Rebuilding Cars: Doing Subtraction in Car Manufacturing

In an era where “new energy vehicle startups” are emerging rapidly, you may hear the names of several new automotive brands every month, most of which are either unheard of or have never been seen on the road even though they have already launched products. The automotive market is so vast that the “early birds” who have built up a wall of nearly a century cannot be broken easily, and the “latecomers” have to go through several revolutions and countless dark moments before the pioneer group “Four Wisemen” of “WEY” brand was formed.

Even if each “new car maker” company is brewing ideas to overturn the automotive industry, they have to go through step by step “leveling up” to achieve better sales. There has never been a myth of “debut to peak” in car sales, especially in the current situation of oversaturated automotive products. However, the appearance of the Cyber Tank 300 broke this perception.

The Cyber Tank 300 made its debut at the Shanghai Auto Show earlier this year, and more than 3,000 units were booked in just over an hour. Subsequently, the title of “Chinese version of Hummer” was widely circulated in major automotive media. On August 27, the limited edition of 3,000 units of the Cyber Tank 300 ended its lock-in period, and the order price on Xianyu had already soared to over 100,000 RMB, and some even resold the car originally priced at 308,000 RMB for 480,000 RMB.

After listing the above information, I even doubted whether I was talking about a car product, since I had only seen such a boom when Starbucks launched the “cat paw cup.”

It’s hard not to pay attention to such popularity. As the lock-in period ended, Superliminal Cars, the company behind Cyber Tank 300, officially came to light. Those who received orders also wondered why they were contacted not by Great Wall Motors, but by a team called Superliminal Cars. What is the background of this company that entered the automotive industry with a “car rebuilding” model and why the need for limited production? With these questions in mind, we need to delve deeper into this company.

Car Rebuilding: Doing Subtraction in “Car Manufacturing.”

On the official website of Superliminal Cars, we can obtain two keywords about this company: “horizontal car manufacturing; Rebuild from the best”.

# The Concept of “Horizontal Car-Making”: A New Approach to Automotive Industry

Car-making is a long-term work that involves multiple stages, from design and development to supply chain management, production and manufacturing, as well as sales network and customer service. To run the whole process, it takes a long time, a lot of experience, and massive financial support. As a result, with the emergence of the first wave of “new vehicle manufacturers”, the “OEM model” has also risen. To speed up the introduction of products into the market, new vehicle manufacturers have had to subtract from the car-making industry chain and derive a model of OEM from traditional car manufacturers for their own products.

The OEM model involves entrusting the final delivery of the product to a mature factory, while “Horizontal Car-Making” concept of Chaojing Automotive is even simpler: to directly graft the definition of the product onto a mature car body.

In the car-making process, Chaojing Automotive takes the lead in defining their car models and product design, and works together with other car manufacturers to produce them, thereby achieving the effect of redefining the product with their own brand values. The core concept of “Horizontal Car-Making” model is to horizontally extract part of the work in the car-making process and independently carry it out with their own team.

Based on the “Horizontal Car-Making” model, Chaojing Automotive and Great Wall Motors jointly launched a high-end custom car model: the full-scenario SUV Cyber Tank 300 – which is based on the “Tank 300” vehicle model owned by Great Wall Motors, and has undergone extensive redesign and development by Chaojing Automotive, with final manufacturing and production carried out at the modern intelligent factory in Chongqing owned by Great Wall Motors.

Chaojing Automotive has reached comprehensive cooperation with Great Wall Motors in the Cyber Tank 300 project, covering sales and delivery, while the after-sales service is provided by Great Wall Motors’ Tank brand. All the warranty policies for Cyber Tank 300 will continue to be the same as those for Tank 300, which means that the first owner will enjoy exclusive user rights such as lifetime warranty of the engine and transmission, road rescue service, and the same warranty and three-package policies as Tank 300.

Apart from car model definition and product design, one of the reasons that sets Chaojing Automotive apart from ordinary car modification factories is that they can legally operate on the road. In terms of business model, Chaojing Automotive is like a combination of “modification factory” and “new energy vehicle manufacturer”.

Of course, cooperation between Chaojing Automotive and other car manufacturers is a win-win game. Under this model, Chaojing Automotive does not have to worry about car-making qualifications, while other car manufacturers can upgrade their audience by “re-creating” products through Chaojing Automotive. Moreover, the 300,000-level market covered by Cyber Tank is an area that Tank vehicle models from Great Wall Motors have not yet touched.

