"The Baoding Racing God" has also started live streaming

Author | Zhou Zhiyu

After focusing on price and technology, car manufacturers have started to focus on "promoting" their CEOs. CEOs live stream their test drives, seemingly becoming a powerful marketing tool for car companies.

Wearing a "racing suit" and driving a new Blue Mountain model rarely seen before, Wei Jianjun, the chairman of Great Wall Motors, made his live streaming debut on April 15th. During the live stream that lasted over an hour, Wei Jianjun showcased Great Wall Motors' ability to drive with full-scene NOA (Navigation on Autopilot) without high-precision maps.

This figure in the automotive industry, known as the "Baoding Car God", hopes to let consumers feel the changes happening at Great Wall Motors. Great Wall Motors is not only good at "tough" and "off-road" capabilities, but also excels in "intelligence", positioning itself in the forefront of "intelligent driving".

During the live stream, Wei Jianjun mentioned that in the past, Great Wall Motors only focused on work without proper utilization of the internet and media. Moving forward, he will be more active on social media, strengthening interaction with users and consumers.

Behind Wei Jianjun's live streaming debut is the fact that the transformation of the new energy vehicle system has entered a critical stage. This has prompted long-time industry insiders who have focused on technology and strategy to step into the live streaming arena and lead the change in sales models. Faced with this major industry transformation, no one can afford to just stand by and watch.

Debut

The live stream lasted over an hour, starting from Great Wall Motors' R&D center in Baoding, passing through viaducts, bustling urban areas, old streets, train stations, and Baoding's famous "Liudaokou" area. This time, Great Wall Motors' intelligent driving test covered scenarios such as high-speed driving and urban areas. During the live stream, there were sudden lane changes by other vehicles and unexpected situations like sanitation workers at work.

Overall, the test had a good completion rate, covering a total distance of 16.6 kilometers. The pass rate for driving without lane lines or with blurred lane lines was 100%; the success rate of lane changes on highway entrances and exits or congested urban roads was 98%. Apart from driver changes, there were almost no situations requiring human intervention, making the driving process seem very "experienced".

Sources close to Wei Jianjun revealed that this live stream was very rushed. From Wei Jianjun suddenly proposing to do the live stream last week to the intelligent driving team continuously optimizing software algorithms over the past week, the focus was on authenticity.

Wu Huixiao, Vice President of Intelligentization at Great Wall Motors, also mentioned that the team was initially concerned about frequent takeovers during the live stream, which created a lot of pressure. However, the direct purpose of this live stream was to inform consumers that Great Wall Motors is also working on intelligent driving.

During the live stream, some questioned whether this test was an "open-book exam" and if the test route had been run multiple times. Jiang Haipeng, Director of Intelligent Driving at Great Wall Motors, responded by stating that Baoding does not have high-precision map support, but the NOA system that can run in Baoding should work fine in other cities as well. Additionally, the complex road conditions and road renovations in Baoding made it impossible for an "open-book exam".

Wei Jianjun boldly issued a "challenge": welcoming competitors to come to Baoding for testing.

In Wei Jianjun's view, Great Wall Motors has been working on autonomous driving for ten years. Without full confidence, they would not showcase it.

The new Blue Mountain Intelligent Driving Edition featured in the live stream is a "little surprise" and will be unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show next week. The vehicle is equipped with the Great Wall Motors Coffee Pilot Ultra intelligent driving system, as well as the first integrated intelligent driving model SEE (Safety, Efficiency, Experience) in China Coffee Pilot Ultra intelligent driving system is built on the high computing power domain control platform of NVIDIA Orin-X, which can identify various objects larger than 30cm x 30cm. In intelligent driving mode, it supports stopping the car at 120km/h and stopping for pedestrians at 100km/h.

As for the cutting-edge OCC occupied network in the intelligent driving field and the redundancy of adding lidar, the New Blue Mountain intelligent driving version is also equipped to further ensure that the car has accurate perception capabilities.

Wall Street News has also learned that Great Wall Motors has built a supercomputing center called Jiuzhou with a total computing power scale of 1.64E FLOPS (164 billion billion floating-point operations per second), which is at a leading level in the automotive industry. Previously, the Chairman of Huawei's Automotive Business Unit, Richard Yu, revealed that by April 2024, Huawei's cloud computing power for intelligent driving is 3.3E FLOPS.

In terms of specific solutions, Hao Mo Intelligent Driving, which spun off from Great Wall Motors, as well as the introduction of external suppliers to provide intelligent driving products and solutions, Great Wall Motors is also trying to find the most suitable technical solutions for different vehicle models. Wu Huixiao, Vice President of Intelligentization at Great Wall Motors, stated that Great Wall Motors adheres to a responsible attitude towards the overall vehicle experience and competitiveness, choosing different solutions, which is also beneficial for the benign development within the Great Wall Motors system.

Transformation

Through this live test, Wei Jianjun revealed the long-hidden intelligent driving capabilities of Great Wall Motors. He hopes to showcase Great Wall Motors' capabilities in intelligent driving to consumers and investors, refreshing their inherent perceptions of Great Wall Motors.

Over the past forty years, off-road and ruggedness have become labels that Great Wall cannot shake off. The Haval H6, which once sold up to 580,000 units a year, as well as the Tank series and Cannon series, which have become new pillars of sales for Great Wall in recent years, all fall into this category. This has to some extent limited Great Wall's development. In the past few years, Great Wall Motors has made many attempts in product categories, but SUV products still carry the main weight.

Wei Jianjun is not satisfied. Great Wall Motors needs consumers to have a stronger awareness of its electrification and intelligent capabilities, which should also be reflected in sales.

Last year, Great Wall Motors sold 1.231 million vehicles, falling short of the target of 1.69 million units set earlier; for this year, Great Wall Motors aims to achieve sales of 1.9 million vehicles. To achieve this goal, it also needs to explore categories beyond off-road and SUVs in the second half of intelligentization, becoming the "second growth curve" that supports its sales.

During the live broadcast, Wei Jianjun also expressed his admiration for the past traditional nature of Great Wall Motors. In the future, he will interact more with users on Weibo, see their sharing, listen to their voices, which will also become the driving force for Great Wall Motors to move forward. He also stated that Great Wall Motors will further face its users directly, "I will set an example."

This traditional old car manufacturer will have more transformations in the future, breaking the conventional ways of the past and finding new ways in marketing and product capabilities.

Clearly, witnessing the marketing power of Xiaomi's Lei Jun and Huawei's Richard Yu, and seeing Xiaomi's SU7 quickly gaining popularity, Wei Jianjun, the tech-focused and straightforward figure in the automotive industry, along with Li Shufu, Chairman of Geely Holding Group, and Yin Tongyue, Chairman of Chery Holding Group, are stepping out from behind the scenes to get closer to consumers and bridge the gap In the past, car companies focused on products and technology, emphasizing the B-end in marketing. In today's era of traffic, they also need to more sensitively capture consumer needs, interact with consumers, and allow consumers to have a more direct perception of their own technology and products.

From technology, channels to marketing, everything is overturning the past way of doing things. But those who can seize the opportunities in the midst of change can also stand at the forefront of the tide