Article | Photon Planet, Author | Wu Xianzhi, Editor | Wang Pan
"The chassis is the last piece of intelligence puzzle."
Recently, Duan Kang (pseudonym), the research and development manager of a state-owned Tier 2 shock absorber, told Photon Planet that among the three major components of a car (engine, gearbox, and chassis), due to electrification, the engine and gearbox are no longer problems, but the chassis always cannot be separated.
Another engineer, Lu Ping (pseudonym), had predicted as early as last year that new forces would definitely return to make up for their shortcomings in 2022, with the most important step being to address various hardware shortcomings. "There are safety considerations as well as driving experience and comfort."
The fact is indeed evolving as industry insiders predict. Firstly, the possibility of installing a 28000 air suspension on the Extreme Krypton 001 has sparked a lot of discussion. No matter how the outside world judges it, it needs to be acknowledged that air suspension does not improve the poor driving experience of new energy vehicles, as it provides shock absorption, sound, and driving experience.
On June 15th, NIO released the new model ES7 on the NT2.0 platform, which also involves many optimizations to the suspension. For example, it is equipped with a self-developed ICC chassis domain controller, which controls the vehicle's air spring height, shock absorber damping, electronic parking and other functions to adapt to the driving habits and levels of different groups of people.
Jikrypton 001 and Weilai ES7 may have different considerations in highlighting the self-developed chassis. It can be confirmed that after electrification, the old and new forces did not directly transition to intelligence as Robin Lee expected, but returned to make up for hardware lessons.

01 New car rolled from the inside to the bottom of the car
"The intelligence of the cockpit is important, but BYD's flagship car infotainment system can achieve monthly sales of 100000 yuan, which fully demonstrates that the current market demand for intelligence is not strong." An industry insider believes that with the deepening of electrification, the hardware shortcomings of new forces are becoming increasingly prominent.
It is not difficult to see that since 2020, both new and old forces have mostly focused on the interior of cars, such as the interior, car infotainment systems, dazzling functions (such as "headlight control" and high integration), as well as the constantly evolving concepts of some car companies. However, whether it is a gasoline car or an electric car, ultimately it still cannot bypass the basic functions of driving.
"Generally speaking, driving a gasoline car doesn't make you feel dizzy while sitting on it, while electric cars are like taking a boat. Whether driving or sitting on a car, you feel dizzy." Duan Kang believes from the driver's perspective that electric cars currently focus too much on marketing, neglecting driving safety and comfort. At the same time, he is also a reducer R&D supervisor, and since 2020, more and more customers have signed one order after another with his company.
Unlike in the fields of automotive systems, kinetic energy, sales, and services, BBA is often overturned, and traditional car companies have their own logic. Chassis technology only requires tuning without subversion, with little innovation. Several engineers have expressed that there is not much difference in the overall chassis design between electric cars and gasoline cars.
Due to standardized production processes, the chassis industry has not undergone much change over the years. The only difference may be that the chassis space of electric vehicles is more than that of gasoline vehicles, and there is greater room for improvement. It is understood that the chassis of gasoline vehicles often has a very compact layout due to the need to accommodate a large number of components such as engines and transmissions, while the chassis layout of electric vehicles is much more relaxed.

