“Voyah” Played the Best Soundalike Joke in the Automotive Industry
Author: Chang Yan
It seems like “Voyah” has played the best soundalike joke in the entire automotive industry.
I still remember when the brand was first launched, I held a cheer sign that read “The ideal future is Voyah” and took a picture with it.
What impressed me even more was the sentence I liked the most: “Finish the drawing with one Voyah.” It exuded the spirit of freedom and not going beyond limits.
This revolutionary romanticism is also reflected in the working style of Voyah.
On the last day of 2021, Voyah granted me permission to go to their headquarters to interview anyone and ask them any question I was interested in.
So, I decided to trouble some of my old friends.
Dream of a Dreamer
In September 2021, I met Dr. Huang Min, the Technical Director of Voyah New Energy, on a live stream of the world’s first open water rear-end collision test in Voyah FREE.
Just three months later, Dr. Huang had already devoted a lot of energy to the sprint of new products.
Among all the new brands, Voyah’s speed of launching new products is absolutely the fastest. In the Voyah factory, a large number of dynamic tests are being carried out on the third product, a medium-sized sedan (highly confidential). As for the MPV Dreamer, which was recently unveiled at the Guangzhou Auto Show, we can finally talk about its technical details.
The Dreamer is a very characteristic MPV that has a dual-motor, four-wheel drive, and double-wishbone suspension, making it rare for an MPV to be associated with the keywords “good to drive” and “handling.”
“We hope to create a completely different category in the MPV.”
“If we use a single motor, the entire car will have the power of an ordinary 2.0T engine, which is not what we pursue in Voyah.” “The Dreamer has made a lot of innovations in terms of handling, which becomes even more apparent when driving on unpaved roads; it is completely different from previous MPVs, and the suspension system offers the same feeling as Voyah FREE.”To provide a similar driving experience for larger dreamers, Dreamer’s power, whether electric or gasoline, has undergone a qualitative change.
“The motor of Dreamer’s car must be among the top in the industry.” In terms of working efficiency, power density, harmonic injection, and electromagnetic simulation optimization, LanTu’s new energy team has done a lot of work. For example, LanTu has improved the reducer of Dreamer’s motor, resulting in tighter engagement that greatly enhances the transmission NVH performance.
“The evaluation of Nissan LEAF in the market is very high, but we will do better than it.”
In LanTu’s technical exchanges, factory advantages are often mentioned. “Design only accounts for 50% of the effect, and manufacturing also accounts for 50%.” “In terms of motor flat wire and stator production lines, international first-class production lines are used, and there are only a few in the world, and there is one in Dongfeng in China.”
Huang Min introduced that LanTu has set a higher standard for vehicle safety, making the size of Dreamer’s battery pack smaller than other MPVs and even SUVs, but they still achieve the same level of endurance.
The “big move” of Dreamer actually lies in the range extension technology.
“MPV owners still have a strong demand for range extension.”
“Starting from Dreamer, we will increase the direct drive capability of the engine at high speeds. When working under a certain speed, the system will make intelligent choices.”
“The products we develop advocate users to use more electricity.”
According to Dr. Huang’s introduction, during the early development of Dreamer, LanTu internally set the goal of “Dreamer saves 20% more fuel compared to FREE”, and his team is working hard to achieve this.
Do things for the future
In the more than 3,300 cars sold by LanTu in December 2021, the proportion of pure electric cars has increased significantly compared to August and September.
For a manufacturer that relies on range extender (RE) and pure electric (PE) technology, how to consider the ratio of the two is actually a very important issue. Ignoring the importance of RE is a bit like self-defeating, and ignoring PE is a bit like cutting off one’s own prospects.
And at a time when everyone thinks that PE will be the main battlefield in the future, “whether, and how much, PE reserves exist” has become an additional question to this soul-searching.
I thought Dr. Huang Min would give me a reply of “we are already fully promoting PE research and development,” but his answer was: the energy and resources invested in RE and PE research and development are one-to-one.
“I agree that PE is the future in the long run, but I think the judgment of the transitional period needs to be made for more than five years, and in recent two years I am more concerned about RE.”
“As for RE, there is still a lot of room for optimization in terms of structure and efficiency.”
