Author: Chang Yan

The new energy market at the end of previous years, like fireworks, sparkled then satisfied everyone’s expectations and everyone went back to mind their own business.

However, the new energy market at the end of 2021 is like a multistage rocket, where every time you feel the flame is extinguished, the next climax comes.

In just 24 hours, Akio Toyoda, who previously claimed to “sell Japan’s last gasoline-powered car,” suddenly announced the largest pure electric transformation in history with 15 concept cars. In China, the debut of two new brands in one day also aroused memories of the prosperous scene when new forces first appeared.

However, this implies a huge change in the competitive environment, where the giants’ transformation brings rapid improvement in the quality standards of the entire vehicle, and the acceleration of new forces is reducing the available market space. Newcomers are asked by everyone: what advantage do you have in catching up with the pioneers?

For example, the most highly anticipated NIO Co. and its new brand, ZYGE.

Unavoidable Li Yinuo

As people’s understanding of the car-making process deepens, the standards for evaluating a new car company have gradually become more comprehensive: people, cars, factory. They have become a tri-dimensionally displayed.

When it comes to NIO, one cannot ignore its founder Li Yinuo.

On the one hand, Li Yinuo’s legendary experience has brought this company a natural curiosity and halo, and on the other hand, Li Yinuo’s rich experience in the entrepreneurial arena means it is the soul of the company.

To reduce interference from irrelevant information, you can search for his story yourself. Nevertheless, as Li Yinuo said in an interview: “Whether it’s the development of complex systems, hardware and software, brand establishment, logical understanding of sales channels, financing capital markets, I have experience in all of them, and I have seen them all to some extent.”

These experiences are almost standard for founders of current successful emerging car companies. They are a crucial guarantee for the construction and control of complex organizations as well as sensitivity and persuasiveness in capital markets, in the face of an industry with a “complexity level many times higher” than other industries.

In today’s simple communication, Li Yinuo gave us a sense of personality, lack of people and financing, and not caring too much about specific problems.

“Just like when we were doing high school math problems, after solving a set of problems, there are many ways to reach a conclusion. Sometimes other methods cannot get through, and the most reliable method might not work in the end. What I want to say is there is no absolute correct way or method.”

Therefore, although Li Yinan admits that he did not enter the industry early, he does not think that there is no opportunity in the industry now. “Japan is a car powerhouse. In the process of the growth of Japanese companies, we know that Honda entered the automotive industry 30 years later than Toyota and Nissan. I don’t believe that there was nobody else in the Japanese industrial community during those 30 years.”

From these two discussions, you can see Li Yinan’s rational and firm decision-making in entrepreneurship. ZECARO did not choose to completely mimic other brands in a comprehensive manner, but instead, concentration of resources and careful decision-making is the quick way to achieve survival.

Li Yinan’s background and experience have also been helpful in recruiting and financing. “Our development of autonomous driving and intelligent cabins was in Beijing, and the design was mainly in Shanghai. The engineering side was actually the team in Changzhou. Our main recruitment and hiring of executives was in 2019. At that time, I felt that it was easy to recruit people and we didn’t encounter any problems.”

“I think the automotive industry also has a high capital threshold. There is no doubt about that. In 2014, I personally judged that I couldn’t raise 3 billion US dollars to do this, but now I think I may have a high probability of being able to raise that money.”

What makes Li Yinan stand out even more is his indifference.

This indifference includes three levels.

Firstly, indifference to competitors. “First of all, I think the biggest characteristic of the automotive industry is the lack of shortage of comparable models. There are many products on the market for whatever you do,” so he is not qualified to judge others.

Secondly, indifference to irrelevant expressions. “No” is a high-frequency word in today’s interview. He did not share investment ratios of start-up teams that could cost money, unrelated entrepreneurial experience or strategies. With quick, direct responses, from the perspective of bystanders, Li Yinan is actually more focused on core affairs.

Thirdly, indifference to metaphysics. In all aspects involving “concepts”, “strategies”, and “logic”, Li Yinan dissolved “philosophical” problems with “practical” answers. The starting point and destination are: hoping that users like our cars.

While all new forces are competing for “labels”, Li Yinan is surprisingly indifferent to any labels.

Can we feel proud of driving our cars?

Before we begin this section, it is necessary to explain the relationship between NIO New Energy and ZECARO. The former is the company name, and the latter is the car model name, to some extent equivalent to the relationship between “XPeng” and “G3” or “Tesla” and “Model 3”.Nowadays, everyone needs to completely erase their past impressions of Niu Chuangxin New Energy.

This includes all associations with “Niu electric cars” and the concept images previously released for Niu Chuang cars.

