Yuan, Guochuang Center: How can automobile enterprises realize joint research and development in the new decade?

Editor's note: 2020 is the beginning of a new decade. This new decade will be a crucial moment for the achievements of the new four modernizations transformation of the automobile industry. Although the direction is clear, the uncertainty of the market and technology has also greatly increased.

Especially at this critical moment of industrial transformation, global auto companies have entered a period of confusion and exploration. The electrified route is still swaying, how to define smart cars, how much value can unmanned driving produce, and how will human travel change?

In the new decade, we have too many problems to explore. At the beginning of the Spring Festival, everything revived, and Che Yun joined hands with Mobile Travel Innovation Think Tank to jointly launch a special interview-talking about the new decade.

This issue is the fourth in a series of interviews. Cheyun.com's founder talks with Yuan, general manager of National New Energy Vehicle Technology Innovation Center.

China's new energy industry has gone through a decade of development and achieved rapid development. By the end of 20 18, China's new energy passenger cars accounted for 50% of the global market.

The turning point occurred at 20 19.

From July 2065438 to July 2009, the national subsidy standard for new energy vehicles dropped sharply. Since July, the domestic production and sales of new energy vehicles have declined for six consecutive months. In the whole year of 20 19, the sales volume of new energy vehicles was12.06 million, down 4% year-on-year, which was the first year-on-year decline in the past decade. Compared with the growth of 63.63% and 68% in the same period of 20 18, it is far from it. ?

It can be seen that despite the amazing achievements in sales, the key technical links of new energy vehicles in China are still weak, and the underlying core technologies will still be "stuck" and still need a lot of positive development. Facing the next decade, this is the key for China new energy automobile enterprises to "change lanes and overtake". ?

Nowadays, platformization and modularization have become the trend of technology development. A platform that can realize technology sharing and maximize resource utilization may solve the problems faced by many new energy vehicle companies. ?

Based on this, from 2065438 to March 2008, the National New Energy Vehicle Technology Innovation Center (hereinafter referred to as "Guochuang Center") was formally established. What role does such a center, which takes the research and development of new energy core technology platform as its responsibility and is jointly participated by many car companies, play, and what role can it play in overcoming the bottleneck of new energy technology and realizing platform technology sharing?

Building a National Technology Innovation Center

"I used to work in a foreign company and worked in a domestic car company for nearly 9 years. I feel that the gap is quite big. " In the office of Beijing Yizhuang Guochuang Center, Yuan expressed his feelings about the gap between domestic and foreign car companies. ?

During the five years from 2005 to 2065438+00, Yuan has been a senior researcher and technical director in the direction of advanced automotive batteries in the Global Center of General Motors. After returning to China, he came to Beiqi New Energy as the deputy general manager, and engaged in the research and development and management of new energy vehicles for a long time. Compared with his previous two professional experiences, Yuan has a deeper view on China's new energy vehicle technology.

"We are now shaped, our development process is there, and the verification process is there, but it is not as in-depth, thorough and accurate as others." ?

These problems have exposed the current situation of the new energy market-the key link technology is still weak.

The new energy share ratio policy will be gradually liberalized, and the future share ratio policy will be gradually liberalized to commercial vehicles, passenger cars and even all car companies. The competitive partners of domestic car companies are no longer just joint venture brands or independent brands in the traditional sense. "The future must be to compete with these world-class car companies, but our strength is very limited." ?

Platformization is the best way that many car companies can think of. "Can we integrate resources and build a strong technological competitiveness through platform strategy and win-win mode of joint cooperation? This has been recognized by many car companies. " ?

Although the new energy vehicle market in China is growing rapidly, as mentioned above, there is no national professional platform for car companies to share technical resources. ?

The National Innovation Center is to build such a national platform. What kind of development model should such a national technological innovation center adopt? At the beginning of its establishment, this became a multiple-choice question in front of Yuan and others.

Prior to this, in 20 16, the national high-speed train technology innovation center was formally established and developed according to the model of public institutions. However, the essence of new energy vehicles is different from China's high-speed railways, with certain advantages and higher industrial concentration. "At that time, we saw that the field of new energy vehicles fully reflected the highly competitive situation of the entire automobile market. There are too many participants, and there is no absolute monopoly or absolute dominant enterprise. So we asked at that time, can we respond more to the needs of the market and industry and explore with the enterprise model. " Guochuang Center has also become the first national-level scientific and technological innovation center built by enterprise mode.

At this point, the orientation of the future development of Guochuang Center has become more and more clear, forming its own core competitiveness and exporting forward-looking, common and basic key technologies.

During the conversation, Yuan told us several principles strictly observed in the construction of Guochuang Center:

Guochuang Center belongs to the service industry organization, which exports forward-looking common key platform technologies. ?