In terms of PE, Voyah Technology has made much faster progress in technology research and development than I imagined. CTP battery solutions have entered the testing stage, and the 800V architecture, which was previously heavily unveiled, has also had new developments.
Voyah’s 800V architecture has a maximum charging power of 350 kW and is completely self-developed by Voyah. It will be the first to “have batch delivery capabilities” domestically. Dr. Huang introduced that on the 800V platform, Voyah needs to consider what customers can truly bear and what can make them happy to use. Therefore, on the one hand, it needs to wait for the cost of silicon carbide components to come down, and on the other hand, it needs to wait for the cost of batteries with a rate of more than 4C to truly reach the same level as the current 1.5C batteries. Therefore, from these two perspectives, in another 2-3 years, the cost will be in a suitable range.
At this time, the second friend should come on stage. She is Chen Jiayue, who is responsible for vehicle materials and lightweighting at Voyah.
Knowing her is also related to the car body design of Dreamer at that time. Creating some “tricks” on the body has become a routine action for Voyah’s new car launches. The mystery of Dreamer lies in the door frame. After laser welding and hot stamping, this integrated door ring has made more than 10 traditional parts into one part. The most valuable thing is not just being “lightweight”, but being “integral”. It will greatly aid in the vehicle’s collision, rigidity, and NVH.
Chen Jiayue also told me a personal secret of Lu Fang, the CEO of LanTu Motors. “Lu is an environmentalist, so he values materials very much. Even all the materials that can be touched in the LanTu car, from foaming agents, adhesives, to all auxiliary materials, are water-based with very low VOC (volatile organic compounds) content. Even the release agents and lubricants used in the production of components are water-based, and the details are taken care of.”
Many users, including myself, are surprised that the LanTu FREE car does not have the traditional “new car smell” of BBA models. This is due to the above reasons.
Also focusing on the future, LanTu’s Material team is working on “expanding their influence” in two areas. One is to continuously expand their team, and the proportion of master’s and doctoral degrees in the team is constantly increasing. The other is to “update industry standards”. As more and more leather products and sporting parts are used in the car, the aging test will be accelerated, and “more early and effective exposure of problems” will be needed.
It was then that I learned that LanTu, with a scale of 4,000 people, has an average age of only 31 years old, allowing me, who was 33 years old at the time, to experience the impact of the LanTu youth storm.
Understanding high-end is actually understanding user needs
This chapter’s subtitle, from LanTu CEO Lu Fang.
User operation is an important scoring item that any new brand needs to learn, make up for, and surpass.
LanTu’s products and experiences are not 100% perfect. As a LanTu FREE car owner, I feel more direct. However, the most profound feeling is that whether it’s our feedback on the delivery experience or the Weibo complaints about the software, we not only did not receive the traditional “public relations” treatment, but were actually seriously taken care of by the relevant development department.
Lu Fang said, “As a new brand, we are not here to educate users, we want to meet their needs, provide them with experiences, and bridge the gap with users.”
And, “We do not like to say user operations. Our contact with users is based on the principle of altruism, and we want to bring users better value and experience.”### English Markdown Text
During this interview, I unexpectedly gained a freshly baked story from 2021.
On December 6th, a LanTu FREE user from Chongqing because of being an entrepreneur, often had to work late, and would frequently encounter nighttime water trucks at a long downhill location. When braking on this type of road surface, the user occasionally felt the vehicle surge forward, “although it did not affect driving and safety, it brought an unfriendly driving experience to him.”
When LanTu’s engineers received the task, it was already time to get off work, but they immediately decided to fly to Chongqing to understand the problem. “We tested with the user from midnight until after 3 a.m., tested the vehicle in the early morning, wrote a report on data analysis after eating supper with the customer, and took a 12 o’clock flight back to Wuhan.”
Through the optimization of regenerative braking and brake pump operation, this rare and occasional problem was eventually solved.
Even many “common problems” that are considered as “consensus” by the industry and not solved, LanTu is also biting the bullet.
“Whether the user cares or not, we have to care a lot,” said Dr. Huang Min. Electric vehicle users have a big pain point, which is the “inaccurate estimation” of charging time in the car system. This not only wastes the user’s time but also affects their mood.
