How to view Feifan, a newcomer, with a mature perspective?

文 | DEFU

Recently I saw an advertisement starring Liao Fan, which is the anniversary advertisement of RisingAuto Automotive Company’s brand new brand, called “Name”.

“There may be ordinary words in this world, but there is never an ordinary name.” The names you are accustomed to always contain the wishes and expectations that parents have carefully chosen countless times. The hopes of the newborn and the expectations contained in the name are vividly displayed in this video.

Names represent expectations. Many people spend their whole lives striving to live up to the four words: “worthy of the name”. But there are also many people who feel that within a year, individuals, things, or companies can bring about earth-shaking changes. After all, the sudden rise of internet celebrities nowadays is a matter of moments, and there are also many examples like TikTok, which became a unicorn from obscurity within a year.

However, in fact, we are all too optimistic about the changes we can bring about in a year. For example, even Facebook, after changing its name to Meta, it would take only one year for Mark Zuckerberg’s virtual image in the metaverse to grow two legs. And in the first year of Tesla’s founding, the two co-founders, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, had just found Elon Musk.

But why do people think that one year is enough to cause a huge change in the technology and automotive industries? It is mainly because of the long-term accumulation of sufficient technology and resources, and only with the opportunity of favorable timing can a company successfully undergo a transformation.But in this industry, we can see an exception. Although it has only been established for one year, it has already launched its first flagship model; and it has established a complete self-research + co-creation model in just one year; At the same time, it has also determined to continue to focus on the race tracks of intelligent cabin and intelligent driving and aims to become a leading enterprise in China’s high-end new energy brand by 2025. It seems to have crossed all the ignorance of a new company and has a maturity that is not commensurate with its age. It is the RisingAuto Auto with “extraordinary” speed.

How to “Pre-Fill” the Accumulation Required for High-Speed Development?

How should we interpret the “extraordinary” speed demonstrated by RisingAuto Auto? The first clue is its circle of friends. It is well known that RisingAuto Auto is backed by SAIC Group, a towering tree. This enables RisingAuto Auto to enjoy the fanatical circle of friends of an established factory during the startup period. From design to production, from how to build a factory to how to arrange the production process. The RisingAuto Auto experience is like starting a new game and already reaching the highest level, directly starting to fight monsters. Don’t underestimate this point. How to win at the starting line is really a problem that any startup company dreams of solving. Especially in the automotive industry, “startup” means cost. Not only the obvious costs of building factories and organizing teams, but also hidden costs of trial and error, time costs, and barriers from big-name suppliers.

For example, many new carmakers like to show off their high-cost designs or manufacturing costs in some details, and actually, these are the costs brought by trial and error and supplier barriers. Here, I need to use Mr. Luo Yonghao as an example again. The stumbling block to the manufacture and delivery of the Hammer mobile phone in the early years came from the “different treatment” of suppliers between mature enterprises and startup companies. And this phenomenon in the automotive industry will only be worse.

So, the solid background of FEIFAN Automotive not only saves a lot of time and cost in product development and production, but also allows it to establish strategic R&D and mass production partnerships with global intelligent driving benchmarks such as NVIDIA, ZF, HELLA, and LUNIMAR at the beginning of the brand’s birth. Therefore, it has completed the front-end work of obtaining many enterprises’ “network” resources, which normally takes several years of trial and error.

In simpler terms, these enterprises, with rich experience in intelligent driving support, will provide FEIFAN with the most mature and suitable solutions. They will also provide customized designs based on the brand’s special needs. Although the suppliers of all new energy brands might seem similar, whether they take a “one-size-fits-all” approach or custom-tailor solutions would eventually cause a huge difference in the final products.

In addition to collaborating with giants in the intelligent driving field, FEIFAN Automotive can also cross boundaries and partner with traditional giants to achieve transformational changes, including teaming up with PetroChina and Sinopec to accelerate the construction of comprehensive energy service stations. This is not only a result of networking but also a brand-new thinking of transforming relationships into win-win situations in the electrified era. This thinking also reflects FEIFAN’s new thinking mode that has already shed off its traditional car-making past.

How to “stand on the shoulders of giants” and “fly higher”?

Of course, under the influence of the surging trend of electrification, various domestic automakers have also launched sub-brands or established joint-venture new brands. However, many enterprises have fallen into the trap of “all talk and no action”. The reason for this is that they are still limited by the thinking of traditional brands and have not understood that consumers in the new era need more than just a transportation tool that has changed from a fuel vehicle to an electric one.Standing on the shoulders of giants, the premise of this sentence is “standing”. With abundant background and strong support, creating a new model with the resources is the way that RisingAuto Motors chooses rather than “resting on its laurels”. Just as the brand name implies, “Van” is the cornerstone and confidence of “Fei”, while “Fei” embodies the attitude of self-breakthrough and the completion of another leap forward based on its existing achievements.

Several months before the establishment of RisingAuto Motors, SAIC Group released its new vision, mission, and values: transition to a “user-oriented high-tech company” by comprehensively promoting innovative development strategies, and comprehensively pushing for a new generation of electric smart cars under the concept of “data determines experience” and “software-defined car”. Against this backdrop, RisingAuto Motors was born.

For RisingAuto Motors, “user-oriented high-tech company” serves both as its own positioning and as its responsibility as the front-runner for SAIC Group towards the future. How to create a new energy vehicle that young consumers love and become a brand that has user stickiness and is loved by consumers. These were the must-answer questions facing RisingAuto Motors a year ago. And the solution that RisingAuto Motors chose was to start with its first flagship model, RisingAuto R7, using visible and tangible quality to convey the ideas instilled in the brand.

