Translation
Author | Huangshan
Editor | Zhu Shiyun
On the evening of July 11th, “Geekool 001” surged to the top of Weibo’s hot search rankings. At the offline launch event of Geekool cars, the voice of “awesome” was heard repeatedly. The car owners representatives from Changsha and Chongqing beside me even started a group live broadcast to share the joy of Geekool 001 car owners at the first time. The car owner representative from Chengdu beside them exclaimed: “This time we return with a full load!”
217 days after delivery, Geekool CEO An Conghui finally enjoyed the highest honor of “YYDS (forever god)” in front of the audience, as the user-centric car enterprise.
All of this was because Geekool announced on the evening of Intelligent Evolution Day that they will upgrade to 8155 for all car owners who have already picked up their cars or placed orders, provide a free Bluetooth key, and comprehensively upgrade the intelligent hardware, in-car system and auxiliary driving functions for free.
The pressure immediately fell on their competitors. On the same night, NIO founder Li Bin said in a group chat: “I can’t afford to upgrade for free, 20 billion cannot withstand it.”
As the first car of the Geekool brand, Geekool 001 has been highly anticipated since it was called “Lynk & Co Zero 001”. However, car owners have been dissatisfied with the car’s issues, such as the car machine’s stuttering, product and interaction bugs, and insufficient auxiliary driving features, even the employees of the company criticized them.
Now, with the upgrade of the Snapdragon 8155 chip for free, Geekool, who is striving to establish a user-centric enterprise, has gained a second chance.
The criticized car machine, and the free 8155
The old version of Geekool 001 uses the Snapdragon 820A chip, which belongs to the old generation of 14nm products in 2016. The Snapdragon 8155 chip, launched in 2019, is a 7nm chip. The improvement brought by the installation of the Snapdragon 8155 chip on Geekool 001 is that the CPU computing power is increased by 177%, and the time for the car machine to wake up is only 2 seconds. The cold start-up speed of the car machine is improved by three times,and the sliding frame rate is increased by 66%.
8155 seems to have become a “standard” for intelligent electric vehicles. Many car models, such as NIO ET7, Ideal L9, XPeng P5, Geely, SAIC, and Great Wall, are equipped with the 8155 chips.
Why is everyone so keen on the 8155 chip?
Because in the era of intelligence, the chip represents the latest technology and productivity, as can be clearly perceived from the upgrade and processing speed of mobile phones in recent years.
And the chip precisely determines the basic experience of the intelligent cockpit, which is the control medium for opening various instructions such as entertainment navigation and auxiliary driving. The underlying capability limits the upper-layer application.After becoming accustomed to smooth mobile experiences, people will perceive the phenomenon of lagging in the car more distinctly. This is a typical case of “no comparison, no harm”.
A few days ago, the rumor about the 8155 chip upgrade solution that requires payment was circulating online, which made old car owners complain.
Whether it is “suppressing desire with reason” or changing strategy, in the end, both new and old car owners of Xpeng will upgrade to the 8155 chip for free.
Old car owners can be installed without loss by directly replacing the entire intelligent cockpit domain controller. The replacement of the domain controller only needs four screws to complete. In terms of replacement time, hardware replacement takes about 35 minutes, and software upgrade takes about two hours.
At the press conference, An Conghui also stated that Xpeng has invested more than 300 million yuan in hardware procurement, software development, logistics, and after-sales service for the new generation of intelligent cockpits, according to the current delivery and order quantity. The decision to upgrade all new and old users for free was clarified at the beginning of the project.
Although Xpeng has spent a huge sum of 300 million yuan, it has won the trust of users. This is crucial for a new brand.
However, the supplier of the Xpeng 001 car system, Yikatong, based on the poor experience of the 820A chip, reflects the inadequacy of Yikatong’s research and development and subsequent upgrade capabilities. The chip replacement this time largely demonstrates the capability of the 8155 chip.
Not only car system, but also driving and ADAS have upgraded
At the press conference, An Conghui also announced several surprises about driving system, ADAS, and Bluetooth key.
