As the Makino Evoque is praised by the world's automotive media and favored by car enthusiasts and ordinary consumers around the world, every car manufacturer is now racking their brains to develop their own set of human-machine based on color screens. interactive system.
Japan's Toyota was the first to start, followed by Germany's Volkswagen.
They are aware of the huge changes that disruptors have brought to the automotive industry, especially disruptors like Li Mu, who do not play by the rules at all.
What was the competition between car manufacturers originally like
This allows us to develop different types of models based on different user groups, different needs, and different market environments, and conduct comprehensive and industrial comparisons with other competitor models.
Therefore, the product lines of any large automobile group cover almost every level, including but not limited to hatchback, sedan, SUV, hatchback, travel, mini, small, medium, large...
Take the common B-class cars in China today. Japanese cars include Honda's Accord, Toyota's Camry, Volkswagen's Passat and Buick's Regal. Competition among car manufacturers basically revolves around appearance and mechanical configuration. Article, no one has ever extended competition to technology fields that have nothing to do with traditional cars.
However, Li Mu just did this.
In fact, Li Mu also knows his own strengths and weaknesses.
After summarizing the technology at hand, he found that the most comprehensive technology and the most suitable for mid-range cars is Volvo's technology.
On the other hand, Land Rover and Jaguar are basically aristocrats who can't do anything right now. Their existing technologies and platforms are not suitable for making mid-range cars, but are more suitable for making mid-range and high-end cars. After all, they are not suitable for making mid-range cars. Neither brand currently has an engine with a displacement lower than 3.0.
In terms of comprehensive level, the Volvo vehicle technology used by Makino Evoque is still far behind giant companies such as Toyota and Volkswagen.
Li Mu also knows very well that he will not be able to catch up with this gap in the industrial field within three to five years, or even ten years. Many domestic car companies have been developing for ten years or more, and they are still imitating Japanese cars one-to-one, and they have not been able to catch up. Go to someone else's house.
After all, you are running, and others are running too, and they have been running for decades before you. It is really difficult to catch up with this gap.
So we can only find another way.
Why can Chinese Internet companies rise so rapidly in such a short period of time? Even in the life before Li Mu was reborn, Chinese Internet companies were basically at the forefront of the world in various fields.
The reason is that the world's Internet started in the 1990s, and China's Internet also started in the 1990s. Everyone's technical level is not far behind, it's only a few years. Coupled with the Chinese people's spirit of hard work and hard work, It will take at most ten years to catch up with the gap of a few years and achieve catch-up.
However, this is only a leader in the field of software and Internet product forms and models.
When it comes to computer hardware, the gap between China and the West is much wider than in the automotive field.
At the very least, when Li Mu was reborn, China was still lackluster in the field of computer chips. Although it had its own chips, the performance gap was far greater than that of cars. Although the overall technical level of domestic cars was much worse than that of American, Japanese and German car companies, they could at least make There are many models with high practicality and high cost performance, but the chips are far behind.
This is why, in Li Mu's mind, what he wants to do is to subvert the traditional automobile manufacturing industry, rather than compete with them head-on.
Therefore, in addition to using the interior and exterior to gain the upper hand, the remaining advantages are all concentrated on the humanized design and technological level of the product.
This puts him ahead of traditional automobile companies by at least two to three years, and Li Mu is confident that he will continue to expand this advantage.
One of the uncomfortable things about the automobile manufacturing industry is that everything basically needs to be adapted to hardware and software.
Today's automobile manufacturers have little intersection with the Internet industry, nor with the high-tech computer and software industries.
It feels like a mobile phone brand that has never made a smartphone is suddenly forced by the market to start researching smartphones one day.
But they hadn't even made a color phone before.
As a result, the workload before them becomes extremely huge.
Not only must the entire system be developed, but all the hardware corresponding to the entire system must be adapted to the system.
Even top automobile companies such as Toyota and Volkswagen currently do not have the ability and foundation to independently build an intelligent human-computer interaction system.
Moreover, changing the central control to a color screen would cause them trouble in the hardware supply chain alone.
Then we need to redesign the interior, re-develop and develop molds, and moreover, we need to find suitable hardware suppliers around the world and re-integrate a new supply chain.
The Germans were the first to despair about this matter because they found that even if they integrated the supply chain, they would not be able to develop an interactive system comparable to Makino Automobile within one to two years.
If you just put a color screen in the car, but you can't make the color screen smart, then consumers won't pay for it.
And Li Mu also has a trump card, which is the map and navigation provided by keyhole.
Since the company Keyhole was jointly acquired by Li Mu and Google, he and Google have already established a clear closed loop of rights and interests.
First of all, Keyhole will never authorize any car-related company to use any Keyhole technology and data.
