AITO asked the new M7 to break through 80,000 one month after its listing, and quickly became a strong dark horse in the new energy vehicle market. It is worth mentioning that in October, AITO series delivered 12,700 new cars, among which AITO series delivered 10,547 new cars, and the delivery of a single model exceeded 10,000 in a single month, reaching a record high. Recently, Celestial Auto executives said in an interview that Celestial Auto is making every effort to achieve "vertical quantity" in production and delivery from supply chain to manufacturing.
Technology integration innovation behind the product craze
As the first sample to explore the new model of the industry, the successful creation of AITO series can not be separated from the cooperation between Huawei and Cyrus, and both sides basically take care of the family’s "baby".
According to sources who understand the cooperation between Huawei and Celeste, Celeste has invested more than 20 billion yuan in the field of new energy vehicles in the past few years, and invested more than 12 billion yuan in AITO boundary projects alone; Huawei’s research and development of automobile-related technologies began as early as 2009, with an annual investment of about 10 billion yuan and over 7,000 direct R&D personnel.
Especially in the aspect of extended range technology, compared with Huawei, which has its own aura, Celeste Automobile, which is not obvious in cooperation, applies its most advanced technology to the series of products. For example, the range extender, the core of the power system, has been developed to the third generation, with the highest oil-electricity conversion rate of 3.44kwh/L and thermal efficiency exceeding 41%. The intelligent extended-range control system pioneered by Cyrus in the industry can independently identify more than 900 kinds of travel scenes, accurately match them, realize the adaptability of the whole region in all seasons, and continuously upgrade OTA to improve the learning ability of AI, with a patent layout of 1,000+in the world.
Since 2016, Celestial Automobile has made great efforts to lay out multiple technical routes, pioneered the pure electric range extension technology, and developed the super electric drive intelligent technology platform (DE-i), realizing a multi-technical route solution for pure electric and range extension, laying a pioneer and leader position in the range extension route of new energy vehicles.
In terms of vehicle design, taking AITO Wenjie New M7 as an example, Cyrus and Huawei invested 500 million yuan to upgrade. Sailis re-matched the car body, opened the mold, and rebuilt the welding production line. The high-strength steel and aluminum alloy accounted for 80.6% of the whole car, and the submarine-grade thermoformed steel accounted for 24.4%, far exceeding the industry level. In the development process, a total of 100+ vehicle safety tests, 10,000+simulation analysis times and 1,000,000+simulation analysis core hours were invested, which truly realized the leading safety structure at the same level.
At the earlier AITO M5, both parties made bold technological innovations, and the products adopted all-aluminum chassis, reaching the level of millions of luxury cars. Compared with the traditional steel chassis, it can bring the light weight effect of the whole vehicle, at the same time, it has greater rigidity and strength, more stable and safe handling performance, and enhance driving confidence and ride comfort.
Later, in the process of developing the M5 intelligent driving version of AITO, various components such as laser radar need to be added. With the improvement of vehicle design, the industry-leading achievements such as no increase in vehicle weight, endurance improvement and NVH improvement have been achieved. When the M5 standard edition of AITO was released, it caused quite a stir in the industry. The intelligent extended range technology jointly created by the two engines made the cruising range of this model increase again, reaching an astonishing 1,455 kilometers, far exceeding other competing products in the industry.
Process innovation to create high-quality products
The deep integration of Cyrus and Huawei has innovatively created a set of intelligent development, intelligent manufacturing and testing systems. From the beginning of research and development, we strengthened the test standards, increased the sample size of the test and extended the test time, which was four times that of the industry. In addition to the off-site three-high test, it also simulates various climatic environments in the field to do function, performance and durability tests.
In terms of supplier’s ex-factory inspection, the power core components such as power battery and range extender are specially controlled, and every component of the supplier’s ex-factory must undergo 100% automatic inspection, and the test data is transmitted to Saili Automobile Smart Factory in real time to ensure that every component shipped to Sailis 100% qualified, and the whole process is automated to remove human factors.
After the whole vehicle rolled off the assembly line, it achieved 100% full inspection of the vehicle, and conducted a comprehensive physical examination of each vehicle through independent research and development of automatic detection technology. Through the whole body "CT scan", more than 400 functions and more than 4,000 signal interactions of the whole vehicle are automatically tested, and the test data are uploaded to the cloud in real time to realize the "one car and one physical examination report", ensuring that every car leaving the factory is 100% qualified.
In addition, Celestial Auto has also completed the construction of an integrated platform of end and cloud, covering the whole product life cycle. With the blessing of "digital intelligence productivity", the end-cloud integrated platform runs through the processes of research, production, supply, sales and service, and opens up the "artery" of networked ecology to cover the whole life week, and continues to use technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence to upgrade the intelligent networked ecosystem, helping all models to land with high quality and empower smart travel.
Huawei’s industry-leading technology is seamlessly connected with the vehicle structure and various electronic and electrical architectures, and it is quickly introduced to the market. In fact, the soft power of Sailis has been ignored by the industry for a long time.
Fully trust each other and consolidate the foundation of cooperation
Analysts believe that as Huawei’s earliest cooperative partner, with the most complete channels, the richest product lines and the largest investment, the smart car selection model initiated by Celeste Automobile and Huawei fully verifies the correctness of the cooperation model and the leading position of cooperation efficiency through the success of AITO’s products.
The intelligent car selection model is different from any previous model, which requires enterprises with super product understanding, super execution and super struggle spirit, full mutual trust and close cooperation. From the beginning of research and development, AITO Jiejie series has comprehensively covered the extended range and pure electric technology routes, creating a differentiated matrix of high-end smart luxury products.
An unknown detail is that the bosses of Huawei and Cyrus often call in the middle of the night to discuss the product details, and the R&D personnel of both sides can hand over the product improvement plan to the management desk the next day. Research and development, products, services and other aspects, communication seminars at all levels between the two sides are also held regularly and irregularly. Before the new products went on the market, the teams of the two sides jointly tested the performance of new cars and tried to present the best products.
With the leading edge in their respective technical fields, Cyrus and Huawei launched three AITO series models in just one year. After the new M7 of AITO Questionnaire explodes the market, the M9 of AITO Questionnaire, which integrates the latest technological achievements of both parties, will be officially unveiled, which has aroused more expectations from users. At the same time, the "AITO Joint Working Group on Marketing and Service" established by Celestial Automobile and Huawei is fully responsible for the end-to-end closed-loop management of marketing, sales, delivery, service and channels. This mechanism further improves the management of sales, channels and services in the world and enhances the user experience.
From product definition to after-sales service, the cooperation of the whole process has created the first explosion of intelligent car selection business. Huawei’s intelligent advantages and the strength of Celestial vehicles make the smart car selection model a phenomenal topic in the new energy vehicle industry, which has been repeatedly discussed, and Celestial’s market value has been rising all the way, ranking among the top three new energy vehicle enterprises in China. With explosive products to promote the growth of enterprises, the cooperation between the two sides is also expected to create more new industry records in the future.
At present, Celestial Automobile and Huawei have formed a long-term, stable and solid cooperative relationship. Under the broader vision of mutual empowerment, the persistent exploration and resilience demonstrated by both sides will promote the cooperation to continue to make new breakthroughs. (Photo: provided by Cyrus)