Some details also indicate that there is a certain gap between the new forces and traditional car companies in chassis technology and components, mainly due to the accumulation of technical experience and data.
Taking shock absorbers as an example, they mainly consist of at least ten gray box and black box components. The gray box is jointly developed by the supplier and the car company, while the black box is independently developed by the supplier. The car company either only has partial data or cannot grasp it at all, so there will be complex processes during development.
Generally speaking, it may take about a year for car companies and shock absorber suppliers to complete the entire process of development, trial production, road testing, and mass production.
The first few months were mainly for scheme review and agreement signing, and the two months after signing the agreement were for matching samples to determine the delivery time and quantity. After both parties reach an agreement, we will proceed to the third step - small-scale mass production, followed by loading and participating in two rounds of road testing. The second round of road testing usually ranges from tens of thousands to 100000 kilometers, and only after the road testing is completed can we enter the mass production stage.
In the above process, most new car manufacturers lack experience, often unable to accurately provide requirements during development, and suppliers are often unaware, resulting in low efficiency.
Duan Kang told Photon Planet that he encountered various difficulties when participating in the development of a new power decelerator for a certain waist. "Traditional car companies are more rigorous, such as developing according to a specific system and providing very detailed information. The new forces' processes are very chaotic, and sometimes they say they need to do a certain link at a certain time, but all the information provided is disorganized. Sometimes we only supplement the materials after we have finished the product."
According to their observation, most new forces are more aggressive in hardware development, with a relatively short time cycle. They only know what the overall direction is and cannot be specific to the components themselves. "Once asked about the details, new forces can only ask suppliers for solutions, and sometimes even intentionally or unintentionally signal us to refer to independent car companies like Geely and BYD."
In addition to lack of hardware development experience, new car manufacturers are often arranged clearly when searching for suppliers.
Industry insiders have told Photon Planet that due to the relatively stable supply chain of car companies, new car manufacturers can either offer higher prices or only seek new suppliers when looking for suppliers. Although the prices of newly opened suppliers are low, the level of craftsmanship varies.
The above sources revealed that a new force had previously considered costs, so A supplier opened a new joint development with B supplier. Even if accurate dimensions were provided, B supplier still could not meet the demand. Later, the order volume skyrocketed, and supplier A was forced to provide a "nanny style" service, arranging dedicated personnel for point-to-point development, but the product still faced heavy responsibilities.

02 The old faction crawled from the bottom of the car into the car

Traditional car companies not only have sufficient accumulation in the hardware field, but also deeply understand the importance of tuning.
It is understood that different joint ventures have obtained many patented technologies and professional talents over the years. "FAW's tuning technicians directly recruited German experts from Volkswagen, and they have trained many tuning technicians, such as Toyota seeking Japanese experts." Engineer Lu Ping mentioned that FAW Dongmachi (a shock absorber manufacturer) is a joint venture between China and Japan, and most of its technology is purchased from Japan.
This does not mean that traditional car companies with mature supply chains, rich experience and technical personnel can rest assured. Photon Planet has learned that some traditional car companies, due to other reasons, have led to suppliers being too angry to speak up.
"Overall, Changan is the most stingy. Geely and Great Wall have the strictest standards, while BYD and Toyota are the easiest to cooperate with and offer relatively high gross profit margins." A chassis supplier said that in order to lower costs, Changan has almost gone crazy and set up "original price engineers" to achieve full process cost reduction.
"There are many gray and black boxes in the parts, and Changan will ask you what welding materials need to be done and what the approximate formula is. This is not over yet. We also need to ask you which steel factory the raw material supplier is, what its formula and time consumption are, the length and thickness of the pipe material, and how many production processes there are. As long as there are any that can be optimized, they will all be optimized."
Not only does the declining Chang'an cause unbearable suffering for suppliers, but the extremely strict standards of Great Wall also make it difficult for suppliers to serve.
"Although quality is highly valued, compared to Geely, Great Wall prefers to make sudden changes to the plan and does not extend the cycle, resulting in engineers having to work overtime." A supplier told Photon Planet that most of the chassis related plans were very upset and caught Wei Jianjun's butt.
The above-mentioned person recalled that after several adjustments, engineers from the Great Wall side were already very satisfied with a certain plan, so they withdrew the bid and completed internal approval, only waiting for mass production. As a result, Wei Jianjun had a sudden urge to get on the car and experience it, making things instantly tricky.
Wei Jianjun said that when Great Wall sells this car, we sell hundreds of thousands of units and must be responsible to the customer. The person in charge must personally get on the car. One of his buttocks is not right, and the other on the right is not matching. This has caused our suppliers, whether they are the company's CEO, department head, or the next level supplier's CEO, to have a meeting early on Saturday morning to discuss how to solve the problem.

