In 2024, BYD and Tesla, the two "electric horses" that have been galloping on the new energy track for a long time, are destined to compete fiercely again in the field of intelligence.
Last year was undoubtedly a history-making year for BYD. The Chinese automaker swept the new energy vehicle market with annual sales, soaring 62 percent year-on-year with an astonishing performance of more than 3 million units3%, winning the sales crown in the global new energy vehicle market. At the same time, it is also one of the few domestic car companies that can successfully complete the annual target in 2023.
On the other side, even though the global new energy sales champion was taken away by BYD, Tesla will still deliver 1.81 million new cars in 2023, maintaining a strong influence in the world and firmly occupying the "top stream" position in this field.
In the past, although the two were both electric vehicle giants, they had their own advantages in market positioning: BYD was deeply involved in the market of less than 200,000 yuan, while Tesla was comfortable in the high-end market. The wonderful drama appeared in a series of actions of DENZA Auto after the beginning of the year, this new energy brand developed by BYD for the mid-to-high-end market, is now directly issuing an "invitation" to Tesla.
And on social networks,The "dialogue" between BYD's Zhao Changjiang and Tesla's Elon Musk seems to have added a touch of gunpowder to this war that began with the competition for performance.
Screenshot of Zhao Changjiang's personal Weibo.
A few days ago, Zhao Changjiang's public statement on Weibo was not just an ordinary industry response, but a clear signal: BYD is ready to compete with Tesla in the field of intelligence, and confidently predicted that the Denza N7 will be the key to changing the market pattern, directly challenging Tesla's Model Y model.
The root cause of this declaration of war initiated by BYD is actually Tesla CEO Elon Musk's earlier statement. With the fourth quarter of 2023, BYD's pure electric vehicle deliveries surpassed Tesla's for the first time, attracting global attention as the world's largest pure electric vehicle manufacturer.
When asked about the topic of "being pulled down from the throne by BYD", Musk once emphasized that Tesla is not only a car manufacturer, but also a pioneer in artificial intelligence and robotics. The implication is that in addition to highlighting Tesla's advantages in the field of intelligent software, it also seems to be an allusion to BYD's lack of intelligence.
Screenshot of Musk's personal social **.
And Musk's remarks actually more or less represent the general views of many people in the industry.
Although BYD has become the world's top seller of new energy vehicles, and in 2023, it will come up with a series of leading technologies such as Yi Sifang, Yun Yuan, and dual-gun fast charging, which have amazed the industry. However, on the intelligent track, BYD has always been slightly conservative, rarely showing its high-end intelligent driving technology, so that many people think that BYD does not pay enough attention to the development of intelligence.
Wang Chuanfu's famous sentence "unmanned driving is flickering" is circulated in the industry, although there is a suspicion of being taken out of context, but it is also understood by many people as BYD's cold sense of car intelligence. But now it seems that this may be a misreading of BYD's intelligent layout.
Faced with Tesla's potential domestic landing advantage in the mid-to-high-end market of more than 200,000 yuan with FSD autonomous driving technology, various new car-making forces have increased their investment in vehicle operating systems and intelligent driving technology, striving to take the lead in this chase.
And today's BYD, it seems that there is no need to deliberately emphasize the advanced nature of DM-i. Looking forward to BYD's future layout, in the interweaving of public information and industry dynamics, its strength in the field of intelligent driving finally has an intuitive "launch schedule". On the battlefield of the smart car technology competition, BYD is quite confident in making a move this time, and the Denza brand will take the lead in challenging Tesla, which means that 2024 will become a turning point for the intelligence of electric vehicles.
In this context,Zhao Changjiang's challenge to Musk is obvious, and its BYD Denza brand seems to be ready to get rid of the low-key image of intelligence in the past and officially face the industry giants. At the 2024 DENZA Auto User Communication Day, Zhao Changjiang, Chief Co-creation Officer of DENZA Auto, made it clear that the key word of DENZA in 2024 is technology intelligence.
In the car manufacturing circle, it is not only the manufacturers competing for the market, but also the overall subversion of the traditional driving experience by new technologies and intelligent trends.
In the past, luxury looked at the car logo, and now luxury looks at technology, and this year is the year of technology for Denza. According to Zhao Changjiang, in 2024, DENZA will also mass-produce the intelligent technology of the whole vehicle, including high-speed pilot, city pilot, light map mode and other intelligent driving functions will be launched one after another; In terms of handling, it will achieve a length of more than 5 meters2 and a turning diameter of less than 10 meters, so that the big car is as easy to drive as the small car; As for safety, the Elk test will be close to 90km h, making it safer.
Official picture of the DENZA press conference.
