When the embrace of automobiles and technology is closer, a new round of huge changes in the automotive industry is triggering. Since announcing its transformation to a "technology-based enterprise" in April this year, Dongfeng Automobile Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Dongfeng Company") is working hard and making every effort to accelerate its transformation. The elephant turned around, which is undoubtedly a new self-revolution for Dongfeng Motor, which has a history of 52 years.
Dongfeng Automobile Brand Autumn Press Conference and the 6th Science and Technology Innovation Week opened
A few days ago, in Wuhan, the "2021 Dongfeng Automobile Brand Autumn Press Conference and the 6th Science and Technology Innovation Week" was held unprecedentedly. Under the strong east wind, the forward-looking "14th Five-Year Plan", the innovative collaboration of major strategic cooperation, the scenario-based implementation of smart logistics, and the fruitful R&D of digital empowerment have all made this change appear vigorously.
"play the technology card", the "14th Five-Year Plan" leads a new direction
As an important carrier and platform for scientific and technological innovation, the automobile industry has always integrated and carried the high-tech technologies of every era. At present, with the acceleration of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, the technological competition in the automotive industry is becoming more intense.
aims at the transformation of technology companies. Dongfeng Company's most intuitive breakthrough move starts with updating its corporate positioning. When determining the new positioning of "an outstanding technology enterprise that provides users with high-quality automotive products and services", "Oriental Wind Rises" simultaneously released the framework thinking for the "14th Five-Year Plan". A complete set of "14th Five-Year Plan" followed closely, and was officially released at the opening ceremony on September 26, and the new direction of Dongfeng's "technology-based" enterprises became clearer.
Dongfeng Company's "14th Five-Year Plan" is released
In order to drive its own transformation, Dongfeng Company's "14th Five-Year Plan" aims to "six new and one strengthening", that is, to achieve new levels of business quality, achieve new breakthroughs in independent undertakings, build new advantages in new undertakings, improve core capabilities, achieve new optimization in business layout, and achieve new levels of co-creation and sharing. The Party's leadership and Party building have been comprehensively strengthened.
Among them, the comprehensive market share reaches more than 16%, the main commercial vehicle enterprises create high-quality industries, the main independent passenger car enterprises rank first in the industry, and the operating income of strategic emerging businesses reaches more than 30% of the group's total revenue. Each indicator points to innovative development, which shows Dongfeng's determination to transform.
For the "14th Five-Year Plan", Dongfeng Chairman and Party Secretary Zhu Yanfeng said that Dongfeng will build a business pattern of integrated development of "one main and two wings", and use "one main" (integrated vehicle business) as a carrier to lead and promote the development of the "two wings" (technology sector and service ecology), use the "two wings" to improve the development level of the "one main" and accelerate the transformation to an outstanding technology enterprise. Under the new direction of
, the transformation and upgrading of independent passenger car business has attracted much attention. In particular, the establishment of Lantu Automobile has begun the journey of progressing the Dongfeng brand, and Dongfeng's high-end new energy era began. In just over a year, from the release of the brand strategy to the popular sale of Lantu FREE, Lantu has led Dongfeng to the path of nirvana to leap, becoming a vivid annotation of Dongfeng Technology's transformation.
Nowadays, carrying high expectations and gathering forward-looking blue maps, like a speedboat placed on the giant east wind ship, riding the wind forward with a more flexible system and a keen sense of smell. During the event, Lantu brought the latest leap results such as 800V high-voltage platform super fast charging technology, amber and mica high-performance battery safety system and OIB central smart brain. On the afternoon of the 26th, Lantu FREE challenged the first domestic vehicle crash superposition experiment to challenge the bottom collision superposition experiment after wading through water. It not only set a precedent for domestic electric vehicle safety testing, but also witnessed the ambition of "China's new strength in car manufacturing" comparing with the world's advanced automakers.
