Author: Wang Xuan
Li Yinan is probably the most “lying flat” among all the new forces’ leaders.
In December 2021, Li Yinan announced his car-making plan to the public in Changzhou, Jiangsu, and thus began his new journey with Zyujia. Unlike other auto companies’ press conferences, Li Yinan did not talk about any grand visions, but only mentioned brand, first product, and related information about the Dacheng factory.
When facing reporters’ questions, he even answered with some vague words. I chose “Li Yinan: Not Thinking, Not Knowing, Not Necessary, No Comment” as the title of the report on the communication meeting, and these four words were the most frequently mentioned throughout the meeting.
Of course, we can also understand it as “real.” This is also the most obvious point I have felt about Zyujia in the past year, just like last night’s release, which lasted 25 minutes. In addition to explaining the products, intelligence, Dacheng car factory, and user rights, there were no extra tricks and “One more thing.”
A new force car company without a clear user portrait, novel marketing methods, and innovative user communication models is unfamiliar. Of course, this also makes the public return to the products themselves that Zyujia focuses on.
No position, is the best position
Thanks to the GEMINI twin power module system developed by Mars Rock Technology, Zyujia NV has pure electric and range-extended models. Among them, the standard range and long-range version of the pure electric model are priced at 278,800 yuan and 318,800 yuan, respectively, and the range-extended version is priced at 288,800 yuan.
The range-extended version of Zyujia NV WLTC has a comprehensive range of 939km (CLTC has a comprehensive range of more than 1257km), and the range extender uses a 1.5T four-cylinder/five-in-one range extender with a high thermal efficiency of up to 41.07%. At the same time, the range-extended version has a pure electric range of 150km. The peak total power of both front and rear motors is 270kW, and the peak total torque is 526 N·m.
The pure electric long-range version of Zyujia NV has a CLTC range of 560km, and it also offers a pure electric standard version with a CLTC range of 440km. The peak total power of both front and rear motors is 280kW, and the peak total torque is 452 N·m.
What Li Yinan did not expect was the target audience of ZIYOUJIA. In the fiercely competitive market, everyone is frantically adding various qualifiers to their products to attract a certain segment of the population. In this environment, not positioning oneself has become a “lie-flat” approach.
If we look at the dimensions, the ZIYOUJIA NV is 4915mm long, 1962mm wide, 1755mm high, and has a wheelbase of 2910mm. In terms of dimensions, the ZIYOUJIA NV is similar to the soon-to-be-released L6, AITO WENJIE M7, and LANTU FREE. At the same time, all four of these cars offer extended range forms.
For products in this segmented market, they do not really need a clear user profile, including the IDEAL L6. At the recently-concluded launch event for the IDEAL L8 and L7, Li Xiang still described the L6 as a family intelligent luxury five-seat SUV.
However, the acceptance rate of the family positioning of a seven-seat large SUV is higher among users, and it is somewhat far-fetched to put a medium-to-large five-seat SUV in the realm of family users because five seats are the standard configuration of traditional cars, and non-extreme special needs can be met by five seats. Overly deepening a specific tag may make non-tagged users spontaneously exclude themselves from the brand’s audience, causing car manufacturers to lose this part of the user base.
Therefore, we can see that for the ZIYOUJIA NV alone, the official did not give it a clear positioning to attract a specific group of people, and not positioning is the best positioning for medium-to-large five-seat SUVs as it corresponds to the broadest demand.
The key to competition lies in the “small and clever” ideas
In the past, everyone would choose the “stacking material” approach to showcase product strength, but obviously, the ZIYOUJIA NV seems to be more “lie-flat”. After all, we did not see any “surpassing configuration” on the car. However, this car has shown us another way to improve product strength: polishing the details of functional configuration to make it more convenient for users to use.
It can be easily observed that there is a silver cover plate on the C-pillar of the self-driving RV NV, and there is a battery indicator light in the center of the ornament panel. When the user inserts the charging gun, the vehicle’s battery level will be displayed by flashing the light. The user can visually check whether the vehicle is fully charged when outside the vehicle.
Of course, friends who use electric cars may have encountered such a problem. Due to the limited availability of charging facilities, when you are waiting for charging in the car, other drivers may approach and ask whether the battery is fully charged and whether they can take the charging spot. The light indicator is also an information outlet for other car owners.
The self-driving RV series of vehicles from the self-driving home company comes standard with the iAWD intelligent dual-motor four-wheel drive system, and also provides 7 off-road scene modes. In addition, it also provides larger diameter tires, which can further improve the vehicle’s passing performance.
