Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 261 Hailan Overseas Delivery, Europeans Shocked

Among Hailan Automobile's many R&D projects, many spare parts, electronic control technology and vehicle development are actually carried out simultaneously.

The research and development of core components and technologies, such as motors, batteries, and electronic controls, are separate from vehicle model research and development.

Then, based on the integration of these core components technologies, we will carry out platform design, or chassis design, and finally create a platform framework for a pure electric vehicle.

Based on this core framework, the overall design of the vehicle, especially the exterior design, is then carried out.

Under this R&D model, HaiLan Automobile will be able to use the existing HaiLan SEC pure electric platform to develop more vehicle models.

Theoretically, Hailan Automobile can develop various levels of sedans based on this platform, but Hailan Automobile is not interested in pure sedans at present...

At present, at least in the early market, Hailan Automobile is restricted by high costs and cannot lower the price of electric vehicles. It is impossible for it to make ordinary family cars or so-called luxury cars of around 500,000 yuan in the traditional sense.

It’s not that I don’t want to do it, but there’s a high probability that I won’t be able to sell it…

Nowadays, no one would buy an electric car worth hundreds of thousands of dollars as a family car.

As for saving money on fuel, that doesn't make much sense. The current oil price is actually quite cheap, and the oil price in many overseas regions is also quite cheap.

Besides, people who buy Hailan electric cars that cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of yuan don’t care about the little money saved on fuel.

This is when Hailan Automobile carries out various promotions, generally focusing on high-tech experience, especially advanced automatic assisted driving.

In fact, relatively little is said about areas such as energy conservation and environmental protection. Even if a small amount of publicity is carried out on energy conservation and environmental protection, it is not to promote how much money is saved by saving fuel, but to promote the low carbon and reduced carbon emissions brought about by saving fuel.

Of course, as to whether a lithium battery as big as an electric car is environmentally friendly, everyone has their own opinions...

However, in terms of carbon emissions during the use of electric vehicles, it is definitely environmentally friendly, which is also one of the selling points of Hailan Automobile.

As for whether the manufacturing process of lithium batteries and the subsequent processing and recycling of scrapped lithium batteries are environmentally friendly, and whether the discarded batteries will pollute the environment.

Well, Hailan Automobile never discusses these issues.

In the current early electric vehicle market, many things are actually far less mature than later generations. The pure electric range is only three or four hundred kilometers, which is not very good.

Then, there are almost no public charging stations, and it is impossible to charge outside. At the same time, the so-called fast charging technology developed by Hailan Automobile has great limitations. Even with the so-called fast charging, it actually takes at least half an hour to charge part of the power. It takes even longer to fully charge the battery. In order to protect the safety of the battery, basically after charging to a certain level, the battery management software will limit the charging amount, especially after more than 80% of the power, the charging speed will be very slow.

Even there are not many fast charging stations like this!
Up to now, HaiLan Automobile has only built about a few hundred fast charging stations, and most of them are in a few first-tier cities.

Many rigid conditions limit the possibility that the electric vehicles currently launched by Hailan Automobile on the market can never truly become a conventional family car that ordinary people can own and use for commuting to work and daily transportation.

The cost is too high and the price cannot be reduced in a short time; the pure electric range is too short, and there will be mileage anxiety when traveling long distances;
If you buy this kind of vehicle, you must have a fixed parking space, otherwise you will have no place to install a home charging station to charge your car!
Due to these many restrictions, the Hailan SEC can only be a toy for high-income or even super-high-income groups, a toy used to enjoy the special driving experience brought by modern high technology.

It is still very far away from ordinary people!
Anyway, the users who currently order Hailan cars, whether domestic or overseas, are all high-net-worth groups.

By the way, the sales of Hailan SEC in West Asia are also very good. Many local rich people are also very interested in this novelty toy, and they are not short of money. The price of the fully equipped deluxe version launched by overseas SEC is a small matter for them, so many people will buy and order it to have a try.

