Organizing | Dexin Editor | Frank Wu, the design director of Yan Xiaoyu Jidu, cannot read Chinese. After the concept car ROBO-01, the first car in the collection, was released in early June, Frank used translation software to read online comments from netizens. Many of the commen

finishing | Dexin

editing | Yan Xiaoyu

Frank Wu, the design leader of Jidu, cannot read Chinese. After the first concept car ROBO-01 was released in early June, Frank used translation software to read online comments from netizens. Many comments were " concept car. that cannot be mass-produced."

is not convinced.

The press conference above "stirred a hornet's nest" took place in the metaverse world of Baidu . Because it is released in the Yuanverse, the concept car ROBO-01, Jidu CEO Xia Yiping , the first car owner Xijia and even the audience are all avatars.

In the past few years, "PPT car building" has taught many investors, engineers and even scheduled users a lesson. "Building cars in the Metaverse" is more difficult to accept than "building cars in PPT", which has caused a lot of ridicule and controversy.

In order to break this conflict and build trust with users, after the epidemic improved in June, Jidu returned to offline, held several media communication and vehicle static experience sessions in Shanghai, and opened its first session at Baidu Tower in Beijing. A pop-up shop.

We also went to see Jidu’s actual car again, and chatted with Frank Wu (Wu Fan), Jidu’s design leader, about the design thinking of the entire ROBO-01 car.

This article is mainly about talking about, based on the current information, what is the positioning of this car, is it reliable, can it be mass-produced, and can it be built?

Frank Wu was born in China and grew up in the United States. He has worked at the Cadillac North American Design Center for a long time and led the design of 5 cars in 18 years, including two generations of CT6.

Many designers are still doing detailed design when they are in their forties or fifties, and even have no selected styling plan in their entire life. Frank Wu was born in 1989. Being able to design the main model such as CT6 early in his career shows his talent and strength.

Frank Wu joined around February or March of 2021.

The first step in the design work is not to draw a sketch, but to determine who the car is going to be sold to.

"Young Premium" is a model positioning announced by Xia Yiping at Jidu's press conference in the summer of 2021. I understand it is a high-end/luxury model for young people.

Frank Wu mentioned a more specific statement. In the early days of the company's establishment, the core team of Xia Yiping, Frank Wu and others determined a general portrait of the core population:

• are between 25 and 35 years old;

• has a relatively good aesthetic appreciation of high-tech products. Groups of people often have a certain level of education;

• are young pioneer user groups. The boundary of

ROBO-01 design is that if can be afforded by those under 25 years old and liked by those over 35 years old, it will be bonus (extra reward).

core group portrait also anchors the approximate price range of Jidu’s first car, which will not be too expensive for young people to afford, such as between 200,000 and 400,000 yuan; and product features, because users have been compared If you have been educated on technological products and have good taste in technological products, your new car will also have a very strong sense of technology.

Judging from the results, the core group targeted by Jidu avoids the range that , Weilai, and Ideal are currently focusing on. Xpeng and , which also emphasizes smart technology, will compete head-on with similar positioning, as well as Xiaomi Motors, which will be launched in 2024.

Jidu’s first mass-produced car has more space and cheaper price than Model Y?

Model Y has sold very well in the past two years, and there are many models that compete with Model Y.

In 2021, the total delivery volume of Tesla Model 3 and Y is 911,200 units, of which Model Y accounts for more than half, about 500,000 units, and it is still growing rapidly.Elon Musk predicted that Model Y will likely become the world's best-selling single model (annual sales of 1 million units).

Xpeng's G9 and SAIC Feifan's R7 are similarly positioned. The NIO Volkswagen brand Alps, which will be launched in 2024, also has a model that matches the Model Y, and it is a "battery replacement version."

Model Y is a very balanced model, from appearance design, three-electric battery life, power control to intelligent driving. Its shortcomings are also obvious. The interior is too simple, the interior space is average, and the intelligent technology lacks local optimization.

Jidu ROBO-01 has:

• an appearance design that is not inferior to Model Y;

• a more avant-garde and bold interior design;

• is developed based on SEA architecture, refer to extremely krypton 001, the power performance, battery life and control experience should not be the same Poor;

• The interior space is larger;

• China’s localized smart cockpit and smart driving technology.