Rebuilding Cars: A Carnival of Creativity

The “horizontal car-making” model allows CyberSpace, the automaker, to launch the Cybertank 300 project in just a few short months, but the auto industry has never been about who can get products to market faster. Obviously, this world no longer needs a new car factory, but what this world needs is creativity that makes cars more interesting. The meaning of “Rebuild from the Best” is to use creativity to recreate existing car products.

Many people learned about CyberSpace’s cool interior and exterior design through the Cybertank 300, but CyberSpace’s products were not conceived on a whim – they have a unique brand style. The name “CYBERSPACE” comes from a science-fiction concept, which means virtual reality in the network, and is also an abstract concept in philosophy and computer science. In the age of artificial intelligence, the trend of human evolution is towards “CYBERization”, and they believe that the ultimate goal of cars is a “SPACE” for human individual CYBER living. “Futuristic” is CyberSpace’s main product style.

The popularity of the Cybertank 300 actually reflects the market’s demand for personalized products. Today’s auto market demand can be divided into two types: horizontal demand and vertical demand. Horizontal demand is the basic demand for the size of the model, and the market can be divided into five levels based on horizontal demand: A0, A, B, C, and D. Vertical demand is the element that subdivides the market and can be divided into three major categories: practical, luxury, and personalized. For example, the luxury B-class car market that we often talk about is a sub-segment market that combines these two types of demand.

At present, the personalized market is still a blue ocean. Now you may ask, why are so many car companies working on personalization, but only the Cybertank 300 has become a wildly popular product?

The main reason is that most car companies are “dancing with baggage.” They want to break free, but no one really dares to break free. For example, Cybertank 300 only offers white interiors. In a normal car company, the product manager would certainly consider the market acceptance of white interiors and other issues. They want to be personalized but are afraid to challenge consumers and affect sales.

Luxury is also a type of personalized demand, but this demand has evolved with economic progress. When users need a car that goes beyond “utility,” increasing the size and using more expensive materials is the easiest solution. But what about the others? No one has thought about it yet.Personalization is a very broad term, and a futuristic sense of luxury is just like a sense of luxury, both are concrete personalized demands. The explosive sales of the Cyber Tank 300 also prove that the products of Superjia should resonate emotionally with the subscribed users, and there are indeed people who buy into their creativity.

In a sense, Superjia is good at defining products, so the “remanufactured car” model is more suitable for them. Although there are hundreds of car models available on the market for consumers to choose from, careful observation of the market will reveal that only 3 to 5 products in each sub-market can stand out and occupy 60% to 80% of the market share. Because excellent products have their own advantages, while mediocre products are all mediocre, Superjia needs to use creativity to achieve transcendence.

We speculate that there are three reasons why the Cyber Tank 300 of Superjia is limited to only 3,000 units. The first is to create a “forbidden fruit effect” and artificially create scarcity, which further guides and attracts users, increasing the attractiveness of the creativity. Because everyone wants to get something rare or unique, as the saying goes, what is scarce is precious; the second reason is limited by the production capacity of the Great Wall Tank 300. After all, it takes several months to place an order for a regular Tank 300, so the amount that can be provided to Superjia is also relatively limited. The third reason is limited by Superjia’s ability. While horizontally making cars, the team also has to provide services to 3,000 car owners, which is also difficult for a startup.

Although Cyber Tank 300 is a phenomenal product, we can still raise some reasonable doubts, considering that Tank 300 is already a product with a huge order volume, and it takes at least 3-6 months to wait for delivery. If Superjia carries out “remixing” on a mediocre product, can it still receive such good market feedback? In the personalized market, Superjia is indeed a pioneer, but the problem that pioneers face is that they have no precedents to refer to and must explore the breadth of this market on their own. Therefore, the question of how far Superjia can go still requires time and more products to be validated.

After Cyber Tank 300, in 2022, Superjia will release another coupe model, a pickup, and an MPV. We might as well take a guess in the comment section, which automaker and model will Superjia “remix” for these three products.

Finally

“Remixing” is the necessary way to achieve transcendence, and the relationship between the two is like that between wheels and levers. The wheels can only keep turning when they are supported by the levers.

The above paragraph is adapted from a quote by Mr. Victor Hugo, and I believe it perfectly describes the current Hyperspace Cars. However, Mr. Hugo’s original intention was to discuss the relationship between persistence and courage. The reason why Cyber Tank 300 stands out to us is largely due to the courage of Hyperspace Cars to attempt personalized market, but whether they can persist in this path is not wishful thinking.

“24 hours, 3000 units” kind of gimmicks may continue to appear in the media headlines after the release of Hyperspace’s new products in a short period of time, but for Hyperspace, they have more important milestones to achieve step by step.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.