That’s right, the current Hailan SEC is for “playing”, not for “using”.

Based on this, after launching the Hailan SEC, a pure electric coupe with stunning appearance and full of technology, Hailan Automobile's next model to be launched on the market will also follow this toy car route.

As for large-scale sales of electric vehicles for ordinary families priced at tens or even hundreds of thousands of yuan, it is estimated that this will only be possible after a few years when the market matures further and the technical costs fall further.

And now, let’s make the ‘toys’ first.

So, when Xu Shenxue arrived at the R&D center and saw Hailan Automobile's second flagship product, he saw a big toy.

At this time, Bao Yongyan explained to Xu Shenxue: "When we first launched the SUV project, we also referred to the appearance of many current fuel-powered SUVs. However, although many of them look good, they still cannot reflect our high-tech attributes. At the same time, although many SUVs look good, they are not suitable for high-speed driving. Our electric SUV is based on the SEC platform, and its acceleration and high-speed performance are very good. We also hope to continue to reflect this in SUV models."

“So, after many designs by our engineers and wind tunnel testing, we finally settled on this look!”

"The overall shape is rounder, without obvious straight lines, but a kind of arched back shape. However, there is a spoiler on the upper part of the rear of the car. The main reason is that our vehicle has good acceleration and high-speed performance, so we need such a thing to stabilize the posture of the vehicle during high-speed driving."

"In fact, when designing this spoiler, we also tried an active spoiler solution, which can automatically adjust according to the vehicle's speed and body posture, providing the vehicle with better speed performance and a certain degree of body center of gravity control."

"It's probably similar to the tail fin on an airplane, but after we actually made it, we found that the technology was quite difficult and prone to failure. Once a failure occurs, such as abnormal deviation, it is easy to cause the vehicle to lose control at high speeds, so we gave up this plan!"

"That's a shame, I personally like our active spoiler solution."

Xu Shenxue listened and watched at the same time. He felt that this SUV was very good. It already had the feeling of many domestic electric SUVs in the future!

As for later domestic electric vehicles, no matter how their performance is, most of them have good-looking appearances, and their interiors have more lights and screens than the last.

But don’t think that these are useless fancy things. In fact, if you put these electric cars together with a large number of fuel-powered cars from foreign car manufacturers, you will probably feel that they are things from two different eras!
The appearance and interior are actually very important. They are the key factors that determine whether most people buy a car.

At present, HaiLan Automobile is able to make the appearance of its electric vehicles similar to that of later domestically produced cars, which is already quite outstanding in Xu Shenxue's opinion.

The appearance of this SUV looks very sci-fi, just like the Hailan SEC when Xu Shenxue first saw it.

The appearance of the Hailan SEC is also quite sci-fi. As a coupe, its shape is very prominent among many coupes.

Especially because it is an electric car, there is no need for any air intake grille. Therefore, the front face of the Hailan SEC does not have a traditional air intake grille, but is a whole piece.

There are only two small air intakes below the headlights on both sides, which are used to cool the electrical system and provide fresh air for the air conditioning in the car.

This alone is enough to make people see at a glance the huge difference between the Hailan SEC and traditional cars.

Therefore, the sea blue SEC on the street is very recognizable... This car has no front air intake grille and no exhaust pipe.

The SUV model that Xu Shenxue saw today also continued this front face design, which looks very different from the front half of a traditional SUV.

"This car looks very good. It has a good appearance. It is luxurious and domineering while also having a sense of technology, and a sense of technology is very important."

Bao Yongyan said: "When we designed the exterior of the vehicle, we also took into account our potential customer base, which is still high-net-worth users. In terms of market positioning, we target high-end SUV models from luxury brands such as the X5 among traditional gasoline vehicles."

“Therefore, when designing the car model, we also focused on the two aspects of luxury and technology!”

Xu Shenxue was quite satisfied with the appearance of the car. He then opened the car door and took a look inside. The interior was also quite good. The extra-large touch screen was the iconic feature of Hailan Automobile, so it was naturally necessary to have it.

