Aiways’ long-distance running ability.

For new forces in the automotive industry, 2019 is not an easy year. Financing environment is tightening, new energy subsidies are gradually declining, after the two-year bombing, consumers are starting to get tired. Regardless of policy, capital, market or industry, every new automaker is under stress.

Today, let’s take a look at a new automaker whose brand awareness is not outstanding: Aiways.

Aiways is not advantageous

To be frank, at this stage of new car manufacturing, strong support is needed to “blow up” Aiways. From many perspectives, Aiways is not advantageous in the new car camp.

In February 2017, Aiways was officially established. Judging from the time node, Aiways is not optimistic. It takes at least 48 months from the establishment of a forward-developed model to its production and market launch, and that is already 2021. Qin Lihong, president of NIO, said that the window period for new car manufacturing, which includes subsidies, licenses, and intensified competition, will close around 2020.

What are the advantages of Aiways?

The second point we talk about is founder management team. Aiways co-founders, President Fu Qiang, former President and CEO of Volvo China, and CEO Gu Feng, former CFO of SAIC Group.

They all seem to be experienced automotive professionals, but the outlook is not optimistic. Smart cars are essentially a deep integration of the automotive and Internet industries. Considering the high threshold and difficulty of integration in the automotive industry, the person who can make the final decision in the management team should ideally come from the Internet, with a deeper understanding of the Internet and the integration of the two industries.

Aiways clearly does not have this condition.

Third, it is brand awareness. It is crucial for a new car company to establish brand awareness to capture consumers’ hearts and minds. In February 2017, after being bombarded by one product after another from NIO, WM Motor, XPeng, and Chehejia…consumers finally welcomed Aiways with various technological routes and marketing plans, whether it was “working miracles” or “less is more,” the front runners have tried them all. Consumers are now tired of it, and Aiways has done nothing wrong, but it came too late.

Why Aiways?

Then why are we taking a look at Aiways? On November 29, 2018, Aiways held a press conference in Shanghai, releasing much information it had accumulated since its inception, in addition to the first intelligent electric SUV Aiways U5.

The parameter information of Aiways U5 is listed as follows:

Whole vehicle platform: developed on MAS platform by Aiways
Motor power: 140 kW
Maximum torque: 315 N.m
NEDC range: 503 km
Vehicle dimensions: 4680×1865×1700 mmLet’s talk about the details of the obsession with cleanliness of the very engineers or designers who are focused on the Aiways U5.

“Upper steel and lower aluminum” white body

In the automotive industry, the trade-off between safety, lightweight, and cost has always existed. We demand high strength and high torsional rigidity to ensure safety, while also requiring lightweight for energy efficiency and longer range. In addition, we want to lower costs, not only to reduce manufacturing costs but also to lower maintenance costs in the later period.

From 1994 to today, the overall quality of several generations of Audi A8 has been constantly fluctuating with the change in the proportion of the use of aluminum, which is an important embodiment of Audi’s repeated balance between safety, lightweight, and cost.

The entire chassis platform of the Aiways U5 is made of stamping aluminum, profiles, and die-cast aluminum all made of aviation 7-series aluminum alloy. In most common minor collisions or scrapes, the chassis will not be impacted, and the application of aluminum achieves a 25% reduction in weight, while not bringing high maintenance costs to users.

On the upper part of the SUV body structure, high-strength hot-formed steel is the main material. The final result is that the U5’s torsional stiffness reaches 35,000 Nm, far higher than the level of traditional vehicles between 20,000-30,000 Nm.

“Sandwich” Battery Pack

The energy density of the Aiways U5’s battery pack is 181 Wh/kg, and if Aiways can start delivery on schedule in Q4 of this year, the U5 will undoubtedly be the vehicle with the highest battery pack energy density in the industry.

Aiways has innovated in the battery pack structure. The industry’s common practice is that the battery pack and battery liquid cooling system are tightly integrated in structure to achieve better heat dissipation. However, Aiways has independently developed and designed multi-layer structures such as the control layer, cooling layer, strength layer and cell layer, which realize the separation of the battery pack’s “dry zone” and “wet zone”.

This multi-layer sandwich structure is Aiways’ most critical engineering innovation in the battery pack field. According to Aiways, due to the dry/wet separation structure design, the cooling plate can adopt lightweight thin-wall design, which ultimately promotes the U5’s energy density to reach as high as 181 Wh/kg.

Hidden Front Radar

The U5 designer Luo Dongfei has a characteristic of being very concerned about small details in design.In today’s L2 assisted driving system, the front millimeter wave radar has become a standard configuration for vehicles in the 150,000 price range. Directly showing the picture, this is the official U5 picture from AIWAYS website. You cannot see the millimeter wave radar of U5.

The conventional solution is like this.

U5’s solution is like this.

The millimeter wave radar module of U5 is hidden and located below the Logo and above the camera through the engineering optimization of paint layer thickness adjustment together with the supplier, ensuring the effective operation of the radar without affecting the safety of the whole car. According to AIWAYS, this design appears to be “cleaner”.

