What are the challenges faced by "new forces building cars"? Idiot, the key is software

Recently, I read an article by Mr. Peter Mertens, the former Audi R&D director, and I was deeply moved. In the article, he believes that German car companies have been sleeping. If they don't wake up, sooner or later they will pay a bloody price in front of innovative companies like Tesla.

Peter Mertens is a typical technical person. He has held important positions in the technology research and development departments of Volkswagen, Skoda, Bentley, Volvo and Audi, etc. He has a background in telecommunications companies and has unique insights into the future development direction of the automotive industry.

Coincidentally, Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, one of the representatives of new domestic car-making forces, also lamented the sales of Tesla Model 3, believing that the reason for Tesla’s elimination from the list is very elementary. It relies on self-built supercharging stations to crush other brands. While other brands won in terms of battery life, intelligence, and cost-effectiveness, they still failed miserably, and they were completely off track. I have to say that these views are very interesting and make me want to say a few words.

Li Xiang shared his analysis of the reasons why Tesla crushed its opponents in his circle of friends. It was interesting, but biased.

1. The sleeping German car companies and the Tesla that has rushed to the bedside

In Peter’s eyes, the reason why German car companies are described as sleeping is because Since the maturity of the traditional internal combustion engine automobile industry, there have been very few innovations in every function and component of the automobile. "Some have just outsourced these functional modules and subsystems to suppliers, allowing them to provide faster, better, and cheaper products." ". What's even worse is that the products of hundreds of outsourced suppliers are all self-contained. Today, the cars we drive have hundreds of chips that manage these complex networks in the car, but there is no coordination between them. , and there is no centralized control. These chips do not even communicate with the central control computer and work completely independently.

The current automobile companies are actually integrators, and many core technologies are in the hands of outsourcing suppliers. If you want to occupy a place in the future of the automobile industry, you must develop core technologies yourself. This is a subversion of the current industry’s inherent model.

Before Tesla’s arrival, people didn’t think there was anything wrong with this. This is like a million-strong army in the Cold Weapons Era desperately trying to make the swords in their hands sharper, but they did not expect that the opponents they were about to encounter were the advance troops from the Hot Weapons Era.

The most subversive aspect of Tesla is not the three-electric system, but becoming "the first automaker to release customized and highly vertically integrated products. Its products use a central computer to control all cores of the entire vehicle." Functionality and non-core functionality". Such a design can easily change the car's driving characteristics, cruising range, acceleration performance, etc., all of which can be achieved by simply updating the software of your car through OTA. Through software as a tool, Tesla has changed the way the automotive industry plays and everything about the automotive industry.

At the beginning of development, Tesla focused on software. Therefore, although you don’t see much difference from the outside, its ideas and starting point are actually revolutionary.

At this time, traditional car companies are very much like the elite cavalry of Seng Gelinqin of the Qing army in the Battle of Baliqiao in the Second Opium War. They also want to fight with light swords and fast horses and thousands of people. The enemy on the opposite side. However, what no one expected was that the enemy on the opposite side presented them with volley guns, shotguns, new rifled cannons and explosive grenades. The Qing army lost 3,000 people in this battle, and the British and French forces only lost 5 people. This is a complete massacre of hot weapons against cold weapons, and it fully proves the absolute inferiority of cold weapons compared to hot weapons.

Traditional automobile companies are definitely not willing to become the Qing army of the past, but they have not really found a way to fight against it - they still place their hope on external suppliers, hoping that they can quickly provide parts that can digitize cars. . However, everything that suppliers do is to tinker with the original foundation, rather than to create a new design based on a highly integrated software architecture from scratch on customized chips and technologies.

Peter believes that these actions of traditional car companies are due to the organizational structure of the company. The emergence of Tesla has turned car companies into software companies. What software companies naturally need are software engineers and software organizational structures.

However, traditional car companies still let executives who are proficient in internal combustion engines and hardware be responsible for software-related work, just like letting the commander-in-chief of an army using cold weapons command a modern army. It would be strange if nothing goes wrong. Peter gave the example of Volkswagen: Although Volkswagen hopes to use the ID.3 electric car to achieve a major strategic transformation of "software-defined cars", this typical traditional car company still messed up in terms of software. Now it has to organize tens of thousands of IT engineers to solve its ID.3 software problems. We even built a temporary tent factory for this purpose, and then spent 6-7 hours on each car performing wired OTA (you read that right, wired). But from the perspective of software companies, to solve these problems, perhaps only 100 or even 50 excellent engineers are enough. Tens of thousands of people versus 50 people, how similar is this to the Battle of Baliqiao? This is the best proof of "generation difference".

With the important mission of "software-defined cars", ID.3 is the product of Volkswagen's major strategic transformation. As a result, under the leadership of a group of executives who only focused on internal combustion engines and hardware, the newly produced ID.3 finally messed up the software. Now I have to connect to OTA, what a joke.