At this time, Bao Yongyan said: "We basically have all the auxiliary configurations that should be available, including heated seats, automatic seat adjustment, memory seats, air boost mode in the car, keyless entry, voice control start, automatic lights, heated and defogged rearview mirrors, etc., as well as passenger, rear and side airbags."

"In addition, there are adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, automatic emergency braking functions based on our automatic assisted driving suite, as well as the core automatic assisted driving function based on visual algorithms."

"In addition, we will also provide advanced automatic assisted driving options based on the fusion of lidar and visual algorithms on this model."

"More importantly, the chassis platform used by this SUV model is the same as that of the SEC model, so the technical difficulty is greatly reduced, and a large number of spare parts are common, which helps us significantly reduce R&D and manufacturing costs and control the price within a reasonable range."

"According to our estimate, this car will be released in the middle of this year. By then, the price of the standard pure electric dual-wheel drive version will be controlled at 550,000 yuan, and the price of the four-wheel drive version will be controlled at 650,000 yuan."

"At the same time, when we were developing this car, we were also developing the extended-range version. We reduced the battery allocation in the extended-range version and freed up some space to install a fuel generator to power the vehicle during long-distance driving."

Xu Shenxue sat in the car, looking around and listening to Bao Yongyan's comments. After a while, he said, "This car is generally OK, and the price is well controlled."

"Can we try this car now?"

Bao Yongyan said: "Of course it is possible. Our prototype car has completed basic research and development. The follow-up work is mainly to make some details, some adjustments to the appearance and interior, as well as the establishment of production lines and supply chain issues. But as for the car, it is now ready for use."

Not long after, they arrived at the test center next door and saw the test driver driving this pure electric, large SUV with a length of five meters.

After taking a quick look around a few times, Xu Shenxue sat in the passenger seat and the back seat to experience the ride himself.

During the experience, he tried connecting to his mobile phone to play music and watch movies.

After feeling that the overall experience was good, he simply got in the car and prepared to try it himself.

After getting in the car, I feel that the field of vision is similar to that of other large SUVs, but it is a little higher, so the field of vision is slightly better.

Of course, this improvement in vision is also very limited. In fact, the blind spots are all similar, and what should not be seen cannot be seen.

However, when the vehicle was just started, a 360-degree panoramic image of the vehicle driving at a low speed appeared on the central control screen.

I am quite interested in this Xu Shenxue. The previous Hailan SEC did not have this function. I did not expect that this function would be launched in the newly improved SUV model.

The 360-degree panoramic imaging function is a function that uses images captured by multiple cameras and combined together using an algorithm. It is a very typical graphic recognition and processing technology, and Zhiyun is an expert in this area!

In terms of graphic recognition and processing technology, if Zhiyun is second, there will definitely be no other manufacturer that dares to say it is first.

In terms of graphic recognition and processing, Zhiyun Group's specific applications include intelligent beauty photography technology, panoramic photo shooting mode, and character recognition and classification in albums.

Then there is the pure vision-assisted driving technology provided by the core unmanned driving project team and installed in the Hailan car.

As for this series of underlying technologies, Zhiyun is not using the so-called ordinary big data like other manufacturers, but AI!

These graphics processing algorithms are all trained using deep learning!

This alone has opened up a large gap between Zhiyun and other manufacturers in this field in terms of graphic recognition and processing technology.

Do you think other manufacturers don’t want to develop pure vision autonomous driving? They can’t do it...

Zhiyun has been working on graphic recognition technology for several years. It not only develops it on its own, but also acquires a large number of related companies to obtain technology and patent layout.

Among them are several companies that provide visual recognition algorithm chips to a large number of future car companies, including Tesla.

Then, we further integrated our self-developed technology and the technologies acquired from many companies, and finally came up with the pure vision-assisted driving technology solution used on Hailan Automobile... and a further advanced advanced driver assistance technology solution that combines lidar and pure vision, which also greatly increases the cost.

