In the automobile enterprises with the prefix of the three major countries, their leaders all want to spell out a "red flag" of Xu Liuping within a limited term. That means going down in history in the whole history of China’s automobile development, enjoying a great reputation, or really "retiring after success".
At least for the moment, Zhu Huarong, the chairman of Changan Automobile, has always had the greatest chance. In the brand layout of new energy vehicles, Changan Automobile is really far ahead of its rivals. Let Aouita and Deep Blue go first, followed by Qiyuan. Such strategic courage and reform is definitely a major strategic layout that a leader with real strength dares to have.
Only now, Aouita is still fighting for a high-end reputation, and Qiyuanji’s power of Chang ‘an Cluster is staggering. Deep blue should have been the sales pillar of Changan Automobile’s new energy products at this time, but it was empty and windy, and nothing happened. In this way, why "reach the future first"?
The previous products are all weak, and "G318" is a must for the whole opponent’s life?
The United States has the famous Highway No.66, while in China, there is a national highway No.318 called "I must drive in this life". These roads have already transcended the essence and become a cultural symbol. In our country, this G318, which was built in 1950, runs from the coast of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to Tibet along the 30 north latitude line, and is the longest national highway in China at present. From sea level to the roof of the world, it is known as "the landscape avenue of China people".
However, after March 18th, 2024, if people use search engines to search on the Internet, the results that people can get will be occupied by businesses, and what people can see at first sight is the SUV“G318 "just listed by Deep Blue Automobile.
It was on this day that Deep Blue released the "Hard Off-Road" SUV G318. Although it will not be available until the second quarter, this model has successfully attracted the attention of netizens with various "out-of-position" publicity campaigns, but it has been followed by many consumers and even the doubts in the automobile industry.
This "hard-core" SUV with no girders and a load-bearing body dares to add the label "Who says hard-core must have girders". As we all know, from G500 to herdsman, from 300/400/500 to now, the real mainstream hard-core off-road SUVs all adopt non-loaded bodies. To this end, after the release of G318, BYD Equation Leopard offered a "don’t be hard" advice to Deep Blue.
For the time being, the non-loaded body can have higher frame torsional strength and repairability to cope with metal fatigue, and a simple comparison of the parameters known at present between Deep Blue G318 and Equation Leopard 5 can also give us a clue. Both of them also use a 1.5T engine. The total motor power of the former is 430Ps, while that of the latter is 660Ps；. Although they are different in body mass, the equation Leopard 5 engine with plug-in hybrid can participate in power output at the same time; And the former has a approach angle of 27 and a departure angle of 31; The latter is 35 and 32, and the real hard-core strength seems to be clear at a glance.
With the wind of "hard-core off-road SUV" rolling up in the automobile industry, the dark blue G318, which has been late for a long time and has not yet reached the battlefield, will be completed this time, and I am afraid it will be many eyeing competitors such as tanks and Equation Leopard. In contrast, they have firmly occupied consumers’ minds and markets on the point of "hard faction".
G318, this is the third product of Deep Blue. Although it is not too early to start, the deep blue brand has gone through many "detours". In July 2022, its first model, Deep Blue SL03, was priced at 168,900-699,900 yuan at the beginning of its listing. In 2023, it was reduced to 145,900-191,900 yuan; By the time the 2024 model goes on the market, the guide price has been changed to 139,900-173,900 yuan, and the terminal has a discount of more than 10,000 yuan.
Early users reacted strongly to Deep Blue SL03 "Forced to Tu Longdao". Although to some extent, this is related to the decline in the cost of market involution and supply chain, more users think that they are paying for the "honey confidence" pricing strategy that the brand side does not look at the market. What’s even more "terrible" is that in the used car market, there are merchants who write down the price of the 2022 dark blue SL03 quasi-new car with a mileage of 0.8 thousand kilometers, which is less than 100 thousand yuan.
While the owners of Deep Blue are constantly encountering "backstab", the SL03 and S7 models launched by Deep Blue rank 300-600 on the quality feedback websites such as "Car Quality Network", which is very low. The main complaints come from the car body accessories and electrical appliances, engine generators, and other problems also exist at the same time. Some media once recorded the real remarks of a dark blue S7 owner with the title of "6000 words detailing why I regret buying a dark blue S7, and I won’t recommend people to buy a dark blue S7", including the automatic deceleration of high-speed intelligent driving errors and the abnormal mutual exclusion of functions. Each of these problems is not small, but it has not attracted the attention of the brand. When Deep Blue S7 upgraded OTA to version 2.0, these problems were not solved, and many car owners were locked in the car for more than an hour because there was no prior warning.