Of course, AIWAYS is not alone. Prior to AIWAYS, Tesla’s techniques in hiding radar were already very adept.

Where is the charging port?

This is the charging port of Tesla Model S (non-GB), after unplugging the charging gun and closing the charging cover, the charging port will blend into the taillight, and there is no dedicated opening for the charging port.

U5 also did not make any modifications to the body for a dedicated charging port. The charging port of U5 is located in the air intake grille below the right headlight of the vehicle, just open the grille to start charging. The reason for this design is also to “make the surface of the car look more pure without any extra lines”.

“`
You may ask, do these things affect driving? What’s the point of putting effort into these things? When asked why pursuing the perfect circuit board design for the Mac, Steve Jobs responded, “A good carpenter doesn’t use inferior wood to make the back of a cabinet, even if no one will see it. You know it’s there.”

Well, you know it’s there.

When you are in a race and starting from behind, how do you catch up? Using existing platforms and supplier solutions are the methods used by other new car companies. AIWAYS, on the other hand, chooses autonomous research and development, and puts in some efforts to make it different. AIWAYS obviously has a longer-term plan. At this point, we will have a deeper understanding of AIWAYS’ CEO, Fu Qiang’s statement, “Making cars is like running a marathon.”

How many steps does it take to sell a car?

When answering this question, we can’t help but sigh at the high threshold of entry into the automotive industry.

The first problem that a start-up must solve is qualification, which is the “birth certificate” for vehicle production. On June 5th, Changan Automobile announced that Changan’s joint venture, Jiangling Holdings, will introduce strategic investors for capital increase.

AIWAYS plans to increase capital by RMB 1.7466 billion, of which RMB 1 billion will be included in the registered capital and RMB 74.6602 million will be included in capital reserve. After this capital increase is completed, Jiangling Holdings’ registered capital will increase from RMB 1 billion to RMB 2 billion, and AIWAYS will hold 50% of Jiangling Holdings’ shares. The share ratio of Changan Automobile and Jiangling Motors Group in Jiangling Holdings will be diluted from 50% to 25%.

Through participation in the mixed ownership reform of state-owned enterprises, AIWAYS took the opportunity to obtain production qualification through Jiangling Holdings.

With the “birth certificate” in hand, let’s talk about how to produce. On May 18th, 2017, AIWAYS’ Shangrao factory broke ground, and on February 28th, 2019, the AIWAYS factory was topped out. The factory covers an area of 950 acres and has five workshops for stamping, welding, painting, final assembly, and battery packs. At the same time as the factory was topped out, more than 40 U5 test assembly vehicles have also been offline. From the perspective of the timing and production line debugging rhythm, U5 will be launched on schedule according to the plan by Q4.

After introducing the manufacturing layout, let’s talk about sales. As for sales, AIWAYS adopts a self-built brand store + channel franchise system. According to Cai Jianjun, AIWAYS’ Executive Vice President, AIWAYS’ logic is to fully utilize the existing social channel resources, separate sales and services, and integrate online and offline to ensure highly unified user experience for channel partners and self-built brand stores by studying fast-moving consumer goods industry to establish standard processes.
“`On June 6th, Aiways officially launched its channel investment. Just now, Aiways announced that almost 400 channel partners covering 23 provinces and 58 cities have expressed their intention to collaborate.

Aiways’ CEO, Fu Qiang, previously talked about his understanding of the automotive industry in an interview with Cheyun. The gist is that although the entire industry is shouting “customer-centric”, there has never been a “customer-centric” approach in car manufacturing since its invention more than 100 years ago. From the invention of the car to the establishment of Ford, it has always been engineer-oriented. During the Ford era, it became business-oriented, and the assembly line process greatly reduced costs. But no one has ever thought about the application scenarios of a new car.

A true “customer-centric” approach means that the user experience of the entire lifecycle, from purchase, usage, maintenance, repair, to second-hand cars, must be redefined and designed.

To reshape the user experience, Aiways comprehensively adjusted its organizational structure. For example, in the brand marketing, travel, and intelligent energy businesses, which are supervised by Executive Vice President Cai Jianjun, Aiways abolished the traditional “sales company” organization and established a customer-side business group. The group further divides into user development, operation, and service departments.

During the organizational construction process, reform was carried out with a “customer-centric” approach
In the product landing process, long-term thinking was applied to make products, independently research and develop, and focus on differentiation
In the layout of manufacturing and sales, Aiways proceeded with steady and cautious steps

Aiways is not without problems. As Fu Qiang himself said, “After more than two years of establishment, it must be frankly said that Aiways has not yet become a very outstanding technology company.” However, Aiways believes that it has “clear direction, firm target, and pays more attention to long-term development.”

So, can Aiways achieve success with its strategy of “building high walls, accumulating grain, and calling oneself king”?