The Journey of China’s New Car Movement, by Chang Yan

The new car movement in China is a journey. According to the “Xinhua Dictionary”, “程” means “a segment of the road”, which means that the journey of this train will have people getting on and off.

Among so many passengers, only a few will be remembered for their future.

The Future (前途) is unique as it has chosen a very niche and difficult market segment: electric high-performance sports products. Before this, no Chinese original brand had conquered this segment, which often means a high level of difficulty in design, industrial manufacturing, and performance tuning. What’s even more difficult is that many brands have only launched a concept and have not been able to deliver a mature product to users.

The Future not only has its own production system, but also has a decent sales system and user operation. Even compared with other new energy players, The Future’s mass production and delivery time is among the best.

However, The Future soon encountered ups and downs.

The down part is that due to the high price, slightly rough workmanship, and the launch of models like the Model 3 with outstanding cost performance, the market performance of The Future’s first mass-produced car, K50, was not ideal, and it faded out of everyone’s sight for a while. The up part is that the absolute sales and penetration rate of new energy and new energy players are climbing, and many successful brands and models have emerged in the field of “pure electric sports cars”.

Many former new energy players have also joined the battle again after receiving new capital support.

Therefore, when I received the invitation from The Future’s 2022 strategic release conference, I was not surprised but also surprised.

After all, The Future has all the cards in its hand, and the “torture” it went through in the previous period also gave them enough time to reflect.

On the scene, the most eye-catching were still the many concept car designs presented by The Future, in addition to the slightly modified K50 Spyder, there are also the prototype of K20, a pure electric MPV and a pure electric four-door sedan.

Although I know that no one will believe even if The Future announces that these cars will soon be mass-produced, what’s important is that The Future is proving to people that they still have a forward-looking understanding of electric vehicles.During the meeting, the founder of NIO, Lü Bin, repeated a sentence that touched me the most: “We have done some things right and some things wrong before. Now we have a chance to correct the mistakes we have made.”

Then, he talked about the future development direction of NIO, which can be summarized in three “new” aspects.

First, new materials. On the NIO K50, carbon fiber composite materials are widely used, which bring direct benefits such as lightweight and high strength, help with low-carbon environmental protection, and of course, better mechanical performance is also what consumers need. NIO will not only continue to use new materials on its own mass-produced models, but also provide new materials for the industry.

Starting from next year, NIO will carry out research and production on aluminum alloy 3D printing technology, fluid metal body frame structure, new body connection technology, lightweight aluminum alloy body manufacturing, and other technologies.

Second, new energy. NIO will cooperate with photovoltaic manufacturers to add more solar panels to the car, which can provide power to the whole vehicle and also become an independent energy producer during long-term parking.

According to the plan, NIO will launch a new car in 2022, using photovoltaic charging technology to achieve a daily range of more than 50 kilometers in areas with three levels of illumination (annual equivalent photovoltaic utilization hours of 1,200-1,400 hours).

Third, new intelligence. Here, CUE brings up the hottest metaverse concept. NIO will cooperate with Jingang Circuit and some content production companies to create immersive in-car experiences, develop metaverse racing games, and organize offline events based on modifying the NIO K50 into a GT racing car, combining online games and offline events to achieve a new racing experience that seamlessly integrates virtual and real worlds.

Just like before, NIO has chosen a challenging upward path that looks cool, but difficult to achieve.

We cannot endorse every technology, but this may be the gene engraved in the NIO brand.

To me, the most critical aspect of this visit is the NIO K20.

Lü Bin also mentioned that in 2022, apart from the resumption of sales and export of the NIO K50, the most important thing is the launch of the NIO K20.Like a concept car, the K20 production car we see is a two-door K-Car with a Honda S660 flair, featuring an extremely compact length and wheelbase, with the four wheels effortlessly close to the corners of the body. K20 is known for being popular on the streets of the UK because of its unique interior, where you can even see a mobile phone holder and a cup holder mounted on the dashboard.

While the past two years have been delayed, it has been an incredibly rapid development period for new automakers, with intelligent cockpit and autonomous driving technology becoming the most significant barriers between manufacturers.

However, it seems that these two delays, at least for the K20, have not had much of an impact.

After all, if you intend to buy this car, it’s mostly for driving, and the standards for an “usable” intelligent cockpit in a vehicle that’s designed for urban commuting could be more easily met.

If Frontrow wants to use the K20 to save the day, there are at least four things that need to be done:

1. Price: as this vehicle is geared toward a wide range of consumers and young people, the greater the range, the better it will be for them.

2. Performance: it doesn’t need to be extreme, but it needs to have fun acceleration with usable range.

3. Reliability: materials can be less expensive, but manufacturing must be more precise.

4. Timely delivery: one day earlier, one more hope.

In the title, I mentioned the word “By the way”, which can indicate a reminder or that the decision of the front is likely to be correct – we may already have a conclusion of the final result by this time next year in 2022.

In any case, Frontrow is back this time.

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.