Keywords: 1: sustainable development
In the past month, extreme weather occurred frequently all over the world, which made the first forum with the theme of sustainable development quite necessary and appropriate. Volvo officials say that by 2025, the carbon emissions of bicycles will be reduced by 40% compared with 20 18 years.
Aside from these specific targets, considering that China is facing the big goal of achieving carbon neutrality in 2030 and 2060, and that cars rank second in carbon emissions in all industries in China, it is admirable for Volvo to put forward this difficult goal at this time, but the impression at the C end is not so strong. In other words, safety and environmental protection is really the DNA carved into the bone marrow by this brand.
What does Volvo plan to do? In short, carbon emissions from manufacturing and logistics should be reduced.
On the one hand, its three domestic production bases (Chengdu, Daqing, Taizhou) and factories of all first-class suppliers must use clean electricity such as water, wind and solar energy. Taking 2025 as an example, the utilization rate of renewable resources in manufacturing links of plastics, steel and aluminum will reach 25%, 25% and 40% respectively.
On the other hand, Volvo requires that all models produced in China factory should reach the localization rate of 65,438+000%, and the distance between the origin of core components and Volvo's three major factories should not exceed 400 kilometers, so as to reduce carbon emissions in logistics by increasing the loading rate and shortening the transportation distance.
Can Volvo's goal be achieved? Personally, I am optimistic.
On the one hand, our country is accelerating the adjustment of energy structure, and plans to reduce the proportion of thermal power generation from the current 70% to 50% by 2025, with clean energy accounting for half, and further increase the proportion of clean energy to over 70% by 2030;
On the other hand, in the on-site supplier exhibition area, many upstream supply chain enterprises demonstrated a series of recycling technologies of different resources, such as rare earth materials recycling in the three-power system, steering wheel made of bio-leather, sitting basin made of natural fiber, steering rod connecting rod made of plastic, fabric made of recycled waste plastic, etc., and these technologies are very mature and have begun to enter the mass production stage.
In other words, Volvo took the lead in proposing this goal in the OEM, and then driven by demand, it promoted the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. In the medium and long term, such a demonstration effect will inevitably promote the accelerated transformation of the industry, which may be more valuable and meaningful to the automobile industry, even the national strategy, and even the fate of mankind than the goal itself.
Keyword 2: Electrification
When it comes to sustainable development, electrification obviously has to be mentioned. In this forum, Yuan Xiaolin, senior president of Volvo and president and CEO of Asia-Pacific region, also gave a clear goal, that is, Volvo will become a global luxury pure electric vehicle brand in 2030.
This is also the most radical solution proposed by traditional luxury car brands, but it is not unexpected for Volvo. They really don't have much obsession and psychological burden during the transition period.
The core of supporting Volvo's electrification transformation is the brand-new SPA2 architecture. In the ten-second short film broadcast before the forum, the following information appeared:
1. Re-optimize the vehicle structure layout and safety layout based on electrification;
2. Equipped with central computing electronic and electrical architecture to realize the separation of software and hardware and the rapid iteration of OTA for the whole vehicle;
3. The integrated operating system of Volvo Cars. OS is mainly based on Google Android ecological development and supports open API；.
4. Improve the battery cell layout, reduce the battery pack thickness and optimize the internal space;
5.Luminar lidar and NVIDIA Orin high computing power chips are standard;
Su Qing, president of Huawei Intelligent Driving, once said that Huawei (represented by a technology company) and traditional OEMs have different understandings of electric vehicles. The latter's cognition is that it is still a car, but the energy and driving form have changed, and Huawei's understanding is that it is an intelligent terminal that can drive, and intelligence is its fundamental attribute.
From the perspective of SPA2 architecture, Volvo has also begun to accept the idea that the former is now proved to be more recognized by consumers, which may actually be the most essential progress.
The strongest consumer perception is undoubtedly the hardware part of Article 5, which has appeared in Weilai ET7 and R ES33 before, and is basically the highest specification in the industry at present.
Volvo's CitySafety system has a good experience and reputation in L2 ADAS, but in the field of higher-level driver assistance promoted by new forces, the traditional OEM actually lags behind. Now, Volvo is once again the standard bearer among them!
In addition, the "standard" published by Volvo not only reflects its obsession with vehicle safety again, but also further triggers the technical route dispute between lidar fusion scheme and Tesla pure vision scheme. The NOA function of FSD Beta V9.0, which Tesla has just promoted overseas, is Tesla's great advantage as a pioneer in the data field and its own ecological builder, which is precisely the disadvantage of traditional OEMs.