In the new year, DENZA's models will usher in a comprehensive upgrade of intelligence. Not only that, but Denza will also launch three flagship models – including the dual flagship sedans (directly facing the benchmark Porsche Panamera and Mercedes-Mai**S-Class) to be released in the first half of 2024, and the new Denza N9 SUV, which is scheduled to be launched by the end of the year.
It is worth mentioning that DENZA's intelligent driving technology does not completely follow Tesla's pure visual route, but chooses to combine the underlying architecture of high-precision maps and the "light map" solution, which can break through the open and regional restrictions of high-precision maps and spread intelligent driving capabilities to all parts of the country more quickly.
At the same time, DENZA also showed "DENZA speed" in channel construction. Up to now, there are more than 370 DENZA directly-operated stores, covering 135 cities. This year, DENZA will continue to expand its service outlets; User activity will also be more diverse.
For Denza's sales target this year, Zhao Changjiang also showed confidence in line with the "bold words". It said that in 2024, the annual sales target of DENZA is 200,000 units, of which the sales target of DENZA D9 is 120,000 units. At the same time, DENZA will further expand its internationalization process. According to Zhao Changjiang, "This year, DENZA will take the lead in Hong Kong, China, and Macao, China, and DENZA will also become the official partner of the European Cup and appear at more international auto shows." ”
In order to achieve the above goals, at the beginning of 2024, DENZA also brought an unprecedented OTA New Year gift package to users, updating more than 60 key functions, covering intelligent cockpit, intelligent driving and intelligent chassis. The highlights of this upgrade, such as high-speed NOA (N**igation on Autopilot), remote parking (RPA) and automatic parking (APA) function experience optimization, expand the competitiveness of DENZA products in intelligence.
As the opener of BYD's "intelligent second half",The growth of the DENZA brand is also a microcosm of BYD's intelligent strategy.
At BYD's 2024 Dream Day event, BYD released the first intelligent architecture of "intelligent and electric integration" - Xuanji. The architecture integrates BYD's current cutting-edge technologies in electrification and intelligence, including Yi Sifang, DMO, e-platform, Yunyuan, three-electric system, intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving technologies. At the same time, BYD also launched a dual-cycle multimodal AI - Xuanji AI large model, which applies artificial intelligence to the whole field of vehicles.
Moreover,Wang Chuanfu also publicly stated at the meeting that 100 billion yuan will be invested in the field of intelligence in the future. The 100 billion yuan undoubtedly released a strong signal to the market: BYD has fully launched a new situation of entering a higher level of intelligent competition. This investment scale, compared with four times BYD's total R&D expenditure in 2023, is even equivalent to the total amount of funds built by Xiaomi Auto, showing its grand plan for the future automotive intelligence field.
In response to the actual needs of the market, BYD will provide high-end intelligent driving systems for models with more than 200,000 yuan, and models with more than 300,000 yuan will be equipped as standard. In the first quarter of this year, the DENZA N7 model will be the first to be equipped with city navigation and high-speed navigation functions, which will serve as a fulcrum for Zhao Changjiang's confidence and confidence to challenge Tesla.
As a mid-to-high-end model priced at more than 300,000 yuan, the DENZA N7 is undoubtedly competitive in terms of traditional product power. The market's expectations for this model are pinned on the advanced intelligent driving functions it claims, which is exactly what BYD wants to achieve.
Tesla's Model Y, although it sells well in the global market, is not yet clear about the localization of FSD for the Chinese market. In this context, if the DENZA N7 can take the lead in improving the intelligent driving experience and be recognized by the market, surpassing the Model Y will no longer be out of reach.
Looking back on the market performance of the DENZA D9, Zhao Changjiang once boldly predicted that it would succeed, and finally the D9 became the annual sales champion of the whole MPV market with the annual cumulative sales of 118595 units (the statistical caliber of the passenger association), which shows that Zhao Changjiang's ** is not unfounded. On this basis, it is indeed not impossible for the DENZA N7 to defeat or approach the goal of Model Y.
Entering 2024, the competition in the new energy vehicle market is increasing unabated, and the first-class war has become a commonplace "low-end game", and the pursuit of technology has become a high-end battlefield for car companies to advance upward.
In this era when intelligence has become the core battlefield for the development of the automotive industry, this confrontation between BYD and Tesla can be described as the ultimate showdown of intelligent technology. The performance of the two companies in 2024 will directly affect the direction of future automotive intelligence. At this moment, the eyes inside and outside the industry are focused on these two giants and their showdown in the field of intelligence, waiting for the day when the answer will finally be revealed.
(This article was first published by Zhang Min and Chang Xiao, edited by Zhang Min).