According to media statistics, in the first half of 2023, China’s automobile brand quality ranking (new energy) was ranked at the bottom. This means that deep blue can only attract consumers by its "face value" and cost performance. Although its initial growth is indeed rapid, it is difficult to last, and it is hard to say that it has been successful in the automobile industry. And this G318, it is also afraid that it will be the "must drive in this life" of the opponent.
Wang Jun is in command, and deep blue has changed from "edge" to "future"
At the beginning of the rise of new energy vehicles, Changan Automobile once hoped to launch a "gravity" sequence focusing on the middle and high end through UNI product series. However, the strategy was quickly adjusted, and it changed again and again. In the end, this sequence was stuffed into many original V-standard fuel vehicles, low-end electric vehicles and even pickup trucks of Changan Automobile, and it has gathered into a pot of "hodgepodge". At the same time, Changan Automobile has also offered three new energy automobile brands, namely, Aouita, which focuses on high-end products, and Deep Blue and Qiyuan, which are aimed at ordinary people.
Aouita was registered and established in July 2018. It was originally Changan Weilai New Energy, where Changan Automobile and Weilai Automobile each held 50% shares. Later Weilai gradually reduced its shares, and Changan introduced Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited and other investors, and introduced Huawei technology blessing. Although many media reported that "Deep Blue Auto was released in April, 2022, and it is the explorer of Shangri-La Plan of Changan Automobile and Tian Shu Plan of Beidou", the eye-catching survey showed that the registration time of Deep Blue in May, 2018 was even earlier than that of Aouita.
At the beginning of its establishment, Deep Blue’s chairman was Yang Dayong, then vice president of Changan Automobile, and its CEO was Deng Chenghao. At that time, people who didn’t have important positions in Changan Automobile’s brands seemed to be temporarily arranged here, just like a "distribution center for marginal people".
However, as "Gravity" failed to become an independent brand, Deep Blue stood out as a new energy vehicle in Chang ‘an. Yang Dayong, who made great achievements, was once in charge of Changan New Energy. However, as he was promoted to the position of executive vice president of Changan Automobile and transferred to the joint venture of Changan Ford, the position of chairman of Deep Blue Automobile was handed over to Wang Xiaofei soon. In February 2023, Wang Xiaofei began to appear as the chairman of Deep Blue Automobile.
Wang Xiaofei, born in 1982, is young and promising. Since Tsinghua University graduated from Changan Automobile in 2005, he has served as deputy general manager, product marketing director and deputy general manager of the company’s product planning department. In 2020, Wang Xiaofei was appointed as the general manager of Changan Auchan. In two years, he led the team to develop hot-selling models such as X5, X7 and X7 PLUS of Changan Auchan, and pioneered innovative functions such as racing mode, karaoke inside the car and voice outside the car, which made Auchan become a "dark horse".
The eye-catching achievements also made Wang Xiaofei promoted to vice president of Changan Automobile in early 2022. After he served as the chairman of Deep Blue Automobile, he led Deep Blue to release the "super extended range" technology and brand-new intelligent solutions, and "went to sea" in the Thai market, which also laid the foundation for Changan Automobile’s strategy of "all rivers run into the sea".
However, after the initial difficult "groping", Changan Automobile found that Aouita and Deep Blue were far from the expected sales target. In 2023, the targets of Aouita and Deep Blue are 100,000 and 400,000 respectively; However, the actual sales volume is only 27,000 vehicles and 136,900 vehicles.
So in January 2024, Wang Jun, president of Changan Automobile, took over the post of chairman of Deep Blue Automobile from Wang Xiaofei. One month before this, Zhu Huarong, the chairman of Changan Automobile, announced that he would personally take charge of Aouita and concurrently serve as the chairman. Qiyuan, which did not set up the company independently, was handed over to Ye Pei, executive vice president of Changan Automobile.
This is equivalent to the first, second and third leaders of Changan Automobile, and each of them supervises the new energy sector. The frequent personnel changes of two new energy brands, Aouita and Deep Blue, may, to a certain extent, explain the dissatisfaction of Changan Automobile and its belief that "success or death".