It should be noted that in order to support the mass production of Jidu’s smart driving, Baidu has specially established a smart driving integration innovation department within IDG.

integrates the smart cockpit and smart driving on ROBO-01, which is Baidu Apollo’s battle of honor. There is no doubt that cockpit interaction and intelligent driving will be the biggest highlights of this car.

Focusing on the core user positioning mentioned above, the basic design principles have been determined: "Design for technology and user experience".

can be understood as: simplifying complexity, concise and practical design. For the appearance part of

, let’s press the button first.

In terms of interior design, 3D immersive interactive experience is an important starting point.

Frank tells us that D immersive interactive experience will be a trend of future interaction . Therefore, the centralized smart cockpit center chooses a continuous piece that extends from the instrument panel to the large screen of the co-pilot.

HUD's solution requires digging holes in the panel in front of the driver's seat, and the projected windshield is required to be very flat, which will affect the exterior design of the vehicle. The central Pad solution is very common nowadays. In contrast, an integrated large screen is the simplest and most immersive solution.

Vertical dimension, while loading the large screen, it is necessary to ensure the smooth pop-up of the main and passenger airbags and ensure a wide field of view from the driver's seat . It restricts the width of the large screen and determines the proportion of the entire large screen.

It is said that Ideal ONE also considered a complete glass screen when designing, but later considered that the glass is easy to break on bumpy roads , so the integrated screen was abandoned and replaced with three split screens. We still don’t know how concentration solves this problem. The challenge brought by

integrated large screen is that one screen must display instruments and infotainment system at the same time, which has high requirements on the stability of the operating system; the special screen ratio and the emphasis on 3D visual experience mean that the content also needs A lot of custom development and adaptation work.

Since a long and integrated large screen is used, the traditional round steering wheel will partially block the screen. In order to reduce the blocking of the screen by the steering wheel, Jidu will mass-produce the U-shaped steering wheel of the existing concept car.

In addition, Jidu’s space capsule seat will also be mass-produced . The headrest of the seat is electrically adjustable (officially called a swan neck design). The driver's seat will have independent headrest speakers.

Large screen + U-shaped steering wheel + space cabin seats, which means that most of the interiors on ROBO-01 will remain in mass production.

is to be a 200,000-yuan model with a sense of technology and high-end luxury attributes. This also means using the best steel on the blade as much as possible to reduce unnecessary costs. Designs that are useless and increase costs.

ROBO-01 does not propose a "xx-style" front face design.We see that most of the car body has rounded lines, no hard lines or corners, and no metal trim strips that increase the cost.

In order to pursue the rounded shape of the side of the car body, Jidu promoted the engineering manufacturing end internally (cooperating with Geely ) to increase the thickness of some sheet metal processes from the industry's conventional 180-220mm to 280mm.

It is said that the drag coefficient of this car has been optimized to a very good level. The two laser radars on the front of

ROBO-01 were considered to have a lighthouse-style layout internally, but it really didn’t look good. Finally, a mechanical retractable design was made; the electric tail wing at the rear of the car will also be mass-produced.

's existing car doors without door handles will also be mass-produced, and 3 opening solutions have been reserved for user convenience:

• mobile phone Bluetooth key;

• touch-based opening (such as fingerprint unlocking);

• hidden mechanical switch.

ROBO-01 has a LED matrix design on the front headlights and taillights. The LED matrix can be used to display the steering or vehicle charging status.

Jidu hopes to create a feeling similar to talking to a car person outside the car through the combination of LED matrix and voice. This part of the demonstration is impressive.

ROBO-01 will be released next year. This fall, the official will release a limited edition.

In addition, Jidu will also release a second car (concept design) this year. Judging from the current scale of nearly 1,300 people in

, the development speed of the Jidu team is already quite fast. Frank Wu mentioned that it used to take more than 36 months to develop a car in traditional car companies, but now it takes almost half the time.

is currently on ROBO-01. We have seen 90% of the mass production results of the vehicle's exterior and interior.

Greater pressure and greater surprises will be on the software side, especially the cockpit software.