Because Zhiyun had made early preparations, it acquired a lot of technologies and patents from companies related to visual algorithms and lidar, and purchased a large number of patent walls in advance.

In this era, it is more difficult for other car companies to follow Zhiyun's example and develop pure vision solutions or lidar solutions than in the original time and space.

Xu Shenxue estimated that it would take Tesla several years to come up with it… because the companies that originally provided Tesla with visual recognition algorithm chips were all acquired by Zhiyun. Without visual algorithm chips, what can you do?

Let’s develop it slowly!

When Zhiyun is developing new technologies, it often likes to acquire a large number of related companies in advance. On the one hand, it is to solve patent and technical problems so as to facilitate integration and further development on this basis; on the other hand, it is also to lay out a patent wall in advance to block the pace of latecomers.

This is what was done in fingerprint recognition technology before.

The same is done for pure vision-assisted driving and lidar-assisted driving technology.

Similarly, the 3D face recognition technology and under-screen fingerprint technology that are currently under development are similar approaches.

This is also the reason why when Zhiyun Group launched some unique functions, later manufacturers saw them and wanted to imitate them, which made it difficult.

In addition to the high technical difficulty itself, it is also closely related to patent restrictions.

Of course, there are no patent restrictions for this 360-degree imaging. Traditional automobile manufacturers have already developed and applied it before, but it is not popular.

HaiLian Auto and the Intelligent Research Institute under Zhiyun Technology, the unmanned vehicle project team conducted joint research and development and came up with a self-developed 360-degree full-view imaging system, which was then installed on this SUV.

After seeing this little function, Xu Shenxue said to Bao Yongyan, who was sitting next to him in the passenger seat, "This little thing is pretty good. It can be used when driving at low speeds, especially when starting and parking, and when passing through complex curved alleys at low speeds. It can avoid scratches."

"It's good to use later, so let's add it to the SEC model."

Bao Yongyan said: "We have this plan. When we release the new model in the middle of the year, we will upgrade the SEC model to a certain extent. At that time, the upgrade package will include this 360-degree panoramic image."

“An extended-range version will also be released at the same time.”

After Xu Shenxue started the vehicle, he controlled it and moved it slowly forward.

This huge venue is the car testing center of Hailan Automobile. It has a wide enough venue and runway for vehicles to conduct basic performance tests.

After the car started, I felt that the accelerator pedal was quite good. Because it was in comfort mode when starting, the start was very smooth, without the experience of many electric cars in later generations suddenly rushing out when starting.

The electronic control system developed by Hailan Automobile, when adjusted to the comfort mode, will not give you a launch start even if you step on the accelerator a little harder at the start, but will still maintain a stable starting mode.

If you want to experience the strong push-back feeling brought by an electric car's 0-100-kilometer acceleration of three seconds, you have to adjust it to racing mode.

There are three modes for Hailan cars: comfort mode, performance mode, and racing mode to meet the needs of different driving scenarios.

During the driving process, Xu Shenxue also accelerated gradually. The whole feeling was very stable and comfortable. When passing some gravel sections in the test site, he also did not feel any bumps. Only when passing some obvious speed bumps did he feel slight vibrations.

This shock absorption system works well.

After driving the car for a few laps by himself, Xu Shenxue turned on the car's advanced automatic assisted driving function and let the car run a few laps by itself.

After the test, Xu Shenxue got out of the car and said: "This car is pretty good, I personally like it very much!"

Compared with the previous Hailan SEC, Xu Shenxue personally prefers this SUV. It has a generous and domineering appearance and is full of technology.

After thinking for a while, Xu Shenxue said, "You can ask the technical department to see if they can make a bulletproof version. If it can be used, I will also make a few."

Hearing what Xu Shenxue said, Bao Yongyan was immediately surprised: "Mr. Xu, if you have this idea, I will arrange it immediately. The bulletproof version will not have any technical problems. At most, the range will be reduced. But if you provide it to Mr. Xu for daily travel in Shenzhen, there will be no range problems!"