Guochuang Center does not produce any products, and complements the automobile factory to avoid competition.

It is our creed that Guochuang Center does not compete with universities and enterprises for fame and profit. ?

Emphasize the whole process of cooperation, co-construction, co-governance, sharing and sharing, and try to involve industry partners. ?

Guochuang Center implements the national innovation-driven development strategy, and strives to build "one center, two highlands and three platforms" around the seven systems of "Industry-University-Research-funded innovation" for new energy vehicles. ?

Center A: an integrated innovation center with global influence on new energy vehicles and cutting-edge key technologies. ?

Two highlands: R&D leads the world in exporting technologies, standards and models, manufacturing and serving new energy vehicles, and gathering high-end innovative talents of new energy vehicles. ?

Three platforms: world-class platform for transformation and industrialization of scientific research achievements of new energy vehicles; A global platform for academic exchange, professional consultation, high-end talent training and exchange of new energy vehicles; A financial venture capital platform based in Beijing and facing the world, focusing on the research and transformation of new energy vehicles.

In addition, the National Innovation Center also shoulders the heavy responsibility of cultivating talents and exploring new business models. Promote communication, cooperation and exchange among talents through the cultivation of talents. On the technical level, create value, realize technology realization and explore new business models.

"Since we are an innovation center and have chosen the first enterprise model in China, we are also responsible for the innovation of scientific research management system, including personnel recruitment, management assessment, achievement evaluation, and whether we can support R&D with new models. This is what we are doing. " Yuan said to:

Based on this, in the whole construction process, the innovation center put forward higher requirements and goals, hoping to build an ecological circle that can unite government, industry, schools, research institutions, users, capital, finance and innovation teams.

"Our mission is to build a world-class new energy vehicle technology innovation source, and our vision is to build a world-class new energy vehicle technology innovation ecosystem. In this way, as a platform-based institution, Guochuang Center will play a role in the whole industry. "

You need an alliance and a leader.

On how to do this, the National Innovation Center led by Yuan has its own articles of association. "We input basic scientific concepts and research ideas and provide some common technologies to our partners. On this basis, we will do productization and engineering development according to the needs of enterprises. " According to Yuan, this is the basic model provided by the International Innovation Center.

Although in the overall strategy, Guochuang Center puts forward a "9+4" business layout including nine technical directions and four development platforms, including nine technical research and development directions of intelligent networking, fuel cell, power battery, electric drive, electronic control, lightweight, hybrid power, forward-looking technology and vehicle integration, and provides high-quality technical services for the industry such as open source vehicle technology verification platform, cutting-edge technology detection platform, intellectual property sharing platform and venture capital incubation platform. However, on this basis, Guochuang Center still sorts out the key technical gaps and shortcomings of the core of the whole industry. ?

"According to the analysis of the capabilities of the National Innovation Center, industry demand and pain points, we have a focus. Some things we may just participate in, and some things we take the lead. " Yuan said to him:?

Following this principle, Guochuang Center has made several very clear aspects according to its own strength: First, build a truly open and open source vehicle verification platform (including physical vehicles and digital twins); Secondly, the architecture of the next generation automotive electronic domain controller; Thirdly, in the field of fuel cell, we pay attention to the control strategy matching with the whole vehicle. In addition, at the level of intelligent network connection, Guochuang Center focuses on the level of perceptual integration. ?

In China, there are thousands of R&D companies related to autonomous driving and car networking, but many companies focus on the same fields and products, and car companies still need technologies that can deeply touch the pain points of the industry. ?

"There is no need to repeat what others have done, we just need to find the pain points of the industry. This pain point has been analyzed, and everyone has the need to promote the industry, so we will focus on this pain point. " Yuan said to:

In addition, Guochuang Center has attracted a large number of upstream and downstream enterprises to develop together, such as well-known OEMs such as BAIC New Energy, BYD and Geely, and well-known enterprises in the battery field such as Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. ?

It is worth mentioning that, as the lead organization in the construction of Guochuang Center, BAIC not only sent many core technicians and managers to Guochuang Center, but also took out its own vehicle platform and cooperated with Guochuang Center when Guochuang Center started the construction of open source vehicle platform, and established a joint laboratory with the latter to provide early hardware resources.

In Yuan's view, he plays the role of "leading the big brother". "BAIC and the corresponding enterprises have taken on more responsibilities in the front, which is helpful for the initial growth, positioning, basic mechanism and operation of Guochuang Center."

