Author: Michelin
Scratching off car badges, or “kou biao” in Chinese, is a unique experience for Chinese car owners during a certain period of time.
Especially for joint venture brand cars, removing or replacing the Chinese characters on the back of the car is often the first thing many car owners do when they buy a car. The bald rear end of a BMW 3 Series, a Mercedes C-Class, and the cute “Huachen Baobao” are all masterpieces after being scratched off.
Why scratch off the badge? There are a hundred different reasons, such as affecting the appearance, not concise enough, or the Chinese characters stand out too much.
Among the many reasons for scratching off the badge, “pretending to be an imported car” accounts for half. In the era of gasoline-powered cars, the first entry-level models of luxury brands were domestically produced, making joint venture cars + scratched badge = fake imports the main reason for scraping off the badges.
As things change, owners who scratched off the “Tesla” characters from the back of their Model 3 at the end of 2019 must not have expected that a year later, they would also receive a car with three Chinese characters on the back that was shipped from Shanghai – the Model Y destined for Europe. The Chinese character badge is no longer a symbol for distinguishing between domestic and imported cars because, after all, for European Tesla owners, the Model Y produced in the Shanghai factory is also considered an “imported car.”
When “fake import” is no longer a convincing reason, does scratching off the badge still serve a purpose for electric cars?
Domestic badges, cost-cutting knife, product competitiveness
Not long ago, Mercedes-Benz’s pure electric car, the EQE, was produced at the Mercedes-Benz Shunyi factory in Beijing and became the first domestically produced full-size electric platform car among BBA; two months ago, the BMW Brilliance factory in Shenyang opened, and the BMW i3 and future pure electric car models will also be produced in China. With the domestic production of BBA electric car models, when domestic users want to choose an electric car, they will find that almost 99% of electric cars are “Made in China.”
Apart from the hot domestic electric car market, having the most complete electric car industry chain in the world can significantly reduce costs, which is also an important reason.Owners who purchased a Model 3 in 2020 would likely receive a label of “cabbage,” due to six consecutive price cuts in a year and a half. Currently, the price of Model 3 has risen from 249,900 to 279,900 CNY, but “price reduction” is still an indelible imprint in the hearts of netizens. The main reason for the six rounds of price reductions within a year for Model 3 is the localization of components.
Since the end of 2019, almost 90% of the components have been domestically produced. China’s electric vehicle industry chain helped Model 3 reduce more than 6% of its cost. The “Tesla” logo on the car tail that was once rejected by many people became the sickle that reduces the cost of the Model 3. This phenomenon is also evident in Mercedes-Benz.
Last year, the most important model for Mercedes-Benz in its electrification strategy, EQS, was launched. In addition to its high-end positioning, gorgeous design, and comprehensive configuration, the million-dollar pricing is also very “flagship.”
Recently, the EQE, which replaced the previous flagship EQS, was put into production. We can still see the pioneering luxurious design concept and cutting-edge technological configuration of EQS on the EQE, even with ten upgrade configurations specifically designed for Chinese users. The price of EQE, ranging from 530,000 to 590,000 CNY, is one reason why EQE replaced EQS, apart from positioning.
We often think that luxury brands and high-end models are not interested in talking about pricing and cost control, but the pricing range determines its competitors and product power to some extent. Unlike the EQS with a small market segment, EQE has many competitors in the 500,000 CNY pure electric vehicle market. With the help of the EVA pure electric platform, 752km of cruising range, 13.7kWh of low energy consumption, the electric luxury configuration inherited from EQS, and the brand value of Mercedes-Benz, EQE’s competitiveness is not to be underestimated. The label of localization not only serves as the sickle that reduces costs but also transforms into a powerful weapon for product power.
Therefore, not only EQE, but also the “new generation luxury” models based on the next-generation modular architecture platform (MMA) and the “core luxury” models based on the MB.EA pure electric platform will be produced at Beijing Benz in the future.
The production of electric vehicles has undergone a “revolution”
It seems that the production of cars also follows the “hierarchy of birth”.
Take the recently popular Wanjie M5 which gained attention due to changing its brand logo as an example. You can still find comments from netizens online that say “Xiaokang used to produce trucks.”
Similar comments have also appeared regarding Jianghuai and Haima. And they have become the focus of public attention on electric vehicle branding: taking off the brand logo of Jianghuai NIO and replacing it with “HUAWEI”, and replacing the “Sylphy” on the rear of Wanjie M5 with “HUAWEI” as well…
For new energy vehicles, imports and joint ventures are no longer the only targets for users to focus only on branding, but also questioning the production capability. Intelligent electric vehicles require more intelligent, high-level production lines to be manufactured, which has become the default rule for everyone.
Therefore, for the new forces that initially chose an OEM model, once they gained a foothold, the first thing they did was to choose to build their own factory and transform their production lines. Traditional automakers such as BBA have also started to build factories dedicated to the production of electric vehicles.
Take Beijing Benz’s Shunyi factory, which produces EQE, as an example. In order to produce domestically-made EQE, Daimler-Benz Group and BAIC Group jointly invested more than 11.9 billion yuan in building Beijing Benz’s Shunyi factory, making it one of the most advanced factories in the world, all to produce pure electric vehicles and new models in China.
Everyone knows that electric vehicles require new factories and production lines, but what changes will the new factories bring? Digitization, flexibility, efficiency, and sustainability are the new benchmarks for car production in the electric era.In the production factory of EQE, the Mercedes-Benz passenger car production operation 360 (MO360) is used. Connected to the cloud through software and networks, employees can use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to view real-time production status and related data, improving human-machine collaboration efficiency under transparent operational conditions.
At the same time, for many car companies, the mixed production of electric and fuel vehicles is still common, and different vehicle orders require highly flexible production lines due to the different configurations. The Production Flow Management System (PFM) can flexibly arrange production lines and install parts according to different configurations of each order, switching between fuel and pure electric vehicle production.
In addition to digital and flexible management of the factory, the use of intelligent tools in production has also improved production efficiency and quality.
In the production workshop of EQE, automated guided vehicle (AGV) runs on a magnetic strip runway that surrounds the production line on the floor. The AGV automates the transportation of the car body and charges itself on the magnetic strip runway while employees can track the position of each AGV through a QR code on the AGV. Similar AGV automated guided vehicles are employed at the Beijing Benz Shunyi Factory, with nearly 300 vehicles, significantly improving production efficiency.
In the welding process, more than 700 robots work together to create an all-aluminum cover for the brand-new EQE that is both high-strength and lightweight. Nine world-class body connection technologies, including the new aluminum alloy spot welding process, provide high-quality connections for the cover and body of the brand-new EQE.
Similar digital and intelligent technologies are also applied in logistics and sorting systems in car production, enabling higher production efficiency, more reliable quality control, and more flexible production for electric vehicles.
In conclusion, the advent of electric vehicles has challenged many of our traditional concepts. Acceleration is no longer limited by the internal combustion engine, and brand upward mobility is no longer an insurmountable obstacle. Chinese manufacturing no longer needs to be “cheap.” In a few years, the popular “badge engineering” may become history, or simply become a way of expressing personality. This is due to the new rules established by electric vehicles and the trust established by domestic electric vehicle production in the hearts of the public, a trust that is slowly being built up.At least, when purchasing a Mercedes-Benz electric vehicle this time, please refrain from being “penny-wise and pound-foolish”.
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.