At present, Aouita, with only two products and a starting price of more than 300,000 yuan, is destined to have a flag status far greater than the actual significance. Therefore, Deep Blue and Qiyuan, who can shoulder the heavy responsibility of Changan Automobile’s sales in the new energy era, will become the core of "real power".
In 2024, the sales targets of Aouita and Deep Blue were pragmatically lowered to 90,000 vehicles and 280,000 vehicles respectively; Qiyuan is250,000 vehicles. This arrangement clearly shows that Changan Automobile has given high hopes to Deep Blue. Whether this big ship can forge a real "new quality productivity" to meet the assessment and sail smoothly in the new era, Aouita is a symbol of technology and high-end, and the sales of deep blue is the key to landing in the market.
After all, Wang Jun, president of Changan Automobile, is at the helm of Deep Blue Automobile. Wang Jun, born in 1972, has served as deputy director and director of the scientific research management department of Changan Automobile Technology Center, director of the scientific research management department of the Ministry of Science and Technology, vice president of the Automotive Engineering Research Institute and director of the product planning department. Manager of product management department of marketing department of Changan Automobile Sales Co., Ltd., director, deputy minister and minister of product planning department of marketing department; Assistant to the President of Changan Automobile, General Manager of Changan Automobile Sales Co., Ltd. and Vice President of Changan Automobile.
Now, as the president of Changan Automobile, he is only "one step away" from the summit. If the time is set back to June 2020, Zhu Huarong, who took over the post of Chairman of Changan Automobile from Zhang Baolin, was the post of President of Changan Automobile; Zhang Baolin, who was promoted to the position of Chairman of Changan Automobile in September 2017, was also the President of Changan Automobile. In the development of this enterprise, there has always been such a personnel practice.
It is worth noting that Zhu Huarong, the chairman born in 1965, is now 59 years old, less than two years away from the legal retirement age of 60. Even if the extension is appropriately relaxed, the term of office has been counted down. In October 2020, when he handed over the post of President of Changan Automobile to Wang Jun, I’m afraid he had already chosen the echelon.
Zhu Huarong has accumulated nearly 40 years’ experience in the automobile industry. Under his leadership, Changan Automobile became the first automobile enterprise with its own brand sales exceeding 20 million vehicles. If he can make further achievements in the new energy, then he will be able to "retire". In view of this, in any case, Wang Jun needs to use the deep blue, which has become the "new energy future" of Changan Automobile, to clear its name and prepare for taking over.
At the committee of 100 Forum on Electric Vehicles in China in 2024, Wang Jun said in his keynote speech that the cost of new energy vehicles is high and the scale effect has not been fully revealed. Taking 2023 as an example, the industry is selling 403 new energy vehicles, with an average monthly sales of only 1,500 vehicles, and there are very few passenger car brands that can really make a profit now. "Changan Automobile has invested a total of 230 billion yuan in the fields of new energy and intelligence in the past decade, which has injected a strong impetus into the development of the new energy automobile industry," he said.
However, it is not known when such a huge investment will be made in three new energy brands in Chang ‘an. His solution is, "we should accelerate the application and promotion of new quality productivity in the automobile industry, accelerate the process of globalization, and further reduce costs and improve efficiency through technological progress and industrial scale development." It is not difficult to infer from his speech that the scale, cost and efficiency of Deep Blue will become one of the key barometers for Changan Automobile to "promote new quality productivity".
"We should adhere to people-oriented, user-oriented and scientific and technological innovation, and cultivate and develop new quality productivity," he stressed at the end of his speech. However, from the previous word-of-mouth of a large number of users, there is a big gap between the products of Deep Blue and the needs of users, and "people-oriented" is more than just "star manager-oriented".
Deng Chenghao’s perfect personal show, products "rely on the wind" rather than users.
Deng Chenghao, the "star manager" who partnered with Wang Jun, had previously been the CEO of Deep Blue Automobile for two terms. The new generation of technical experts trained in the Changan system and the youngest vice president of Changan Automobile are excellent enough.
Deng Chenghao, born in 1986, holds a doctorate in engineering and a senior engineer title. He joined Changan Automobile after graduating from Tsinghua University Vehicle Engineering Department with a master’s degree in 2011. He has been devoted to the development of new energy vehicles and the research of three electric technologies for more than ten years. He used to be the deputy general manager of the power development department of Chongqing Changan New Energy Automobile Technology Co., Ltd., the secretary of the first party branch, the project director of C385EV-E series, and the general manager and party secretary of Chongqing Changan New Energy Automobile Technology Co., Ltd.