2. Generation difference and barbarians

In recent decades, the best explanation for the term "generation difference" is the 1991 Gulf War. At that time, Saddam's army was indeed strong. In addition, most of the officers and soldiers of these troops had experienced the baptism of the Iran-Iraq War, and their weapons and equipment were relatively good at the time. Therefore, it is generally believed that the US military may once again encounter a Vietnam War quagmire. Zhang Zhaozhong, director of the War Ignorance Bureau, even concluded that "if the U.S. military launches a ground war, it will fall into the vast ocean of the Iraqi People's War."

However, when the F-117A, the first stealth fighter in human history, fired its first shot, what people saw was a completely different form of warfare. Two U.S. F-117A detachments dropped laser-guided bombs over Baghdad, which has the most stringent air defense, and destroyed the command system of the Iraqi troops in just a few minutes. Since then, Saddam's troops collapsed in an instant and were no longer able to fight back. Throughout the war, 42 F-117As flew 1,300 sorties and bombed 40% of the targets in the strategic target list without any losses. This is the completely one-sided outcome brought about by the generational difference in weapons in modern warfare. The director was also slapped in the face.

The emergence of the F-117A stealth fighter has brought modern warfare into a new form. The Gulf War allowed people to appreciate the shocking effects of weapons and equipment with different generations.

So in peacetime, can we enjoy the quiet time? The trees want to be quiet but the wind doesn't stop. When you just want to be a beautiful man quietly, the "barbarians" are already knocking on the door. Whether it is mobile payment or online ride-hailing platforms, "barbarians" are all causing trouble.

In the process of historical development, "barbarians" will always appear. They are not only the subverters of the old order and pattern, but also the creators of the new order and new pattern. For the automobile industry, the barbarians are no longer just knocking on the door, but have already entered the room, and have begun to use their weapons with generational advantages to gain a large number of users.

3. Idiot, the key is software!

It’s not just German car companies that are sleeping? As the world's largest automobile market, how many of China's traditional automobile companies are sober under the impact of the new wave? Take the Lantu just released a few days ago, for example, there is still no change in the underlying thinking level. Although the name of this company is Lantu Automotive Technology Company, the management is equivalent to CXO, and the assessment method also adopts the OKR system commonly used by Internet companies, it can be seen from the resumes of the executives that their careers are still rooted in traditional automotive industry.

Even on different occasions, Dongfeng has repeatedly emphasized that Lantu has a brand-new organizational mechanism. However, judging from the current known situation, the selection of management is still based on the standards of the fuel vehicle era. of. Now that the future of the automotive industry has been rewritten by Tesla and software technology has become a top priority, the software team should have the most say and occupy a core position in the management. But if a team with little background in software is put in charge of Lantu, a new high-end electric brand, the result is likely to be to rely on external suppliers and develop traditional products with little new ideas.

There is a huge gap between this and the heavy responsibility given to Lantu by Dongfeng Group and people's expectations for this high-end electrified brand.

Lantu has always emphasized that it is a "new car-making force", intending to emphasize its innate advantages in production and manufacturing, and at the same time deliberately draw a clear line with the "new car-making force". However, if the future automotive industry relies on software to win or lose, the so-called advantages from the traditional automotive industry will not be the decisive factor.

Lantu is a new brand just released. This reflects the efforts of traditional Chinese car companies in the transformation process. But if measured according to software thinking, Lantu is unqualified.

I originally thought that the issue of software should not be a problem for the new car-making forces. After all, the top three domestic new forces: Weilai, Xiaopeng and the ideal founders all have Deep Internet genes. However, from the above-mentioned feelings of Li Xiang, I still feel that he has not grasped the essence of the problem. Tesla’s win over Chinese consumers is certainly not just because of its own supercharging stations to solve users’ charging problems, but the brand effect accumulated over the past decade or so. What endorses the Tesla brand is naturally its leading level of intelligence. Its pioneering OTA system brings users an extremely advanced experience - they can change various settings and adjustments of their car just by changing the code. For the first time, the entire automotive industry has seen the power of software.

As the most successful electric vehicle brand in the history of the automobile industry, Tesla has obviously achieved the ultimate in the technological sense of electric vehicles by virtue of its disruptive ideas and its strong foundation in software. As Li Xiang said, Tesla is not the best in terms of cruising range, and it is not necessarily ranked first in terms of cost performance. Even accidents occur frequently in autonomous driving mode, the price system is erratic, and tragic battery explosions have occurred. But none of this can stop consumers from loving it. It seems that software has really become a key factor in determining the rise and fall of a brand and the direction of the automotive industry.

Finally, let’s talk about the title of this article. This sentence is taken from Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign slogan—“It’s Economy, Idiot.” ?Stupid!) That year, he used this to defeat Bush Sr. and became one of the youngest presidents in American history. Of course, I don’t mean any disrespect here, but I just hope that using similar sharp words can also sound a warning to new and old entrepreneurs in Chinese automobile companies. After all, loyal words are hard to hear.

It’s time for executives of traditional car companies who still think they have gasoline flowing in their veins to wake up. What's flowing through your veins now is electricity and code. And those players who are entering the automotive industry as new forces also need to reflect carefully. Have they really figured out the future development direction of automobiles? If you don’t even know what the challenge is, how can you meet it?

This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.