Although Xu Shenxue also had a Hailan SEC before, and you could see in the media that Xu Shenxue chose his own electric car as his vehicle, but that actually doesn't count.

The vehicles Xu Shenxue travels in nowadays are all bulletproof vehicles. Sometimes he rides in a bulletproof Maybach, and sometimes he rides in a bulletproof Volvo SUV.

He actually has quite a lot of bulletproof cars, and there are some in several cities he often visits.

Places like Qiongzhou Island, Tongcheng, Jingcheng, Hucheng, Jiangcheng, etc., usually have one or two bulletproof vehicles prepared, and Xu Shenxue would take them when he arrived.

Although it seems unnecessary, these things, like his large security team, are just a precaution.

So although Xu Shenxue also had a personal sea-blue SEC, he only drove it very few times. The limited times he drove it were for some public relations promotion and to take photos for reporters... After taking the photos, Xu Shenxue got out of the car and got into the bulletproof car.

Now Xu Shenxue is talking about making a bulletproof car, which means that in the future, Xu Shenxue may also choose this pure electric SUV for daily ride, which will bring considerable brand value to Hailan Automobile.

Who is Xu Shenxue? He is the richest man in the world!
The world's richest man is riding an electric car. As ordinary wealthy people, shouldn't high-net-worth clients also give it a try?
Furthermore, if you own a car, choosing to ride in a vehicle manufactured by another car manufacturer is somewhat detrimental to publicity.

When you promote how safe your own electric cars are, people may say: Your boss doesn’t even ride his own electric car, so why should we buy one?
He brags so much, but he doesn't even dare to sit...

HaiLan Automobile has ignored these comments before, but if Xu Shenxue chooses the bulletproof version of its own electric SUV as his car in the future, it can be promoted and talked about.

After testing the car, Xu Shenxue led his team back to the conference room in the administrative building, and listened to the report from Hailan Automobile's senior management team on the launch of the new SUV model and this year's new SEC model.

At the beginning of the report, it talked about the new SEC, but this year's so-called 13 SECs, there have been no changes in the core technology and the big heads.

The so-called improvements are actually modifications to some minor details exposed in the 12 models. Let’s fix the bugs... After all, it’s the first time to build a car, so there will be some minor problems.

Although these minor problems do not affect safety, they are somewhat annoying. For example, after actual mass production, some car owners reported that there was a problem with the glass window on the driver's seat and it could not be raised or lowered automatically. After detailed inspection, it was found that the waterproof design of the driver's door had some defects. When opening and closing the door on rainy days, especially when the glass is lowered, rainwater will enter a part and cause an interface inside to become damp and corroded.

In addition, the memory function of the electric seat is difficult to adjust and requires complex operations to make adjustments.

Many car owners even reported that the sound of the turn signal of the Hailan SEC was a bit too frequent, which made people feel uncomfortable... After detailed testing, it was found that this horn would emit some high-frequency sound waves, which when mixed together gave people a very uncomfortable feeling.

There are actually quite a lot of similar minor problems... In response to the problems reported by these car owners, Hailan Automobile carried out loophole-plugging improvements in the subsequent production process and made design changes in 13 models to directly eliminate the problems.

In addition, a so-called free upgrade campaign was carried out for vehicles that have already been sold. When the vehicle was returned to the 4S store for maintenance, some problems that could be modified would be modified free of charge.

Things like vehicles are also industrial products and will go through a gradual process of maturity.

However, even so, the SEC model is relatively mature, safe, and has withstood the test of the market.

In order to successfully list in the EU, the United States, Japan and other markets, Hailan SEC conducted various rigorous tests locally, including various collision tests.

Its safety performance is quite good!
In particular, people were once worried about problems such as battery fires. Because Hailan Automobile has done a lot of technical work in this regard, and even compromised on battery life to a large extent for battery safety, coupled with the application of new technologies such as automatic cooling and fire extinguishing systems and charging safety management systems, the safety of Hailan Automobile has been greatly improved.