However, the estimation of remaining charging time involves multiple elements and conditions such as charging piles, ambient temperature, and battery status. In order to collect as much data as possible, LanTu collected and analyzed the operating data of all demonstration-operated vehicles under the Dongfeng system, “ride-sharing cars have a lot of mileage, charging a lot, fast charging a lot, and very concerned about the remaining charging time, which has become a very important know-how in our research.”
LanTu is about to implement this in its future products, “If using slow charging, when the remaining time is within 2 hours, the error is less than 10%; if it is fast charging, the error is less than 10 minutes.”
LanTu’s 2022
In the last month of 2021, LanTu’s monthly delivery volume exceeded 3,000 vehicles.
I am very interested to know, at this point in time, how does Voyah, as a brand, evaluate and view the delivery quantity and user operation results. I had a one-hour conversation with Huang Weichong, the senior director of Voyah brand operation, who is also my old friend. Like a company, their strength shows a focus on change and user orientation.
For him, there seem to be two voices of value orientation. One comes from Voyah itself. Since the launch of Voyah FREE in August 2021, it has achieved five consecutive months of month-on-month growth, and has become the fastest new electric vehicle brand to achieve a monthly delivery of more than 3,000 vehicles. The other comes from others. Competitors have repeatedly set new records for delivery quantity, and the delivery quantity of the head camp of the NIOmeng has begun to be accustomed to being counted in tens of thousands.
In Huang Weichong’s view, it is due to the earlier planning and layout of Dongfeng Group that Voyah captured the growth opportunity of intelligent electric vehicles. “Early user satisfaction and reputation are actually more important than sales volume, while the monthly sales volume exceeding 3,000 is a stage verification of the Voyah operation system. “
This system includes not only Voyah’s strategic approach of adhering to direct sales to users, but also the market-oriented mechanism established by Voyah from the beginning of its establishment, and the independent operation and strict management system of executives. It also includes the landing of the user-oriented full-value chain business, as well as the initial construction of all new teams, corporate culture, digitalization and other underlying capabilities.
He believes that the pragmatism, openness, innovation, and hard work of the CEO Lu Fang and CBO Ye Xin deeply influence the corporate culture of Voyah.
All of these are patiently paving the way for Voyah’s outbreak. 2022 will be Voyah’s first full delivery year. NIOmeng did not exceed 35,000 units in the first year.
“Voyah has not yet reached the time of ‘quality growth’. When there are tens of thousands of cars on the road in 2022, brand influence and reputation will come up, and increment will come.”
During the interview, he reminded me to pay attention to two numbers.
The first is that the average price of Voyah FREE currently delivered has reached 338,600 yuan, which only NIO can achieve among new energy brands delivered in large quantities, indicating that users have accepted Voyah’s high-end positioning.The second thing is that 61% of the Voyah car owners come from BBA car owners who trade-in or upgrade, and none of these users think that Voyah FREE is “expensive”. This indicates that Voyah not only has competitiveness in the mainstream market of the red ocean, but also understands the expectations of the target audience in terms of electric, intelligent, and luxury aspects.
But what I value more is the numbers mentioned in another story by Huang Weichong. Huang said that Voyah requires executives to “be in the APP, be in the group, and call users”. Voyah’s COO, Jiang Tao, had made dozens of phone calls to users during his time as a customer service representative. I think these seemingly trivial, easy-to-do phone calls show that Voyah values users in terms of organizational form and concept, and has implemented it in actual action.
Leading in organization, culture, and action is the key to lasting health and growth.
“By 2022, Voyah Dreamer will become a hit product in the niche market, Voyah FREE will deliver more than 3,000 vehicles per month, and user loyalty will be at a high level. This will demonstrate the market’s recognition of Voyah and serve as a small milestone for Voyah’s system capabilities.”
On the last day of 2021, I finished my interview with Voyah and completed the last flight of the year back to Beijing.
When I got home, I found that, as a Voyah car owner, my name had appeared on the big screen during Luo Zhenyu’s New Year’s speech.
“Making customers happy is the most important thing for a user-centric business.”
In 2022, time and users will be Voyah’s friends.
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.