Beijing Automotive Shen Peng: How to Create a New Label for Traditional Car Companies?

On January 5, the Chi-New 2022 New Energy Vehicle Trend Forum was held in Haikou, hosted by eCar.

In the roundtable forum titled "How to create brand differentiation for automobile enterprises", Shen Peng, deputy general manager of BAIC Marketing Company, introduced Beijing Automobile's new approach and new thinking on this issue.

As the first brand to develop new energy vehicles in China's auto industry, BAIC New Energy used to be a benchmark in the industry, ranking first in domestic new energy vehicle sales for seven consecutive years before 2019. The company has been in the forefront of the new energy vehicle market for seven consecutive years until 2019. Because of this, BAIC is still a company that can't get out of the way when it comes to the label "new energy vehicle".

But it's a pity that although the label of "new energy" has been stabilized early, when the whole new energy vehicle market started to rise in recent years, BAIC's new energy models have entered a continuous decline.

What's more unfortunate is that, when the state with the intelligent present deep binding, stand firm new energy label BAIC in the intelligent on the lack of a sense of presence.

In the face of this status quo, Shen Peng frankly said at the forum, "the past BAIC new energy focused on the B-side of the market, and achieved a certain degree of success, but also stop at this achievement". So, since the launch of the new Beijing brand in October 2019, they have also begun to identify "intelligence" as a key breakthrough direction.

At the Shanghai Auto Show in April 2021, BAIC New Energy's premium brand, Extreme Fox, debuted its Huawei HI version of the Alpha S in cooperation with Huawei. With a video of near-L4-level autonomous driving, Extreme Fox became the most talked-about brand at the entire show.

After the new-energy models were labeled as intelligent by virtue of the cooperation with Huawei, Shen Peng said what they are doing now is "to make a general rise in the intelligentization of oil vehicles as well.

Beijing Auto's new model, the Beijing Magic, was officially unveiled at the Guangzhou Auto Show in 2021, and it is the beginning of Beijing Auto's efforts to shape the label of fuel-vehicle intelligence.

According to Shen Peng, in this car, Beijing Auto has created "three firsts and two new ones":

The first fuel model equipped with Huawei's Hongmeng OS;

The first model equipped with a 60-inch super-large AR-HUD system in the 100,000-150,000 price range;

The first model equipped with electronic exterior mirrors;

At the same time, this model is born from BAIC's new car-making platform - BMFA Magic Cube Architecture, equipped with the latest Magic Core Power 1.5T engine, which has been awarded as one of the top ten engines of the year of 2021 by the "Heart of China". The latest Magic Core Power 1.5T engine.

Perhaps it is out of confidence in the above configuration, Shen Peng bluntly said that this car will reach "the ceiling of fuel car intelligence in the price range of 100,000 to 150,000".

However, due to architectural reasons, there has always been a view in the market that fuel cars are naturally less intelligent than electric cars. On this debate, Shen Peng said, or should be viewed from two sides.

"In L3 or higher-level autonomous driving, fuel cars can't compete with EVs due to the limitations of the underlying architecture. But in the L2 level of automatic driving that has already landed, the difference between fuel cars and EVs in terms of hardware configuration is not great, and the level of intelligence is not at all inferior to EVs."

Before the debut of the Magic Cube, in order to realize the brand renaissance of the whole Beijing Automobile, 2021, Beijing Automobile had released a complete set of product planning. In this plan, Beijing Auto said it would "define demand by scene" in the next three years, and provide users with a full-scene traveling experience through four rounds of product upgrades. And in this, the magic formula and intelligent labeling is just one aspect of its planning.

According to Beijing Auto's plan, in its four rounds of product upgrades:

The first round is to optimize the existing A-class sedan.

In the first half of 2021, Beijing Auto upgraded previously launched economy models such as the BEIJING-U5 and the BEIJING-EU5.

The second round is to launch the Beijing Magic Cube, and BEIJING-X7 PLUS targeting the middle-aged urban middle class.Intelligence and comfort are the product labels it focuses on;

The third round is the product BEIJING-X3 targeting the Z-generation backwaters, with personalized design, surging power, and a rich entertainment experience as the main focus of this model;

The fourth round is that from 2023 onwards, Beijing Auto will create full-scenario products to serve more precise groups of people, such as products for the new generation in the workplace, gaming enthusiasts, budding parents, and full-time mothers, providing more unique solutions.

What kind of brand Beijing Auto will eventually become after four rounds of product upgrades remains to be seen.