Lantu FREE autonomous driving vehicle debuts in the exhibition hall of the Technology Center
In order to promote the realization of "one main and two wings", R&D and talent have become the top priority for the new journey to move forward steadily. It is reported that during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Dongfeng Company's R&D investment reached 100 billion yuan, and the R&D investment intensity of its own brands was not less than 6%. It focuses on strengthening various R&D and industrialization capabilities for green, low-carbon and intelligent networking, and further enhances market insight and technological innovation capabilities.
At the same time, Dongfeng's institutional and mechanism innovation in talent will further stimulate innovation vitality. By the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan, the proportion of scientific and technological talents will increase to about 1/5, the scale of talents in the five realms will double, accounting for 1/3 of the proportion of scientific and technological talents, and a group of top 30 talents in the industry will be cultivated.
"Eat technology" and digital empowerment "leap" new energy level
"In the past seven or eight years, the talent echelon for autonomous driving research and development has been built." Bian Ning, deputy director of the Intelligent Software Center of Dongfeng Technology Center and head of Dongfeng Autonomous Driving Project, said in an interview.
As one of the returned talents, Bian Ning has been engaged in intelligent driving in Dongfeng for 9 years with a passion and sincerity. With the feelings of intellectuals in family and country, he did not hide his love for his work by saying "lovely Dongfeng". This love comes from Dongfeng's tolerance, Dongfeng's platform and resources, and the government and Dongfeng's care for intellectuals, and he also gained a sense of accomplishment in his work.
is in the tide of intelligent driving. It not only does L3-demonstration operation down-to-earth, but also looks up at the starry sky and moves towards L3+. This is the direction that Bian Ning and his Dongfeng Intelligent Driving Team have been working hard.
is different from the classification of SAE autonomous driving from L0 to L5 in the United States. Dongfeng clearly proposed L3- and L3+ in 2018. "L3- is to approach L3 infinitely, but people are responsible for safety, which is actually assisted driving. L3+ is ultimately the system or car is responsible for overall safety, which is fully autonomous driving or unmanned driving. L3 is to drive together by man and machine, and people and cars have to jointly bear it." Bian Ning said.
In the streets and alleys of Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone, the driving Dongfeng autonomous driving car Robotaxi can be seen everywhere. It is one of the models that demonstrate the operation of the Dongfeng autonomous driving pilot project. "We are constantly going from closed roads to simple open roads to complex open roads. Now there are safety officers in the demonstration operation of the Robotaxi Autonomous Driving. Starting next year, we will try to remove safety officers on closed roads or public roads with very small traffic, and move forward step by step." Bian Ning said that based on the first phase of the Dongfeng Autonomous Driving Pilot Project, the second phase of the project is launched again.
"In the next two years, no less than 200 autonomous driving vehicles will be gradually deployed, and the development zone will be used as the core to expand to key areas of the entire Wuhan city, such as important transportation hubs, famous tourist attractions, universities, and hospitals, to enrich our autonomous driving scenarios, accumulate our data, and push L3+ technology to maturity." Bian Ning said that due to the long construction cycle, there is still a longer way to go in the overall promotion of vehicle-road collaboration, which requires R&D people to concentrate and focus without distraction.
"There is no need to make noise outside, we have to do noisy things. If you are professional in this direction, you must grasp the entire development rhythm." Bian Ning said that through the demonstration operation of the development zone and the demonstration operation of the key areas of Wuhan, Dongfeng Company is exploring a path of commercialization of unmanned driving demonstration, which is expected to bring milestone breakthroughs to the industry.
Get quiet in the trouble and move forward with confidence. In addition to intelligent driving, as a fertile ground and source of Dongfeng's independent innovation, Dongfeng Company's Technology Center is fully committed to building three major technical strengths: modeling, intelligence, and "Mach" power, and has a large number of core independent intellectual property rights in forward-looking technology research and development.