In the dual-motor version of Xpeng 001, the “Lightning Switch” function was launched, which smartly switches between three driving modes: full-time rear-wheel drive, adaptive four-wheel drive, and full-time four-wheel drive according to different driving scenarios.
Daily commuting uses the rear-wheel drive, adaptive four-wheel drive for comprehensive road conditions, and full-time four-wheel drive for extreme poor road conditions. Moreover, in the lightning switch intelligent four-wheel drive system, Xpeng is developing a drift mode for performance enthusiasts, which is currently under development and testing.
Another new achievement is the intelligent anti-slip system. When there is a slipping sign at the wheel end, it distributes the torque at the wheel end with an instantaneous processing rate that is ten times faster than the mainstream TCS traction control system, increases the driving wheel’s grip force, assists the driver to quickly and stably stabilize the vehicle, and strengthens the overall vehicle’s extreme handling capability.
The intelligent anti-slip system will also be pushed to all users through OTA.
The “Lightning Switch” and “Intelligent Anti-Skid System” take the mechanical performance of Jicai 001 to the next level. The Chongqing representative of car owners next to me is also very satisfied with the driving performance of Jicai 001.
In terms of intelligent driving, Jicai 001 adopts a one-step hardware pre-embedding strategy, with 2 7nm Mobileye EyeQ5H chips, 7 8 million-pixel high-definition cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars, and a 250m millimeter wave radar.
Based on these hardware components, Jicai 001 has added a full-speed range active cruise control (LCC+ACC) function, which can automatically adjust the following distance based on the driving speed within the 0-130km/h speed range, achieving intelligent follow-up. At the same time, the function can also keep the vehicle in the center of the lane and turn with the lane markings.
In addition, Jicai 001 has launched the “Antelope Evasion” function based on Chinese road conditions. When pedestrians or non-motorized vehicles are on the roadside, the vehicle will slow down actively to ensure safety before proceeding; when there are large vehicles in the adjacent lane, the vehicle will actively avoid them; when there are vehicles parked or blocking the emergency lane, Jicai 001 will slow down and avoid them without changing lanes.
Moreover, the official version of the brand-new ZEEKR OS 3.0 system will start full-scale promotion on July 19.
In addition to the free upgrade of the 8155 chip, Jicai also gives all car owners a free Bluetooth key, which adds more appeal.
It can be seen that Jicai 001 has made great improvements and progress in terms of driving, cockpit, and auxiliary driving.
Jicai Has No Way Out
In the era when smart electric cars are increasingly accepted by people, as Geely’s high-end pure electric brand, Jicai has no way out.
Under the impact of new car makers, not only Geely, but also traditional car brands such as Beiqi’s Jihoo, Chang’an’s Avatar, SAIC’s IM, and Great Wall’s Salon have all made strategic choices to break upward and fight head-on.
When facing car owners’ complaints about Jicai 001, Jicai did not evade. During this period of time with the epidemic, they had to collect problems, repair bugs, conduct hardware debugging, upgrade various software and hardware, and develop new functions and tests synchronously, which was a considerable challenge for Jicai.
Including the free upgrade of the 8155 chip this time, Jicai had no choice but to make the decision to offer it for free, although it was reluctant to do so. However, they had no choice because the impact of new forces is there.
After the failure of the Geely brand, which is hailed as the “best electric car in the eastern hemisphere,” Jicai must bear the banner of high-end electric brand for Geely.Since October last year, over 25,000 vehicles have been delivered, but this is not the full strength of Zeekr’s capability. Due to certain insufficient supply chains, Zeekr’s production capacity of 300,000 vehicles cannot be fully realized and current orders are still pending. According to An Conghui, if not for the supply chain issue, Zeekr 001 could have been delivered in April, and it is expected that the supply chain issue will be greatly improved in August and September.
Furthermore, it is reported that Zeekr’s next model is a pure electric MPV, and the third vehicle will also be unveiled in April next year, which is a smaller car targeting more general families.
Since the Zeekr brand was launched, its reputation and image have gradually been established, though some issues have arisen. However, no company or product is perfect, and Zeekr needs time to grow and evolve.
Of course, it also depends on Zeekr’s own efforts and speed.
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.