Diversification is the main key word in the cooperation mode with other industrial chain enterprises, including car companies. For example, it is the most direct mode for industrial chain partners to participate in projects in the Ministry of Science and Technology or local governments together with China Innovation Center; Guochuang Center is open to the industry and promoted to the industry by integrating automobile enterprise laboratories; Guochuang Center and car companies explore forward-looking technology. The technology of the core link will be carried to the partner's car and promoted to the car company. In addition, it also includes personnel training and technology joint promotion with car companies to accelerate the transformation to industrialization and promote the growth of startups.

In addition, foreign car companies are also on the list of partners to be absorbed by China Innovation Center in the future. "We must be open and in line with international standards. Everyone does it behind closed doors, which is not competitive. We must introduce international high-quality leading technical talents to cooperate with us. " ?

In the planning of the National Innovation Center, the future will be a more open and diversified organizational structure. "In this way, not only car companies have an absolute dominant position, but also parts companies, and it is even possible to integrate with forces outside the automobile industry. Enterprises in other fields can also come in, which will be healthier for the National Innovation Center. "

Technology and platform sharing will become possible.

What Guochuang Center wants to build is a shared technology and a shared platform. In Yuan's view, the core of the platform is to support a variety of models, and among many models, the compatibility of components must be improved as much as possible. ?

In Yuan's view, the new sharing platform must be achievable. As the core architecture of new energy vehicles, when the platform is highly compatible, the OEM can develop the "OEM concept". At that time, Yuan and his team had already put forward this idea when negotiating with Magna to establish a joint venture company. ?

"To make the concept of OEM work, if there is an OEM with overcapacity, other enterprises need to develop their own products and can process them on the basis of a common platform. He only needs to make a production design that represents the characteristics of his products. This can effectively use the production capacity and reduce the investment risk of enterprises. " ?

In fact, this is the current international popular trend, and platformization and modularization have gradually become the technical core of automobile enterprises. The most typical case in the world is Volkswagen's latest MEB pure electric platform.

In China, car companies are also actively promoting the modular architecture of vehicles, such as BMA, CMA modular architecture and pure electric exclusive architecture PMA platform launched by Geely in recent two years. Although each model has its own different characteristics, the platform architecture used is basically a unified platform. ?

"Because of our judgment, 90% of drivers can't tell the difference, and they can't feel the difference. This is the core issue. I think the general platformization technology definitely has a market in the whole vehicle enterprises, and this thing will continue to expand, and parts will become sub-platforms. For example, fuel cells will ask, is there a general platform technology for fuel cells? "

Yuan said that in the future new energy automobile industry, vehicles produced through shared platforms will account for 10%- 15% of the overall market. With the gradual maturity of platform-based infrastructure, the product development cycle will also be compressed to 30 months to 36 months. With the improvement of information technology, car companies will gradually speed up product iteration in the future. ?

What is the trend of new energy vehicles in the next decade?

At present, the safety and residual value of new energy vehicles have been criticized by the outside world, and even become an important reason why consumers are unwilling to buy. In Yuan's view, the key reason is that car companies have not managed the whole life cycle of new energy vehicles. ?

But the essence of the problem is that the new energy vehicle market has not yet formed a complete ecological service system.

Yuan believes that there are several main trends in the future development of new energy vehicles:

First, affected by the megatrend, new energy vehicles as a whole will continue to grow. ?

Second, on the premise of growth, adjust the product structure. With the decline of subsidies, customer-oriented product definition will have a great impact on sales. Automobile manufacturers need to clearly define the needs of target users. ?

Third, intelligent technology will soon rise to the application level, but there is still a long way to go for autonomous driving above L4. The assisted driving function will be more perfect. ?

Fourth, the current mainstream products are basically pure electric products. In the future, there will be fuel cells, extended-range vehicles and 48V micro-hybrid vehicles, and the supply structure will be diversified. ?

Fifth, in addition to private sales, online car sharing and shared cars will usher in a sharp increase in the number. "Selling cars is no longer the only way for automakers to generate revenue. We must change from a simple product manufacturer to a product and service provider. Car manufacturers must provide travel services. " ?

Che Yun concluded:

In the era of traditional fuel, platformization and modularization are important means for automobile enterprises to realize mass production and amortize costs.

When the industry changes, cars appear in front of the public with a new look and a new form of power. The combination of software and hardware makes the platformization in the era of pure electric vehicles assume greater significance than that of ordinary fuel vehicles.

Joint research and development between car companies has long been a trend in the world, and more and more car companies can be seen in China to reach a consensus and strategic cooperation in this regard.

National science and technology innovation centers, such as the National Innovation Center, provide more institutional guarantees for cooperation between enterprises.

But from the current actual effect, the effect is limited. Except BAIC, the participation of other shareholders is still weak. How to truly realize the co-creation and sharing of technology research and development between car companies still needs a long way to go.

We haven't seen it in the new decade.

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.