If the safety is not good, the car will not be able to pass the rigorous verification in various overseas markets and finally obtain the listing approval in the local market.

Therefore, the new model of Hailan SEC does not require too many changes, even the core framework cannot be moved. Once it is moved, it will need to go through a very troublesome new round of various tests.

The new Hailan SEC model has not undergone major changes, so subsequent production and launch will be easier. In order to maintain its brand characteristics, Hailan Automobile will not even promote terms such as the so-called 13th model.

Therefore, strictly speaking, there is no 12th or 13th model of Hailan SEC. Anyway, Hailan Automobile only sells the latest model of Hailan SEC. There is no so-called difference between the era and model, only the configuration.

The continuous improvement of the Hailan SEC Coupe and the launch of new models are relatively easy.

However, as a brand-new product, the SUV model needs complex and large-scale publicity work before it can be put on the market. At the same time, production also requires the establishment of a new production line, and then it needs to be sent to various domestic and overseas testing and certification agencies for testing.

The overall work is still quite complicated.

Xu Shenxue doesn't care about these specific tasks, he only looks at the results.

When discussing the specific marketing plan, Hailan’s marketing department also finalized the name of this SUV: Hailan SEV.

It is scheduled to hold a press conference in May this year to officially release the product and accept pre-orders.

Before that, HaiLan SEC also started to be delivered in overseas markets in February.

In early February, Hailan Automobile launched the first Hailan SEC delivery ceremony for the European market in Berlin, Germany.

As the first batch of vehicles delivered in overseas markets, and the European market is also one of the most important overseas markets for Hailan Automobile, Bao Yongyan personally went to Berlin to preside over the delivery ceremony.

This announces that the Hailan SEC, the advanced automatic assisted driving electric vehicle that represents the most advanced, sci-fi, and even the most advanced technology, has officially entered the European market!
Many local Europeans were stunned after seeing the sci-fi-feeling Sea Blue SEC. They have lived in an environment with fuel vehicles all their lives, but have never seen an electric car that is so technological and seems like a product of the future.

Its advanced automatic assisted driving made a number of Europeans express their shock.

After the first batch of vehicles were delivered in Germany, a large number of local news media in Europe reported the news... Electric cars are not uncommon, but the advanced automatic assisted driving technology equipped in the Hailan SEC is very rare. Not to mention ordinary people, even the reporters who went to experience it were shocked.

I was really shocked!

Up to now, other car manufacturers are still confused about this technology and have not even figured out the technical principles.

In other words, they know the technical principles of autonomous driving technology, but they cannot understand why HaiLan SEC's autonomous driving is so good?
They are all cameras, just with an algorithm added. Why can't those made by other manufacturers work, while those made by HaiLan SEC can easily cope with various environments?

The root of this problem actually lies in Zhiyun Group's exclusive artificial intelligence technology. It is also an autonomous driving algorithm, but the autonomous driving algorithm developed by Zhiyun Group is different from the autonomous driving algorithm developed by other companies, such as Google.

This involves deeper artificial intelligence technology, which is something a large number of automobile manufacturers are helpless about: they have to cross industries!

When various local media in Europe reported on the incident, many car manufacturers also felt a certain sense of crisis, but what is more interesting is that they felt the huge future potential of electric vehicles.

They are all thinking about making electric cars.

After all, no one says that electric cars must have awesome autonomous driving technology!

Tesla doesn’t have autonomous driving technology, but it still sells very well in North America... and its gross profit margin is quite amazing.

Tesla is a listed company and a lot of its financial information is public, so its astonishing gross profit will also be announced.

Although HaiLan SEC is a private company and never publishes financial statements, let alone manufacturing costs and gross profit margins, no one is stupid. Many car manufacturers take apart their cars for research, and then calculate other costs and come to a basic conclusion.

HaiLan SEC's gross profit margin is at least over 30%, which is higher than Tesla's gross profit margin.

This makes many car manufacturers extremely jealous!

(End of this chapter)