The calculation method of tire diameter is wheel diameter + two tire widths × aspect ratio. Larger diameter means the combination of the tire and the wheel is larger as a whole, so the obstacles will be relatively smaller. To make the most exaggerated comparison, the obstacle may seem like nothing to humans, while it is an obstacle to ants. Therefore, a larger diameter improves passing performance.
The front passenger leg rest has a lift function, similar to NIO’s “Queen’s co-pilot.”
We have found in some of the vehicles with similar functions that we test drove before that when the leg rest is lifted, the glove box in front of the co-pilot will get in the way of the passenger’s feet. Some products have even removed the glove box to solve this problem.
However, the glove box is an important storage space, so the solution provided by the self-driving home company is a detachable glove box. When the leg rest needs to be lifted, the glove box can be removed to expand the space.
In terms of intelligent car systems, the two highlights of the self-driving RV NV are:
- Seamless integration between the car machine and smart devices;
Triple Blind Operation Design
NV of ZYHOME now supports intelligent wearables for touchless unlocking, charging and CarPlay connection. In addition to Apple CarPlay, it also supports various mobile phone projection features such as Huawei HiCar, covering 95% of smartphones.
When the user connects to CarPlay, the screen will be divided into two parts, with CarPlay on the upper screen and NIUTRON OS on the lower screen.
Through the latest Smart Stacks modular interaction, NV can run NIUTRON OS and CarPlay on the central floating screen at the same time, with both systems operating independently. NIUTRON OS and CarPlay are highly consistent in terms of interaction and operation.
NIUTRON OS mainly uses a card-based design, and users can customize the arrangement of cards according to their preferences, which enhances the interaction convenience.
Triple blind operation includes the steering wheel control blind operation, physical button blind operation, and central floating screen with RealTouch tactile vibration feedback.
Unlike other car’s steering wheel controls, the NV comes with a 5-directional control dial instead of buttons. Users can easily control the vehicle information by pressing or turning the left and right dials without looking at the buttons.
The importance of physical buttons for blind operation is self-evident. The RealTouch tactile vibration feedback on the screen can further enhance the precision of controlling the vehicle’s internal information.
On both sides of the main and co-pilot’s air outlet, a display screen is placed to show the wind speed, temperature, and PM2.5 concentration, which serves as redundant information display to facilitate the user’s access to air conditioning information.Like most intelligent cars, the Self-Love NV also adopts a panoramic sunroof design. The silver-plated glass can improve the UV insulation rate. At the same time, the Self-Love online store will also provide traditional sunshades for users to choose and purchase.
As a mid-to-large-size SUV, Self-Love NV has left enough space for users in the trunk since it does not have a third row of seats. The trunk can accommodate 9 standard-sized carry-on suitcases.
Self-Love still needs some time
As an intelligent car product, I believe everyone is very concerned about the intelligent driving performance of Self-Love NV. Its entire series are equipped with 24 advanced driving assistance system functions such as AEB (Automatic Emergency Braking), ACC (Full-Speed Adaptive Cruise Control), BSD (Blind Spot Detection), and LCA (Lane Change Assist).
It is worth mentioning that Self-Love NV is also a model that supports comprehensive upgrades of assisted driving software and hardware. All models in the series support hardware upgrades to SuperDrive AAD for a fee, which can adapt to high-speed and urban road navigation-assisted driving functions after the upgrade.
Self-Love Automobile cooperated with Horizon Robotics to jointly develop a high-integration domain controller for supercomputing platforms, super-sensing systems, and 1Gbps Ethernet communication.
The Self-Love NV upgraded to SuperDrive AAD is equipped with dual Horizon Journey5 chips, with a computing power increase to 256TOPS, and the vehicle will have 12 ultra-high-resolution cameras (including two front cameras with ultra-high-definition 8 million-pixel cameras), 4 panoramic cameras, and 5 millimeter-wave radars to meet the needs of auxiliary driving information acquisition under complex road conditions.
Intelligent driving is a highland that new forces in the automotive industry must strive for because this technology also determines the future trend of the automotive industry. Currently, Self-Love has chosen to cooperate with Horizon Robotics to enter the market, and I believe it is due to two considerations.
On the one hand, Self-Love was newly established, and research and development of intelligent driving still take time; cooperation with mature intelligent driving solution providers like Horizon Robotics is the fastest way to landing the functions.
On the other hand, the industry is currently moving from L2+ to L4, and there is still room for improvement in some core technologies for ZY.
Conclusion
It is clear that ZY has chosen a more convenient solution for some of the detailed functions, but their noticeably lower price is fully justified by their product strength, at least for their first product, which can provide sufficient appeal to consumers.
As for how far ZY can go in the future and whether they can establish a distinct image in the market, it will depend on the direction they set for themselves and their research and development results.
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.