Author: Xuan Wang

Before there was the “Spring Festival Gala” of the automotive industry performed by Elon Musk and his partners, and now we have the successive VOYAH Night, NIO Day, XPeng 1024 Intelligent Day, and Ideal User Day. In the long river of history, the ideological orientation of the automotive industry is undergoing changes, and no one is simple enough to hold a product launch event that solely discusses their own products with users and society anymore.

In the past, we only defined products and brands. Nowadays, before defining products and brands, latecomers in the automotive industry prefer to give the enterprise a clear positioning and tell brand stories around this positioning, even hosting dedicated launch events, such as user-oriented enterprises that have been very popular over the past two years in the automotive industry.

On October 16th, the first VOYAH NIGHT was held on the “Zhiyin” cruise ship in Wuhan, known as the “Voyah User Night”. From the name “User Night,” it can be seen that Voyah is also a player in the user-centric enterprise circle and is expected to be the most noteworthy player in this circle in the next five years.

Smart car companies choose to push users to the center of the stage

If we regard the Chinese auto market as a stage, products in the center of the stage must possess the qualities that consumers care about the most.

In the 1990s, private cars began to enter the lives of ordinary Chinese people. At that time, the market was completely controlled by the government and dealers, presenting a situation of “what you can buy depends on what I have,” leading to the emergence of the first group of pioneers in the auto industry.

In the first two decades of the 21st century, the auto market became a product-oriented market, and the abundance of car models gave consumers the power of free choice, while the independent brands were already beginning to take shape.

However, over the past two decades, the qualities that consumers care about have been changing. Initially, people cared most about quality, which caused the self-owned brands’ products to perform poorly in the market and always linger on the sidelines. As the Chinese auto industry developed, self-owned brands gradually closed the gap with joint venture brands in product quality and started a series of price wars centered around “cost performance.” Therefore, in the second decade, self-owned brands began to take strides towards the center of the stage but were still left out of the core circle, as during this decade, the Chinese auto market experienced consumption upgrades, and self-owned brands were hindered by their brand image.

In the past two decades, self-owned brands have gone through ups and downs, and finally, at the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century, they figured out that the key to moving to the center of the stage is users.

Current self-owned brands can be divided into three categories: traditional self-owned brands, new brands that have transformed from traditional companies like Voyah today, and new car brands. Even though their situations are different, they all need to get users to do something for them.“`

For new car companies, users are the cornerstone of building a brand and the key to survival. User personas can represent the brand image, and user voices are the brand declaration. Can NIO survive the winter of 2019 without showcasing users? NIO, Li Xiang, and other new force car companies are using the value of users to help drive the development of the enterprise.

For new brands that have transformed from traditional ones, or are called “new strength” brands, users are the “last resort” weapon. “New strength” brands will shoulder two expectations of the group they are part of: to be on the center stage and to keep up-to-date with changes in the industry.

In order to achieve breakthroughs in the third decade, issues left over from the previous decade need to be solved. The first step in improving brand image is to rebrand, and the second step is to emphasize “user co-creation,” meaning that users play a significant role in defining products and post-service processes. To be honest, if the person who invented the term “user co-creation” had applied for a patent, they would surely be financially independent by now.

If only one car company talks about the value of users, it becomes a leader in the industry and can attract more consumer attention, as was the case with NIO in its early days. Now, however, independent brands are all emphasizing users. When everyone works together, the “user co-creation” becomes a solid demand for consumers when buying a car. After users themselves are pushed to the center stage, traditional criteria such as quality, value for money, and product strength, which have dominated the evaluation of car quality for many years in joint ventures, will be pushed to the sideline.

This is not a speculative action taken by car companies. The fact is that our independent brands have done enough in terms of traditional standards to judge product quality. We just need a platform. Of course, users do benefit more from user-driven car companies, which is also a “two-way street.”

Endless User Value

In fact, “user value” is not just a title. Sometimes, users can be more sensitive to products than product managers themselves. For Voyah, users have been placed at a relatively important position since its inception. Even core users were involved in the process of launching the first product, iterating it alongside the team.
“`From August 2020 to present, Voyah has held 7 global test driver events, attracting over 2000 actively participating individuals and collecting more than 200 suggestions from users. Over 130 improvements and optimizations have been made in areas including details, in-car interaction, driving and riding experience, NVH, experience optimization, and intelligent driving. At the User Night event, Voyah CEO Lu Fang officially launched the second edition of the Global Test Driver program, which features upgraded themes, participation ranges, activity depth, subject categories, and number of participants.