Independent passenger car "Mach" power
Among them, the independent passenger car "Mach" power was launched in April this year and was the first to be equipped on Fengshen Yixuan MAX. "This is a brand that we have built under the track genes of young users, and is a brand positioning based on power as the primary version. On this basis, Mach Power meets the regulations and user driving experience with less fuel consumption and better NVH performance." Chen Tao, deputy director of the New Energy and Power Center of Dongfeng Technology Center, said that in this context, "extremely fast, extremely cheap, extremely quiet and extremely demanding" has become the core performance indicators for building the "Mach" powertrain. For this reason, the technology center has spent more than three years on a lot of development and verification.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the independent passenger car "Mach" Power will build a product matrix covering engines, gearboxes, and hybrid powertrains. Guided by leading projects such as C15TDR/C15DR, 8DCT, and 4HD series, it will build three core advantages: surging power, super driving control, and efficient and environmental protection. Among them, the thermal efficiency of the C15TDR engine has been further improved to 43%-45%, maintaining industry leadership, and realizing the domestic production of key components such as high-efficiency turbochargers.
Technology is self-reliant and self-reliant, and the hope of national brands is rising. In the field of hydrogen fuel, Dongfeng Company is also spared no effort to make the first move.
"Dongfeng has been building the entire R&D chain of hydrogen energy, and has independently developed it, especially from the research of basic materials to core components, bipolar plates, membrane electrodes, stacks, system integration to vehicle applications, and has also established advanced laboratories and pilot production capabilities." Li Hongtao, director of hydrogen energy research and development at the Foresight Research Center of the Technology Center, said.
Dongfeng Hydrogen Boat and Other Technology Exhibits
At present, Dongfeng Company has completed the development of a 120kW fuel cell system and launched the first domestic mass-produced full-power fuel cell passenger car, Dongfeng "Hydrogen Boat". Hydrogen fuel medium and heavy trucks are delivered in batches in Xiongan, Beijing, Tianjin and other places to realize industrial operation.
Technology innovation is only more meaningful when driven by scenarios. Faced with the new demand brought by new business models, Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle released the ecological brand "Kunyue" at the opening ceremony of the event. According to different scenario demands, it has created a series of "green smart logistics solution packages". "Overall Solution for battery swap logistics" and "L4 Smart Port Overall Solution" have completed the first batch of releases. In the future, it will gradually launch a series of solution packages such as smart high-speed logistics, green smart mines, green smart parks, and green smart municipalities to add energy and gather strength to green and smart logistics.
Hydrogen fuel cell tractor
accumulating power to open the bow, exert force to shoot archery, and seize business to overcome core technologies. In recent years, Dongfeng's development in emerging tracks has been unstoppable. The fulcrum for leveraging Dongfeng's accelerated transformation should be the strategic advancement of "digital Dongfeng".
In the field of R&D digitalization, Tan Minqiang, director of the Technology Center and secretary of the Party Committee of Dongfeng Company, released a R&D digitalization report on "storms and clouds, star core leaps". He said, "During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, R&D digitalization will focus on the strategic goal of building a smart brain and independently mastering core capabilities, and will make efforts in emerging fields such as digitalization base, cloudization, and Internet of Vehicles to achieve a comprehensive star-core leap."
To this end, Dongfeng will take the four hearts of "center only users, core grasp data, smart heart leads innovation, and confidence strives for self-improvement" as the development policy, implement the three-dimensional strategic measures of digital products, business and ecology, and use the three-dimensional strategic support of technology platform, network security, and digital system to create an intelligent full-stack self-developed smart center.
For Dongfeng Company, which is in a critical stage of leap from "solidifying scientific and technological research and development capabilities" to "accelerating the application of scientific and technological achievements and enhancing the sustainability of the development capabilities of scientific and technological achievements", it is now unprecedentedly important to "scientific and technological innovation", the primary driving force for promoting high-quality development. Dongfeng R&D is also using its solid internal strength to make the endogenous motivation for layout of the new track stronger.
"take the open road", integrate development and build a new industrial ecosystem
emphasizes independent innovation and overtaking, but it is by no means self-development behind closed doors. If the genes of technological innovation were engraved into the texture of the Dongfeng at the beginning of its establishment, then 52 years have been magnificent, and open development is the only way to become stronger, better and bigger, and the pace of opening up of the Dongfeng has never stopped.
