high-performance dual electric motors deliver 905 hp for a top speed of 256 km h and a 0-100 acceleration of 278s。Although the powertrain is only a dual-motor layout, the design guide of the Lotus Emeya is clearly "tuning is greater than stacking", and it is more focused on maximizing the performance of each motor, with both front and rear motors using SiC (silicon carbide) modules, and the maximum efficiency of a single motor is as high as 97%. In addition, the emeya also offers a two-speed gearbox, which is rare in an all-electric model, so that the motor can work stably in the most efficient power delivery range. In order to make the vehicle more stable when driving, the emeya adopts the "ultra-low centroid of mass" design concept, which optimizes the body layout to make the emeya have a lower center of gravity, and has a better front and rear axle load ratio of 50:50, which can enable the car to maintain a more stable body posture when cornering at the extreme. In terms of aerodynamic kits. In addition to the four Race-Aero ducts, inherited from the perforated body of the all-electric supercar, the Emeya also has a Wind Steering Package that includes an active grille, active air dam, active rear diffuser, suspended double-layer rear wing technology and air suspension. Among them, the active double-layer suspension rear wing can automatically open at speed, generating a maximum downforce of 215kg. As for the literal "contradiction" between the "driving" feeling and intelligent driving, Lotus believes that there is no conflict at the practical application level, and intelligence improves the upper limit of the car's "driving" and makes the control more extreme. For example, the Emeya is equipped with the 6D chassis control system, which was pioneered by Lotus. The system can precisely control the intervention of multiple components including the suspension, aerodynamic package, and braking system, and control the six degrees of freedom of the body when cornering, so that the vehicle can maintain the best attitude in any situation.
ERMD Flow**Exterior Mirrors].
At the same time, with the blessing of 34 hardware sensors and dual NVIDIA Drive Orin chips in the whole car, the industry's first intelligent driving modules and functions such as ERMD stream** exterior mirror, Lotus Hyper OS, Lotus Hyper OS, and Lotus high-end intelligent driving also give Emeya a "unique" intelligent car experience for consumers. In addition, Lotus is also practicing "time back to the driver" with the EMEYA, which has 800V high-voltage electric performance architecture (EPA) with flash charging technology, which can increase the range by 180 km (CLTC standard) in just five minutes. In fast charging mode, the battery level can be increased from 10% to 80% in 15 minutes.
Accelerate the second half of the vision80.
After making its Asian debut at the Guangzhou Motor Show, Emeya opened the booking channel and received more than 300 orders in just three hours, which also means that four models under Lotus's "3+3" product strategy have been delivered or unveiled. The gradual maturity of this product matrix has not only formed a scale effect, but also strongly promoted the transformation and transformation of Lotus.
With the successful ramp-up of the global smart factory in Wuhan, Lotus is now moving into the "fast delivery" phase to deliver on its promise to drivers. According to Mao Jingbo, for the eletre model, the orders placed before October this year will be delivered within the year; For orders placed after October, the delivery cycle is expected to be 5-8 weeks. As for Emira 2For 0T models, all previous retained orders will be delivered by the end of this year; And after September under Emira 20T order, the delivery cycle is expected to be 6-8 months. "Our entire delivery system has now been perfected." In order to cope with the second half of the vision80, Lotus's globalization plan is also accelerating after the delivery guarantee has been realized, and it has decided to introduce global capital to enhance its global layout. Now, Lotus Technology has entered into a merger and listing agreement with LCAA, a subsidiary of L Catterton, a world-renowned consumer brand investment firm, to accelerate the brand's global potential. This year, Lotus' global sales network continues to expand at an accelerated pace. Up to now, Lotus's sales network in Europe has covered 12 countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria and Luxembourg. Globally, there are more than 206 retail networks. Of course, the "3331" policy adhered to by Lotus, that is, the sales distribution strategy of 30% in the United States, 30% in the United Kingdom, 30% in China, and 10% in other countries and regions has not changed. Next, the reconstruction of the human-vehicle relationship will also become the focus of Lotus's attention. It will broaden the boundaries of vehicles through intelligent means, shape vehicles into real AI products, realize the brand potential energy effect of users from trust to love, and then to appreciation, and move towards the goal of becoming the first brand of million-level pure electric luxury.