Lu Fang also expressed during User Night that “Voyah will always put user trust first. As the number of Voyah users increases, Voyah will increase innovation in products and services, and accelerate the construction of service networks, to bring users a better experience with intelligent electric vehicles.”

To create a “scalable intelligent electric SUV” tailored to user needs, Voyah FREE will conduct its first full-car function OTA upgrade in 2021, upgrading 50 items based on feedback collected from about 1500 users on their usage experience. After the first upgrade, Voyah FREE will perform OTA upgrades at least once per quarter.

To satisfy diverse user driving scenarios, Voyah FREE will add 8 new features, including a karaoke function favored by users. In addition, Voyah FREE will show the driving mileage data after the range extender is started, so that users can check information about the vehicle’s health, upload data to the cloud-based foresight service platform, and calculate after-sales maintenance policies based on range extender mileage and usage duration.

In addition to new functionality, this OTA upgrade includes 42 optimizations. In response to user feedback that commonly used functions are too deeply hidden, this upgrade optimizes quick parking operations, including opening the fuel tank cap and charging port on the car’s home screen, displaying battery health status, and switching between three driving modes. In addition, the V-Moment supreme mode and other functions will also be optimized.

At some level, users are the key to eliminating outdated company systems. User-driven enterprises are a trend that new automotive companies are leading, along with new retail models, user service systems, and more. For traditional independent brands, the biggest obstacle to transformation is decoupling from traditional systems.# For the automotive industry, the traditional dealer system is the most difficult part to abandon. It involves not only interests but also personal relationships. For user-based companies, removing the dealer link is essential because they must communicate directly with users. Similarly, to cope with changes in the industry in the future, companies also need to absorb new-generation talents and perform blood transfusions within the team. This is also the reason why user-based car companies call users the “new force” and use the “last resort” to abandon themselves.

Of course, Voyah, as a user-based company, must fulfill its responsibilities, and the first step is to implement the charging system. On the User Night, Voyah Auto released the VOYAH POWER six-in-one charging service matrix, which includes six major charging scenarios, including exclusive private pile charging, public pile charging, Voyah charging, destination charging, customer charging, and portable electric gun charging. Users can realize full-scene energy supplement service on the Voyah APP.

Regarding the current problem of incompatibility and non-interoperability of public charging piles, Voyah, in cooperation with five charging industry leading enterprises including State Grid, Southern Power Grid, Telegreedy, Star Charge, and Quick Charge, the public pile coverage rate exceeds 80%, and interconnection has been realized. Users only need to query and charge through the Voyah APP charging map entrance. Exclusive piles and public charging can cover more than 95% of user charging scenarios.

In terms of private charging, Voyah provides two smart and interconnected private charging piles of 7KW and 11KW, realizing all-round charging safety monitoring and high-efficiency output. Voyah’s exclusive piles are given away with the vehicle, which can not only be remotely intelligent started and stopped but also charged through appointment via the APP. At the press conference, Lu Fang also called for users to fully utilize the appointment function to stagger charging, reduce vehicle use costs, and respond to the country’s energy allocation call.

At the same time, Voyah also created the most cost-effective charging service, providing users with the one-year period of free charging right of 800 degrees per month, which can save about 20,000 yuan per year compared with fuel vehicles. In addition, in the Voyah mall, users can exchange or purchase lifetime free charging packages. One car owner shared their experience of driving the pure electric Voyah FREE from Wuhan to Changchun during the National Day, where the entire charging was cost-free.

To ensure that users achieve high-frequency scenario charging coverage, Voyah has also increased the construction and layout of networked charging piles. For user-customized demands, Voyah Auto selects the user’s high-frequency travel scenarios and constructs a charging pile through big data and cloud computing. In terms of charging services, Voyah has also designed a “customer charging” service for users. In addition, Voyah has specially designed a portable charger gun with a power of 1.7 KW, suitable for ordinary civilian sockets, allowing users to easily handle emergencies.

ConclusionAccording to the current situation, user-oriented companies are the best development direction for independent brands, and even become a necessary path to the future. Of course, there are still many issues to be verified in the future, such as the priority between brand value and user value, and whether user services can really be implemented, etc. But these are all later talks, and the first step to improving brand strength has obviously been completed.

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.