Especially at present, the automotive industry has shifted from competition between "points and lines" to competition in the ecosystem. Dongfeng has not limited his vision to "cars". Its further goal is to leverage empowerment, transform intelligence, and promote the integrated development of "five transformations, one car", "one car and four networks" through moving and advancing with partners, and to maximize the transformation of open advantages into development trends.
In addition to the Dongfeng autonomous driving pilot project, a model of cooperation between Dongfeng and Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone, at the opening ceremony of the event, Dongfeng also announced other major strategic cooperation.
Signing ceremony for major strategic cooperation
Among them, Dongfeng Company, China FAW, China Three Gorges, and Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone focus on battery leasing, operation, big data analysis and management, technical services and battery cascade utilization business, etc., and form a battery management technology company. The total cumulative investment scale in the next five years is expected to reach more than 10 billion yuan. Through battery management and storage, charging and swap stations, a new energy management system will be built to promote the establishment of a national unified battery swap standard.
In the fields of automotive chips and intelligent driving, Dongfeng Company and China Information Technology focus on automotive chips, intelligent driving, communication infrastructure, demonstration operations and other fields to empower smart cars in the network. At the same time, the two sides will focus on automotive MCU chips, jointly build a joint automotive chip laboratory, and promote the implementation and layout of automotive-grade MCU chips in Wuhan.
In order to accelerate the promotion of forward-looking technology research and core technology control, Dongfeng Company also established a joint laboratory with Songshan Lake Laboratory and jointly built an advanced materials joint laboratory with Wuhan University of Technology. During the
event, Dongfeng's "friends" also appeared in the 6th Science and Technology Week. Lianyou Technology, Lianyou Technology (Wuhan) Technology Innovation Co., Ltd. and others have brought hard-core black technology with full of practical information, making a series of strategic cooperation more resounding.
In the exhibition area of intelligent manufacturing and intelligent parts, Lianyou Technology has brought digital solutions for the entire process of intelligent manufacturing and products such as intelligent parts and intelligent interconnection devices. Based on the good cooperation between Lianyou Technology and Dongfeng Company Technology Center in Dongfeng Sharing-VAN, model design and development CAE simulation and other projects, the two parties further cooperate in the fields of modeling and process design services, intelligent networking business, 5G cloud control, etc., to embrace the new potential of the technological revolution of intelligent networking autonomous driving.
Immediate-connected Wuhan Innovation Acceleration Camp Display Day
Immediate-connected (Wuhan) Technology Innovation Co., Ltd. is an innovation platform jointly funded by Dongfeng Company and Immediate-connected China. On the afternoon of the 26th, the exhibition day of Zhilianyi Wuhan Innovation Acceleration Camp was launched at the T-Chuang Laboratory of the Technology Center. It has rich innovation results, covering advantageous industries such as smart travel, new energy, smart manufacturing and biomedicine, empowering "smart cities".
is more than that, and has become the source of original technology and the leader of the modern industrial chain. Dongfeng has made frequent moves in social cooperation, automobile company cooperation and cross-border cooperation. At present, Dongfeng Company cooperates with China Mobile to jointly build a 5G vehicle networking laboratory; works with Tencent to promote the integration of industrial Internet; deepen strategic cooperation with Huawei to jointly build the "Smart Longzhong" project to bring the digital world to automobiles; strategic cooperation with State Grid and CATL to promote the development of new energy vehicles; cooperate with COSCO Shipping to jointly build a 5G smart port unmanned card collection project; invest in Botai Vehicle Networking and establish Dongfeng Innovation Design Center (Nanjing). In the mesh ecology of "five transformations and one car" and "one car to four networks" integrated development, Dongfeng is joining forces with his partners to achieve mutual success in the storm of the times.
The tide rises eastward, and the wind blows strongly. Accelerating the new track of automobile transformation and transforming into a technology-based enterprise is a new starting point for the east wind and a must-see path. Only by laying a good "technology background" for high-quality development can we prosper in the present and with long-term competitiveness, we will always be in the future on the way to change in the future.