Secondly, keyhole will never be authorized to be used by any Internet company other than Makino Technology and Google.
If Volkswagen and Toyota want to develop a navigation system, they won't even be able to buy the complete digital map rights for a while.
Toyota may be able to buy Japan's local map data, but their Toyota cars sell well all over the world, and they have no way to buy digital maps of various countries and regions around the world.
Keyhole can do it. If it was the previous keyhole, it would definitely sell data and maps to companies like Toyota.
But the current keyhole will not give Toyota, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW any chance.
This way. Several automobile companies want to implement navigation in various countries and regions in their own cars, which is also a very long process.
Even the first-generation iPhone and previous generations of iPhones released by Steve Jobs used map services from Google.
Apple's own maps were not officially launched until 2012, and the experience of using Apple Maps in the past few years has been very poor.
It can be seen that in the previous life, Google Maps relied on the foundation of keyhole, and its leading level in electronic maps far exceeded Apple.
It took Apple several years to launch Apple Maps, not to catch up with Google Maps, but to finally be able to replace Google Maps.
In fact, the most useful electronic map in the world has always been Google, and no one else is good.
Now, Li Mu has reached a three-party agreement with Google and Keyhole. In the automotive field, all the foundations of Keyhole, as well as all innovative technologies developed by Google based on Keyhole, will be exclusively given to Makino Automobile in the automotive field, excluding all similar competing products.
In the future, no one from the world’s car brands will be able to use Google Maps.
Therefore, this alone makes the development of in-car navigation of other car brands difficult.
It can also be seen that Li Mu, a reborn person, has control over the overall situation and key points.
For example, without the foundation of Google and Keyhole, if car companies from all over the world want to provide navigation services in mainland China, the only company they can choose right now should be AutoNavi.
AutoNavi has just been established two years ago, and AutoNavi is still in its infancy. They don’t even have a complete electronic map of the entire Chinese continent. If car companies cooperate with them, they may only be able to provide a few or ten in the early stage. City navigation for several medium and large cities.
In addition, car companies have no other choice. It is simply unrealistic for them to form their own mapping teams.
Because in an industry like automobiles that tests the supply chain, no one can control everything by themselves from beginning to end.
A car is composed of thousands of parts. Whether it is a domestic car, a Japanese car, an American car, a German car, or even a French car, their spare parts come from all over the world.
However, Li Mu didn't want to give other brands any chance. Before they could react and figure out all the areas that needed to be considered in the entire human-computer interaction system, he immediately instructed Li Ziwei to contact AutoNavi directly and give AutoNavi a strategic deal. The investment allowed AutoNavi to become a holding subsidiary of Makino Technology, leaving 49% of the shares for the AutoNavi team, allowing them to continue to go all out to develop the domestic electronic map business on the basis of receiving a large sum of money.
At the same time, in the future, AutoNavi's electronic map will exclusively serve Makino Motors in the automotive field.
As a result, several other car companies will have no chance.
Moreover, Li Mu also has a huge trump card.
This killer feature is the two smartphone operating systems currently being developed simultaneously.
Once Android and IOS come out and smartphones become a trend, the vehicle-mounted human-computer interaction system will naturally usher in a big leap. If Android is used to modify the vehicle-machine system, Makino Automobile's technological leadership will be further improved.
In the future, most car-machine systems will be developed based on Android. However, the only car company that can truly develop an intelligent and mature human-machine system is Tesla.
Tesla's human-machine system, like Android, is developed based on Linux. This is a huge amount of engineering work that no other car company in the world can handle except Tesla.
The reason is that Musk, the boss of Tesla, is an Internet person born in Silicon Valley. When he was working on Tesla, he had many more software engineers than automotive engineers, so he could take it with him. A large number of software engineers developed a human-computer system for Tesla based on Linux, which was not difficult for him.
However, for other car companies, that is almost impossible.
Besides, Li Mu also has shares in Musk’s Tesla.
Moreover, Musk is still waiting for Li Mu to help him realize his dream of Mars, so in the future, all his technical achievements on Tesla will definitely be shared with Makino Automobile.
At this stage, Musk has selflessly contributed Tesla's lithium battery pack technology and drive motor technology to Li Mu. Even the takeaway electric car that Li Mu wants uses Tesla's technology.
Therefore, this also means that Li Mu will have at least three sets of truly intelligent human-computer systems that are ready to use in the future, and neither Toyota nor Volkswagen can produce one.
This has laid a very important foundation for Makino Automobile. In the future, Li Mu may not be able to catch up with established automobile groups such as Toyota and Volkswagen at the level of the automobile industry, but he can take the lead in the software field.
(End of chapter)