In March this year, RisingAuto Motors and SAIC Group’s Innovation Research and Development Institute announced that they would deepen their cooperation in the fields such as design, intelligent cockpit, intelligent driving, and power battery, integrate innovative R&D resources, speed up the deployment and implementation of forward-looking technologies, and the RisingAuto Intelligent Driving Co-creation Centre was also inaugurated thereafter. Unlike many new carmakers, SAIC Group’s Innovation Research and Development Institute integrated resources from its five information technology centers, passenger vehicle technology center, overseas innovation center, and other resources. The autonomous R&D team of over tens of thousands positioned RisingAuto Motors to enter the full-speed sprint mode from the beginning.

And what can consumers enjoy at the product level? This can be seen from the title of Flying Pigeon R7 “Intelligent Driving Roll King”. The Flying Pigeon R7 is equipped with the first domestically-launched ZF Premium 4D imaging radar, as well as 33 top-level perception hardware such as 8 million pixels high-definition cameras, and is equipped with the Nvidia Orin X chip. The hardware configuration has already taken the lead in the industry.

Under the blessing of the industry’s first fully integrated algorithm, Flying Pigeon R7 can complete a set of emergency responses including perception, fusion, prediction, decision-making, and execution in milliseconds. For example, identifying the triangular area of an entrance to a multi-forked ramp in advance is currently a difficult point for various car companies in the field of intelligent driving. However, RISING PILOT can identify the triangular area of the ramp in advance through longer distances and more accurate comprehensive perception, thus having more time for lane change preparation. This is the excellent user experience that has been achieved. It is also worth mentioning that R7 has completed the High-Speed Navigation Assistance (NOA) test and supports high-speed navigation assistance function when delivered. Among the mass-produced cars currently delivered worldwide, almost all of the products with high-speed NOA function come from few car companies such as Tesla.

In terms of the interactive experience that contemporary consumers value, Flying Pigeon R7 also has a very mature understanding: “Since a large screen is the mainstream choice of consumers, why not give them the most enjoyable experience?” Therefore, the 3+1 giant screen has become the core of the Flying Pigeon R7 intelligent cabin.The central control system of RisingAuto car uses the latest OLED screen from BOE, with a resolution of up to 2.5K. In addition, the 10.25-inch instrument panel and the 12.3-inch co-driver screen are integrated, and the external surface is encapsulated by aluminum silicate chemically strengthened glass. Moreover, it can be linked with the world’s first mass-produced Huawei augmented reality head-up display (AR-HUD) system for multi-screen linkage, truly combining the experience of multiple screens and large screens to a new level.

In summary, although RisingAuto Automobile has saved a lot of R&D and production costs due to its advantage of being backed by SAIC Group, it has not stood still, but has invested several times to provide consumers with a better intelligent driving experience. This is RisingAuto Automobile’s insistence on user experience as the core, from products to services, and to the final user experience, all of which are for modern users, especially those who have perception of electric vehicles and intelligent driving, and understand their specific expressions on the product level.

In addition to products, what consumers care most about is the experience of car purchase and use. RisingAuto Automobile has built a complete sales network in less than a year. From Shanghai in the east to Sanya in the south, from Lanzhou in the west to Harbin in the north, RisingAuto Automobile has already deployed 206 user experience centers in the core business districts of 75 mainstream cities in China. In terms of actual car use experience, in addition to strategic cooperation with “Two Barrels of Oil”, RisingAuto Automobile has built 114 brand charging stations, 1,100+ equity charging stations, and the number of third-party charging piles has exceeded 540,000.

Through the construction of channels, users can experience a complete user experience service in the actual use of the car at the beginning of the new car launch. This is much better than asking consumers to grow together with the brand and experience it.

Although RisingAuto Motors has only been established for a year, they have already delivered their first flagship model, the RisingAuto R7, to consumers with high quality and mature attitude. They did not provide users with a semi-finished product that needs continuous bug fixing through later OTA, but a mature product. They know that although today’s consumers are tolerant of new things, they also have a standard for measuring quality. For most Chinese families, spending 300,000 to 400,000 yuan to buy a car is not an impulsive consumption, but an expectation for this car and this brand.

Through high-quality user experience and sufficient “inward integration” of intelligent configuration, RisingAuto wants to make everyone have a more comprehensive and specific understanding of the brand, and be able to understand how RisingAuto integrates advanced intelligent labels into the brand concept. And all of this is based on the trust between product shaping and consumers.

This trust will not only stay on RisingAuto R7. From this year to 2025, RisingAuto Motors will launch at least one new product every year. The trust created by R7’s high-quality delivery is the cornerstone of RisingAuto Motors’ product planning in the future. In the future, RisingAuto Motors will increase its continuous investment in technology and channel construction. Through long-term investment in both product and channel construction, RisingAuto will consolidate its trust with consumers and help it become a new energy head enterprise with a good brand reputation and sustainable profitability.

In this regard, we can see the empowerment of SAIC Group, which brings great potential and a solid foundation to a new brand. Through products as the most important channel of communication with consumers, RisingAuto Motors has become a new energy head enterprise with sustainable profitability. We can also see that RisingAuto Motors is standing on the shoulders of giants of SAIC, thinking about how to lead the whole group to meet the challenges of the new era of electrification, which is how to transform into a user-oriented enterprise in the era of electrification.

The electric vehicle industry is currently in a very delicate phase. Many new automakers have seemingly found their footing, but upon closer inspection, we see why so many car owners have become fervent brand enthusiasts, unable to tolerate even the slightest negative information about their brand, because we are still afraid these brands will suddenly collapse.

On the other hand, many traditional companies are struggling to turn the ship around, unable to transform their resources in the age of intelligence. The fact that the one-year-old EV maker Flyyin has achieved its current success is because it has embraced a new way of thinking for the new era, integrating its group resources and making breakthroughs. This may be a reference answer that many car companies need to focus on now.

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.