Author | Zhou Zhiyu

After finishing the price and technology, car companies began to “roll” their bosses. The boss livestreamed the driving road test, which seemed to be a powerful marketing tool for car companies.

Chairman Wei Jianjun of Great Wall Motor, wearing a “motorcycle suit” and driving a new Blue Mountain. He rarely showed up in the past, began his live broadcast debut on April 15. After more than an hour of live streaming, Wei Jianjun showed the outside world that Great Wall Motor's ability to drive NOA in full scenes without high-precision maps.

This car industry boss, known as the “Baoding Auto God,” hopes to use this to make consumers feel the changes that have taken place in Great Wall Motor. Great Wall Motor is not only good at “hardcore” and “off-road”; in terms of “intelligence,” Great Wall Motor can also rank in the “first tier of smart driving”.

Wei Jianjun said during the live broadcast that in the past, the Great Wall did nothing but make good use of the internet and media. Next, he will be active on social media frequently to enhance interaction with users and consumers.

Behind Wei Jianjun's live broadcast debut is that changes in the systemic power of new energy vehicles have already entered the deep-water zone, leading car industry leaders who have been hidden behind the scenes for a long time and focus on technology and strategy, also have to enter the live broadcast room to take the lead in the transformation of the sales model. In the face of this major change in the industry, no one can stand on the sidelines.

Debut

The live broadcast, which lasted more than an hour, started from Great Wall Motor's R&D center in Baoding and passed through viaducts, downtown areas, old streets, train stations, and Baoding's famous “Liudaokou”. This time, Great Wall Motor's smart driving test covered all scenarios such as highways and urban areas. During the live broadcast, there were also unexpected situations such as sudden vehicle congestion and sanitation workers' work.

The overall completion of the final test was good. The total mileage was 16.6 kilometers, and the driving pass rate with no lane lines or fuzzy lanes was 100%; the success rate of changing lanes reached 98% in the entry/exit of expressways or congested sections of urban traffic. Other than driver replacement, there were almost no situations where people were required to take over, and the driving process seemed like a very “old driver.”

A person close to Wei Jianjun revealed that this live broadcast was very limited. From Wei Jianjun's sudden proposal to do a live broadcast last week to the Smart Driving team's continuous optimization of software algorithms over the past week, “the main focus is real.”

Wu Huixiao, vice president of intelligence at Great Wall Motor, also said that before the live broadcast, the team was still worried that there would be frequent takeovers, and the pressure was very high. However, the more direct purpose of this live broadcast is to tell consumers that the Great Wall is also doing smart driving.

Some people also questioned during the live broadcast whether this test was an “open paper exam”; the test path was a route they had run many times over. Jiang Haipeng, senior director of intelligent driving at Great Wall Motor, responded, saying that Baoding does not have high-precision map support, and that NOA is a city that can run through Baoding is not a big problem in other cities. Furthermore, Baoding's complicated road conditions, road renovations, etc. all made the “open paper test” impossible.

Wei Jianjun simply posted a “hero post” to the outside world: All friends and merchants are welcome to test in Baoding.

According to Wei Jianjun, Great Wall Motor has been doing autonomous driving for ten years, and there is no complete certainty, nor will it be shown.

The Xinwei Blue Mountain Smart Driving Edition in the live broadcast is a “little egg” and will be released at next week's Beijing Auto Show. The car is equipped with Great Wall Motor's Coffee Pilot Ultra intelligent driving system and SEE (safety, efficiency, and experience), the first integrated smart driving model in China. The Coffee Pilot Ultra intelligent driving system is based on Nvidia Orin-X's high-computing power domain control platform. It can recognize all kinds of objects over 30cm x 30cm in size. Under intelligent driving, it supports braking at 120km/h for cars and 100km/h for pedestrians.

As for the current OCC network, which is currently at the cutting edge of smart driving, and the redundancy of superimposed lidar, there is no shortage of the New Blue Mountain Smart Driving Edition, which can further guarantee that cars have accurate sensing capabilities.

Wall Street News also learned that Great Wall Motor has built a supercomputing center with a total computing power of 1.64E FLOPS (16.4 billion floating point operations per second) — Jiuzhou, which is at the leading level in the automotive industry. Earlier, Yu Chengdong, chairman of Huawei Auto BU, revealed that as of April 2024, the cloud computing power of Huawei Smart Driving was 3.3E FLOPS.

In terms of specific plans, Great Wall Motor is also trying to find the most suitable technical solutions for different models, starting with the slightest wisdom of going independent of Great Wall Motor and introducing external suppliers to provide smart driving products, solutions, etc. Wu Huixiao, vice president of intelligence at Great Wall Motor, said that Great Wall Motor adheres to a responsible attitude for vehicle experience and competitiveness and chooses different solutions, which is also beneficial to the healthy development of the Great Wall Motor system.

Change

Through this live test, Wei Jianjun hid Great Wall Motor's smart driver for a long time and moved it out. He hopes to use this to show the outside world Great Wall Motor's ability to drive smartly and refresh consumers' and investors' inherent understanding of Great Wall Motor.

Over the past 40 years, off-road and hardcore have become inseparable labels for the Great Wall. The Haval H6, which sold the most 580,000 units a year, as well as the tank series and the Great Wall gun series, which have become the new pillars of the Great Wall's sales in recent years, are all in this category. This has also limited the development of the Great Wall to a certain extent. In the past few years, Great Wall Motor has tried many product categories, but in the end, SUV products have to take the lead.

Wei Jianjun is unwilling. Great Wall Motor needs consumers to have a stronger understanding of its electrification and intelligence capabilities, which can be reflected in sales.

Last year, Great Wall Motor sold 1,231,000 cars, falling short of the previously set target of 1.69 million vehicles; for this year, Great Wall Motor's goal is to sell 1.9 million units. To achieve this goal, it also needs to be able to develop categories other than off-road and SUVs in the second half of the intelligent market, and become the “second growth curve” of its sales.

During the live broadcast, Wei Jianjun also lamented many times that in the past, Great Wall Motor was still quite traditional. Next, he will also interact more with users on Weibo, see everyone's sharing, and listen to users' voices. This will also be the driving force for Great Wall Motor to move forward. He also stated that Great Wall Motor will further confront its users, “I will set an example.”

This established traditional car company will have more changes in the future, breaking the conventional gameplay of the past and finding new ways in terms of marketing and product capabilities.

Obviously, after seeing the marketing power of Xiaomi Lei Jun and Huawei Yu Chengdong, and getting the Xiaomi SU7 out of the ring, Wei Jianjun, a car industry tycoon who focused on technology and had a straightforward personality, also joined Geely Holding Group Chairman Li Shufu and Chery Holding Group Chairman Yin Tongyue to go from behind the scenes to the front of the stage in an attempt to get closer to consumers.

In the past, car companies focused on products and technology, and focused on the B-side in marketing. In today's traffic era, they also need to more keenly capture consumers' needs and interact with consumers, so that consumers can have a more direct perception of their own technology and products.

From technology and channels to marketing, everything is disrupting the game of the past. But whoever can seize the opportunities in the midst of change can also use this to stand at the head of the tide.