Article by Tram Master

Wonderful changes have quietly taken place.

Recently, the topic “一条 plog 告别五月” (saying goodbye to May in One Plog) has gone viral on Weibo, with 990 million readings and shares in social circles. The most popular comments and likes were “Bye-Bye May”. I think what everyone is saying goodbye to is not just May, because May will come back. We are bidding farewell to all the bad and looking forward to the beginning of June.

In the beginning of June, everything is full of vitality. In the Shanghai return-to-work friends’ circle, there is a peaceful and joyful atmosphere, and children of all ages remain youthful during the Children’s Day holiday. I really hope that this kind of beautiful atmosphere can come more and last longer.

Two months ago, He XPeng once “blew the whistle” on Weibo: if the supply chain enterprises in Shanghai and its surrounding areas could not find a way to dynamically restart production, all Chinese vehicle manufacturers might have to shut down in May.

Fortunately, the worst-case scenario did not happen. According to the information we have now, wonderful changes have quietly taken place in May.
Today, let’s talk about Zeeker (Ji Ke in Chinese).

Doubling Delivery in May

On June 1st, Zeeker announced the latest delivery volume of Zeeker 001: 4330 units were delivered in May, with a growth rate of 102.6% and a new historical high of monthly delivery.

As of May of this year, Zeeker has delivered a total of 20,715 units, taking 217 days to reach 20,000 units.

With the commissioning of the dedicated production line for Weibao, the most affected production of suspension components will improve in June. It is estimated that the arrival of parts can meet the production of all suspension orders before January 2022.

Currently, the average order amount of Zeeker 001 is over 335,000 yuan, confirming the view that “Chinese brands can also go up” and matching the determination of Li Shufu to walk the path of new energy and continue to excel in it.”The future development of the automotive industry lies in electrification and intelligentization, which requires accelerating the development of human-machine interaction, autonomous driving, and energy technology.” This was the statement made by Li Shufu, a representative of the National People’s Congress and chairman of Geely Holding Group, in March, and it is currently in progress.

The Changes and Constants of JiKe’s “Second Run” in Shenzhen

On May 28th, JiKe once again brought the JiKe 001 to the Greater Bay Area Auto Show. In the past year, I have observed two major differences in JiKe.

The first difference is that last year’s exhibit was solely at an auto show, and the JiKe brand exhibited as a “newcomer.” Even the Weibo post emphasized that “we are ready.”

However, this year, JiKe took the form of an art gallery in Shenzhen. The difference in packaging not only represents a change in the brand’s style but also the confidence of the brand. The JiKe booth’s space also seemed to be larger than last year’s.

The second difference is that there were “more people” at the JiKe booth. One characteristic of the Greater Bay Area Auto Show is that consumers can enter the venue to purchase tickets on the first day of the exhibition, thereby allowing the media to feel the automotive market atmosphere. Despite the barrier of a 48-hour nucleic acid test and self-funded tickets, JiKe’s popularity has not decreased at all, and its traffic was even higher than last year’s.

However, JiKe still defines itself as a community-led automobile company. A group of JiKe culture-recognized car owners continues to stand on the front line as volunteer drivers.

At the exhibition, the 20,000th JiKe 001 car owner, Ms. Wang Rui, also became one of the JiKe volunteer drivers.

Details of the Communication Meeting

At this owners’ event, we also had the opportunity to communicate face-to-face with several JiKe leaders. With questions in hand, we shared with everyone the stories of JiKe that you may or may not know.

1) Frontline employees attending the User Ecological Committee

I have conducted internal research on many new car manufacturing companies such as NIO, Xpeng, and Li Auto, hoping to deduce their market operation strategies and user service strategy support from the differences in organizational structure.

And this time, I also raised a question:”From an organizational perspective, how does Jidu Auto support the user experience we talk about? Because we all understand some new companies’ structures, and why some people can do it and why some people can’t, a large part of it is whether they understand how to support this organizational structure. And previously, I heard that the ‘User Ecological Committee’ finally received an official response this time. This is a regular weekly meeting attended by different department leaders such as An Conghui (Chairman of Geely Auto Group and CEO of Jidu), Zhao Yuhui (Vice President of Jidu), etc. They share their respective topics and make decisions together. Interestingly, the topics they bring up are all related to users, such as how to quickly address user feedback and make the correct adjustments.