For these two technical routes, from the perspective of redundancy, I personally prefer the fusion scheme, but I must admit or realize that once Tesla's scheme is passed, it will form a huge advantage in cost and further transform it into a competitive advantage in the market, from Tesla super factory to starships that rely on a single engine for landing and recycling. This is exactly where Musk is very good at.
In addition to data-driven, the most difficult technical goal mentioned above is the electronic and electrical architecture and integrated operating system involving software. Last year, Volkswagen executives admitted that they were 8- 10 years behind Tesla in the field of electronic and electrical architecture, but now Volvo's goal is to reach or even surpass Tesla's latest Model Y. For traditional OEMs with different enterprise architecture, R&D system and technical DNA, the difficulty can be imagined.
As for the operating system of VOVOCAR S. OS, there is no detailed explanation at present. According to a few words at the scene, it should still be based on the bottom of Android. Interestingly, the PPT at the scene shows that "open collaboration is far better than going it alone", but in the written materials given, "At present, VOVOCAR S. OS has 400 registered developers and more than 200 software development teams. At present, about 30% of the software of this operating system is developed internally by Volvo, and the follow-up target is 60%. " This description is slightly contradictory, and the road map in ecological construction needs further observation.
Of course, on the other hand, the more difficult data and software are, the greater the benefits will be. Senior Director of Volvo Asia Pacific R&D also specifically mentioned product development cycle and rapid iterative optimization at the scene. It gives a familiar example: in the past, it took at least a few months to develop an air conditioning comfort model for high temperature and humidity in summer, and it was necessary to pull a number of related suppliers, dock and cooperate, develop tests, and then add new functions to the model; After the separation of software and hardware, this only adds hundreds to thousands of lines of code, and it takes only a few weeks at most from development and testing to OTA remote upgrade.
From the traditional giants such as Bosch and SAIC to the tens of thousands of software development teams, to the drastic changes in the recruitment structure of automobile manufacturers; From Tesla and Huawei's attacks on traditional OEMs, to Volvo executives' direct invitation, all kinds of software talents are welcome to join the forum. ...
Software defines cars, which is by no means empty talk.
Keyword 3: New service
In the last part of the forum, Volvo Asia Pacific executives responsible for sales and after-sales and car owners' representatives made a series of sharing around the service system.
Yes, when Weilai established a deep enough brand moat with the concept of "being good to car owners is not a means, but an end", when Weilai's brand-new marketing model of user operation and car owners' reputation was a great success, almost all enterprises were talking about service and user-oriented enterprises.
However, Volvo actually has certain innate advantages in this respect. On the one hand, its relatively high-end positioning has been well consolidated and developed in the past five years. On the other hand, among the traditional luxury brands, Volvo's sense of "luxury" (mainly understood as heroism and local tyrants) is almost the weakest, and its elegant, exquisite and high-quality owner image is just the closest to the new high-end head forces such as Weilai and Tesla.
In terms of specific service system and quality, Volvo's six major services have been online for one year, as follows:
1, make an appointment for quick maintenance: make an appointment for customer basic maintenance, and deliver the car within 1 hour;
2. Free shuttle bus: provide free shuttle bus within 20 kilometers;
3. Exclusive scooter: During the three-guarantee period, the warranty stays for more than 3 days (5 days stipulated in the three-guarantee law), and brand scooters are provided free of charge.
4. Long-term business: make an appointment for basic maintenance, and extend the business hours to 8: 00 am to 8: 00 pm;
5. Lifetime warranty of accessories: you only need to pay in one lump sum to replace the accessories specified by the original factory and enjoy the lifetime warranty;
6. All-weather guard: Volvo on-call car butler provides Volvo car owners with 7*24-hour one-click service, including: one-click call, SOS emergency call, automatic collision help, road rescue assistance, anti-theft notification and other functions.
From the on-site introduction, the six services have been widely approved and supported by car owners in the past year. Among them, 100% free car pick-up and delivery service has covered Volvo dealers nationwide. By the end of May, 2002 1 year, Volvo had provided more than190,000 services to more than110,000 car owners. According to the calculation of taking and delivering 20 kilometers by bicycle, the service mileage has reached at least 3.86 million kilometers, which is equivalent to 77% of the mileage of expressway in 2020.
In addition, if a worker wants to do a good job, he must sharpen his tools first. In order to improve the service quality, Volvo will also complete the installation of novice systems and transparent workshop services for 270 dealers in the whole network in July. This is a digital system that realizes real-time data access management among users, distributors and original equipment manufacturers, aiming at