The NV, the first product from Ziyujia, is a medium to large SUV.

Over the past three years, Ziyujia has pursued both fully electric and plug-in hybrid technologies, as seen by the basic Gemini platform architecture images on their official website.

When people see a car combining plug-in and electric power, they naturally assume that it is primarily a plug-in hybrid car, and sales comparisons with similar vehicles on the market have confirmed this truth.

Before the interview, the only thing Li Yanan actively wanted to explain to the media was the relationship between the NV’s two power forms. He emphasized that he wanted users to always see the car as an electric car, from design, to interior, to intelligent cockpit and driving experience.

He hopes that this is a “gasoline-to-electric” product.

At the scene, we saw the model of the car’s interior and exterior, but due to the confidentiality agreement, we cannot publish images of the entire vehicle.

On Ziyujia’s official website, we can see the rough outline of the car, with robustness as the key word.

The front face design of the car has some similarities with the Ford Bronco, while many people reportedly see the shadow of a Land Rover in the side view of the car.

The front and rear of the car are designed with the characteristics of electrification, such as the charging indicator light on the C-pillar and the rear wiper that can be fully hidden in the upper edge of the rear window, which were specifically mentioned during the product launch.

The front and rear lights are highly futuristic, with LED light clusters distributed in a segmented manner, which is not commonly seen in current domestic models.

Ziyujia calls this design philosophy “Urban Exploring,” hoping to create a feeling of exploring while living in the city. If you ask me why this is a good choice when there are many similar products on the market, it may be because the wildness is the primal instinct that drives us.## Interior Design

So far, there hasn’t been any interactive software that can run on the interior, and the designs on the screen are still stickers, which may not be up-to-date with the latest design changes. The overall layout is similar to a fusion of Xpeng G3 and Leapmotor C11, featuring a central vertical screen protruding from two side platforms, with a steering wheel similar to that of Xpeng P7 and operation areas on both sides replaced with Model 3-style scroll wheels.

Of course, the high-end positioning of the ZY Studio NV also tries to incorporate more luxury elements into the interior details. Specific craftsmanship and details can be seen in the upcoming live show in the first half of next year.

Moreover, the seat layout of this car is positioned as a five-seat SUV.

The straight-line car-making philosophy of Li Yinan is also embodied in the ZY Studio NV. He stated that “the intelligent cockpit is self-developed, and autonomous driving is developed through our own definition and cooperation with partners.” In the model, front and rear cameras are used for ADAS, and ZY Studio also clearly stated that this car will not be equipped with lidar.

This may be the road of product definition after Li Yinan’s choice, and what he hopes is that users enjoy driving this car.

“Generally speaking, our most concern is whether most users can own this product or be proud of driving it.”

But he also stated that ZY Studio will adopt a multi-product parallel R&D strategy in the early stages and that off-road and self-driving are not mandatory attributes of the product line, which will have a versatile design direction.

This may be the original meaning of the “ZY Studio” brand.

Factory

Since various brands have identified themselves as “X Factory”, the word “factory” in the automotive industry has had a dual meaning, referring to both the specific plant and the team that makes up the entire company.

The reason for going to so much trouble to invite all the media to Changzhou is to tell everyone that at least in terms of production, there is no need to worry about ZY Studio.

“We have a factory.” The modern intelligent manufacturing base of ZY Studio, inherited from a previous automotive entrepreneurship project, covers an area of 770,000 square meters and is currently undergoing pre-production modifications and calibration.

From our visits, we can see that stamping workshops and other production lines are already fully established, while welding and final assembly are still in the process of installing some equipment.The official production capacity of this production base is 180,000 vehicles per year, and some workshops can support flexible production of four models.

In the initial communication today, Ziyoujia provided two plans for the NV model, with the factory expected to be put into operation in March next year and vehicles entering small-scale production at the same time, with the first delivery scheduled for September.

From the current state of the factory, there should be no significant problem in achieving this schedule as long as funding is not an issue.

“We are here today to announce that we have almost all the information we need, and we want to communicate with the media, the voice of all the teachers in the media, and potential consumers who may be interested in us. Because for any high-value and durable consumer goods like cars, the consumer’s decision cycle is very long.”

Finally, everyone is trying to give NIO and Ziyoujia an evaluation, but I think no one is more qualified to make an evaluation than Li Yinan:

“Actually, we started in November 2018, and I don’t think we slackened off for a day, and I never ran out of money during the entire process, nor did we run out of money during the entire process. You may think we are doing it slowly, and I also think it’s not fast enough, but I think a good product is refined over time.”

This is Li Yinan without labels, and his experience-focused Ziyoujia.

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.