According to Steven Zhao Yuhui, in the User Committee, the front-line personnel often speak and bring up issues. “For example, two weeks ago, we had a meeting on the issue of car ownership. I bought a car, but my wife drives it. Who is the primary account holder? Whose account is used to charge the car? When we use the app to charge the car, who has the operation right, me or my wife? These issues are very difficult to design at the top-level, and they only rise when problems are found on the front line. Therefore, we discuss these issues and come up with solutions. We have a pre-review mechanism in the committee, and if we think a topic is very important, we bring it up and let the front-line employees who discovered and solved the problem introduce it. We are kind of like judges; we express our opinions, and front-line colleagues often refute us, saying that our ideas are not correct. We have intense discussions, but when we leave the meeting room, the decision is made, and many decisions are made very efficiently. This is our weekly meeting.”

“2) The Management and Co-creation Meeting is heated”

Here, I would like to share that all types of enterprises have a unique name for high-level meetings. In Geely, it is called the Management Meeting. As Jidu is a subsidiary of Geely, it naturally shares many characteristics with Geely, which gives it the confidence to stand on the shoulders of giants.

“On the same team but thinking differently is the path that Jidu has found for itself today,” such as renaming their high-level meeting to “Management and Co-creation Meeting (Solution Oriented Co-creation)” or “SOC.” Steven’s casual remark actually makes people deeply believe that this company is thinking about users from the details outward, and this thinking method may have risen from the organizational structure to the shared culture of the company: “We are not just co-creating with users, even our internal high-level meetings are not called the Management Meeting, but the Management and Co-creation Meeting.””—— This conference name, just like many of our collaborative efforts, is something that we all agreed upon together. We came up with lots of interesting names, including ZAO, which I strongly supported when others embraced the idea of getting pumped up together. It’s hard to imagine that leaders from the Geely system came up with such a name, but we truly argued passionately for it. “

“3) The Most Followed Geely Intelligentization”

At this communication meeting, we met a “young” Leader, Zheng Zhifeng, the national retail manager of Geely. I first saw Mr. Zheng in front of a crowd of over 20,000 car owner users, and later that afternoon, he debuted live with a female anchor ——at first, I thought he was one of Geely’s new internal hosts. It wasn’t until the communication meeting that I learned that this person, who plays and cooperates with users, participates both on stage and behind the scenes, is also one of the representatives of Geely’s rejuvenation.

When asked about the Geely intelligentization team, he was clear: “We established the Geely Intelligent Development Center in Shanghai, which is specifically responsible for research and development in intelligentization, with a focus on intelligent cabins, electrical and electronic architectures, and intelligent driving. In this area, we already have a sound layout. Overall, Geely’s research and development talent pool is quite ample. Although users may have some complaints about our software, our development speed in software ability is quite fast. For example, our ACC and AEB functions were launched simultaneously, while many other brands had to wait for a period of half a year or more to launch them. We will continue to update through OTA in the future, providing users with more features and optimization.”

Lastly, Bravely and Fearlessly

In this chip shortage cycle, demand for Geely 001, “a car of 2,500 varieties and over 10,000 chips,” far exceeds the industry average. Geely is still accelerating in delivery and vehicle experience, for example, the delivery speed of air suspension has greatly increased this year, and Steven said that the springs will arrive soon to cover orders until 2022.

At the process level of delivery, a car that ends production on the 30th might be in the customer’s hands on the 31st. After streamlining its product lifecycle management and user coverage, Geely’s user recommendations have reached 35-40%, far exceeding industry standards and challenging NIO.

This year, Geely has actually tightened discounts and even raised prices, a common challenge in the industry. However, it is reported that the order situation for Geely 001 is still “very good” after the price increase, which also increases the brand’s residual value guarantee.Someone once said that Giga Automobile is a “traditional new car” with a great hand of cards, no financial worries, powerful production, quality management, sales, and after-sales systems, as well as a well-known brand and effective marketing methods. However, the birth of a new brand is always accompanied by advantages and disadvantages. For example, in terms of cultural values, Giga’s colleagues have said that they are “still honing”, but I actually think that constant honing itself is a fusion, and it is the culture and working methods that new car makers should have now.

Giga’s real advantages have not been fully unleashed yet. It’s not about being in the spotlight, and it has nothing to do with heroism. Being brave and fearless will be the main theme for Chinese car companies to guide themselves to climb higher and higher.

End of the article.

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.