As the competition on the new energy vehicle track enters a new cycle, car companies that are constantly being distanced are looking for a way to "huddle together for warmth" to catch up with the leaders.
This week, SAIC and Audi officially responded, and the two sides confirmed that they will jointly develop an electric vehicle platform. "Everyone agrees that the Chinese auto market is undergoing unprecedented transformation, so the two parties will further deepen strategic cooperation, open a new chapter of cooperation, and provide guarantee for a win-win situation."
Time goes back to the evening of April 18, 2021. Audi's second joint venture in China, SAIC Audi, released its first mass-produced model, the A7L. As a fuel vehicle, the actual delivery volume of the A7L in 2022 is only 3,712, which obviously cannot meet expectations.
"We hope that the sales volume of SAIC Audi will exceed 50,000 units in the first year, and the goal of A7L is to sell 3,000-5,000 units per month." This is the sales target set by Jia Mingdi, general manager of SAIC Audi's marketing business, for SAIC Audi in early 2022.
Since then, SAIC Audi has successively launched two new models, Audi Q5 e-tron (pure electric vehicle) and Audi Q6 (fuel vehicle). However, the situation has not improved. In 2022, the combined delivery volume of the three models will only be 6,143.
On March 13, 2023, SAIC Group announced an important personnel adjustment; Yang Siyao, former secretary of the party committee of SAIC Volkswagen Sales Co., Ltd. and executive director of SAIC Volkswagen Brand Marketing Division, will succeed Jia Mingdi as the general manager of SAIC Audi Marketing.
At the same time, in the first quarter of this year, Audi's global sales rebounded by 8% year-on-year to 421,800 units, but sales in the Chinese market fell further by 15.6% to 136,400 units, which was continuously pulled away by Mercedes-Benz and BMW (both sales exceeded 190,000 units in the same period).
In this regard, Volkswagen Group CEO Obermo even publicly stated that Audi has not defended its leading position relative to its main competitors, and even lags behind its own capability level.
At the end of June this year, due to lagging behind in new technology innovation and model lineup lagging behind competitors, Audi Global CEO Kus Duesmann was fired. And one of the main responsible parties for the backwardness, the senior management of Volkswagen Group software company CARIAD also underwent a round of blood replacement in the first half of this year.
Dussmann had previously said that due to the lack of models optimized for the local market, Audi's sales in China have declined, and "the development of new electric vehicle models must be accelerated to meet China's demand."
At the end of 2020, SAIC Group, Zhangjiang Hi-Tech and Alibaba Group announced to jointly create a new user-oriented automobile technology innovation company (Zhiji Automobile); as SAIC Group's "No. 1 Project", SAIC Group has also been given the important task of "upward" in the new energy market.
Two years later, in order to support the unified technology development of multiple brands of SAIC, SAIC established the Innovation Research and Development Institute to provide product development services for the four major brands of Zhiji, Feifan, Roewe and MG.
On the key technology platform, the "SAIC Nebula" pure electric exclusive system platform, the platform-based "Rubik's Cube" battery system, the "Green Core" electric drive system, and the "Galaxy" full-stack smart car solution have also been launched one after another.
So far, Zhiji has launched two models, namely Zhiji L7 and LS7. The total delivery volume in 2022 is only 4,685 vehicles, and the delivery volume from January to May this year is 6,054 vehicles. In addition, the third model LS6 will be unveiled this year, targeting the B-class SUV pure electric market.
According to the production and sales bulletin information released by SAIC Motor, Zhiji Automobile sold 2,007 vehicles in June, and the cumulative sales volume this year has increased to 9,790 vehicles. Judging from the year-on-year data, it seems to have gotten out of the quagmire. However, there is clearly still a long way to go as expected.
"The sales target of Zhiji Automobile in 2023 is 45,000 units. By 2025, we hope to reach the production and sales scale of 200,000 to 300,000 units." This is the goal disclosed by Liu Tao, the co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile, after the official launch of Zhiji LS7 in February this year.
Looking at it now, the completion of the goal is still a huge unknown. With the in-depth cooperation between SAIC and Audi on the new energy track, Zhiji's role positioning is even more embarrassing. "The key points of cooperation currently exposed are Zhiji's three-electric system, underbody and intelligent driving system"
For Zhiji, if it is only a technology exporter, it means that the market positioning of Audi's new energy vehicles may compete with Zhiji, which is a hidden risk for sales growth.
In particular, considering that Zhiji is only a non-wholly-owned subsidiary of SAIC, and the Innovation Research and Development Institute established by the latter as a unified technical service exporter, it means that SAIC (its component companies, such as Huayu, Lianchuang Automotive Electronics, Zero Beam, etc.) is the biggest beneficiary.
For Audi, the brand value will be greatly reduced. At present, in the Chinese market, auto companies' self-research on core technologies is also a key factor in consumers' purchase of new energy vehicles. The reason is that the technology iteration speed of new energy + intelligence far exceeds that of traditional fuel vehicles.
For example, Li Xiang, CEO of Ideal Auto, said last year that the company spent 3 years and invested tens of billions in technology research and development to realize the full-stack self-development of core technologies. In addition, more than 20 laboratories have been built by ourselves, spanning multiple fields to support pre-development.
Li Xiang also said that Ideal has done in-depth self-research on the vision algorithm of intelligent driving, and has done the pre-fusion of BEV surround view ADAS vision algorithm and lidar perception data, making the BEV perception ability significantly higher than the pure vision solution.
In contrast, at present, Zhiji's intelligent driving system is jointly developed by SAIC and a third-party supplier Momenta, and the latter is also providing solutions for BYD, GAC, Lotus and other car companies.
For example, BYD has also established a joint venture company (Dipai Zhixing) with Momenta, which will rely on BYD's intelligent technology accumulation and vertical integration capabilities, as well as Momenta's intelligent driving technology accumulation, to create future-oriented high-level intelligent driving solutions.
Since the beginning of this year, whether it is BYD or GAC (Aion), while they have taken the leading share in the new energy vehicle market, they are also accelerating their brand development. Momenta is present on the high-end models of the two companies based on the Nvidia platform.
Among them, Momenta is also designing the overall software system architecture for GAC, and assisting in building a complete automation and continuous integration testing pipeline to improve the overall R&D closed-loop efficiency.
According to the previous plan of the Volkswagen Group, Audi will launch electric vehicle products based on the PPE platform in 2024; in 2026, the SSP vehicle architecture of the Volkswagen Group will also be implemented. (However, there is currently a risk of delay, especially software)
Currently, Audi FAW New Energy Vehicle Co., Ltd. in Changchun is under construction. It was originally planned to realize localized production of pure electric vehicles (based on the PPE platform) next year.
Judging from the information released by many senior executives of Audi before, "SAIC Audi will focus on building unique models in the Chinese market and exploring the innovation of online sales models." This is also the key to the in-depth cooperation between Audi and SAIC on pure electric platforms.
However, at least so far, the performance of SAIC Audi has obviously not met expectations. Some people in the industry even bluntly said: "Thinking that you can use the Audi brand to cut leeks, but the leeks are not fooled."
And SAIC is still in a tough time. Data show that in the first half of this year, SAIC Motor sold about 2.072 million vehicles, a decrease of 7.28% from last year.