In the information that he participated in the selection of "Top Ten Chongqing Economic Innovators of the Year in 2022", he wrote, "In 2022, under his leadership, Deep Blue Automobile rose against the trend, and the scale of production and sales achieved historic growth, with production exceeding 230,000 vehicles and sales of nearly 220,000 vehicles. Through the coordinated development of value chains such as R&D, supply and marketing, it effectively promoted the upstream and downstream employment of Chongqing’s regional industrial chain and made positive contributions to the rapid development of Chongqing’s automobile industry and economy." Technically, he led Changan Automobile to apply for 734 patents in 2022, and mastered more than 400 core technologies such as new energy "Big Three Electricity", and a number of core technologies were equipped with SL03 to achieve full-scale mass production applications, and the related performance reached the leading level in the industry, such as "the world’s first micronucleus high-frequency pulse heating technology, and the battery can heat up by 20℃ in -30℃ environment".
However, Deng Chenghao, a new generation who idolizes Jobs, shows a different style from a "low-key elderly person" like Wang Jun, but is more consistent with the preference of Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile. Both of them have real-name authentication in Weibo, and he prefers to use public social media such as Sina Weibo as the "main battlefield", maintaining the frequency of several Weibo updates every day. Wang Junze, on the other hand, remained invisible and did not publicly authenticate his account in Weibo.
There have been media reports that in the first event of Deep Blue, Yang Dayong’s introduction of this new brand took only 5 minutes and less than 800 words; Deng Chenghao spent 50 minutes and 8000 words sharing the technology of EPA1 platform of Deep Blue car and C385, the first model.
Today’s Deng Chenghao is more progressive. At the launch of Deep Blue G318, he gave a 157-minute speech, which made it more like a perfect solo show with frequent golden sentences. Regardless of the large-scale questioning caused by the industry and netizens; Only in the introduction of deep blue super extended range technology, the "10 first and second industries in the world are unique", can this be objectively tenable?
As a technical background, Deng Chenghao may have enough reasons to be fully confident. However, in the press conference, he ridiculed Huawei, compared BYD, and even compared his ideals. The remarks that he put all the extended-range technologies at his feet were evaluated as "propaganda has no bottom line". The most typical example is the sentence "I don’t know that the extended range of the engine is by no means a super extended range, and Deep Blue is the only brand in the mainstream extended range brand that has a deep grasp of engine technology".
Deng Chenghao’s grandiloquence is not the first time. Before that, he once said that "the mixed ceiling is a deep blue super extended range", while "Tesla’s products are old-fashioned" and even thought that "the sales volume of SL03 should be at least 178 thousand". In fact, according to the data of the Association, in 2023, the total sales volume of deep blue SL03 extended-range and pure electric vehicles was 68,000, with an average of less than 6,000 vehicles per month.
Before Changan Automobile announced the goal of 280,000 Deep Blue vehicles in 2024, Deng Chenghao had set a "global 450,000" Flag for himself and his team in Weibo. Considering that the compact SUV C857 launched as the fourth model of Deep Blue needs to be launched in the third quarter, even if this car can further lower the threshold of deep blue hybrid models to 100,000 yuan, it will be extremely difficult to help Deep Blue achieve its annual goal. Because in the first two months of 2024, the cumulative sales volume of Deep Blue was 24,000 units; Based on the calculation of 280,000 vehicles in the whole year, this requires its monthly sales volume to reach 25,600 vehicles; In 2023, the average monthly sales volume of Deep Blue was only 10,600 units.
The slogan of Deep Blue Auto is "reaching the future first", but what people see is probably more "reaching first" by star managers than "reaching first" by brands, products or users.
It is almost impossible for Aouita to become the next red flag, but it can add the best footnote to Zhu Huarong’s perfect career. The dark blue car that wants to "reach the future first" will be the most important "achievement" of Wang Jun. The premise is that deep blue can "don’t be hard" and occupy a place in the hearts of consumers in a down-to-earth and solid manner.
As three new energy vehicle brands of Changan Automobile, which are deepening the reform and facing the future, Qiyuan has a high sales volume and Aouita has a high reputation, while Deep Blue has the most long-term ambition. Deep Blue Automobile is people-oriented and "waiting" for the future!
Producer, Trn Quang Diu, Editor-in-Chief, Wu Zhuwei
Author | Trn Quang Diu, Luo Zuxing
Image | Source Network Operation Jiang Xiaowen