”The most pitiful thing was the engineer who was coordinating with him. He was attending a wedding banquet that day, sitting in the auditorium at 9 o'clock in the morning, having a remote meeting
Perhaps it was the engineer's diligence that moved the client, or it could be that the client felt guilty. "Great Wall sent an email to our leader, thanking the engineer for his hard work. He put in a lot of effort for our training, worked overtime, and didn't rest on weekends to meet our needs. The last sentence of the email was hilarious: 'Then let's have another training!'"
Of course, this cannot resolve the grievances of suppliers, let alone the more shortcomings besides the aforementioned issues.
All departments of traditional car companies are skilled at throwing blame, and the cost of communication with suppliers is extremely high. For example, department A's proposal was rejected by department B, but the supplier was required to coordinate it themselves. For example, small-scale trial production plans, or failure to solve inventory problems after mass production is rejected, all of which make supply suffer unbearably.
"People from traditional car companies are masters of the 'drag word formula', always saying it's good and good, and always looking forward when asked. Even if these unapproved products are thrown away or kept, they can only eat Huanglian silently, and there are hardships that cannot be expressed.".
Various cases indicate that chassis tuning cannot be solved by throwing money and piling up materials. Lu Ping mentioned that once the technological differences on the wire controlled chassis are widened, it is basically impossible to make up for them by increasing research and development investment. Not only in research and development, but also in the development of related lowest level components, the host factory cannot cover all aspects.
"There may only be one solution that can achieve overtaking on bends, which requires at least three doctoral level teams, one in control, one in charge of hydraulic, and a team led by a skilled engineer with at least ten years of debugging experience. However, it is almost impossible for these three types of people to come together in China." Lu Ping believes that this solution also requires very high modeling requirements.
The chassis technology of traditional car companies did not fall from the sky, but was accumulated through manpower, financial resources, and time, and most of them adopted the path of reverse development. For example, Geely Boyue reversed the Toyota RAV4 chassis, while Great Wall only released the intelligent line control chassis technology a year ago after years of reverse development.

03 Chassis, last puzzle piece

It is interesting that almost all automotive engineers inquiring about Photon Planet have stated that NIO's claims regarding the chassis and suspension in NT2.0 are suspected of exaggeration.
"Blowing oneself off like a Transformers, it's possible to do battery swapping, but it's impossible to do chassis innovation." An engineer said that in recent years, the process of chassis electronicization has been very slow, and the biggest change now is only the CDC (semi-active suspension), which achieves a nearly Mercedes Benz magic carpet experience in a low-cost way.
Specifically, a sensor is added to the shock absorber to sense road vibrations in real time, and then an electromagnetic valve is added to transmit the information to the newly added controller. Based on the previously written program and parameters, the softness and hardness of the road conditions are determined. Finally, fine tuning is achieved by adjusting the battery valve and damping cloud.
The above-mentioned sources mentioned that domestic suppliers have gradually started to digitize chassis components, such as FAW Changchun related projects, which are expected to be followed closely by other domestic suppliers this year.
Even if CDC becomes popular, logically speaking, it is only aimed at regulating within the physical range, including the three levels of hard, medium, and soft, and it is difficult to go further. "For example, off-road vehicles require the chassis to be tuned to be softer due to their slow speed, while the sports version needs to be tuned to be harder because it requires higher handling requirements. However, how soft and hard it should be depends on the subjective judgment of experienced engineers."
There was a previous view in the industry that the biggest problem during the NIO 866 era was the feeling of scattered chassis tuning. Some industry insiders speculate that this may be related to the low wheelbase and strength. "The Volkswagen chassis is very hard and solid, and there is no floating feeling when charging."
It should be noted that currently, most new forces are constantly promoting intelligence while ignoring hardware itself, which is not wise. From the previous sales figures of Wuling Hongguang and BYD, it can be seen that the market is still in a period of electrification and is far from reaching the stage of intelligence.
On the one hand, domestic consumption is mostly dominated by mid to low-end models priced below 300000 yuan, and intelligence may be too advanced. On the other hand, as of 2021, the total number of new energy vehicles in China was 7.84 million, accounting for only 2.6% of the total number of vehicles, indicating that in the process of electrification, the majority of people still remain above the demand for the first vehicle.
As the name suggests, as the first car, it must first meet the daily travel needs of users, so practicality, safety, and cost-effectiveness are the most important reference criteria. Only when the market penetration rate is high enough and gradually reaches the "second car", may intelligence truly move towards the forefront. However, even so, the safety, comfort, and stability involved in hardware are still issues that all car companies must prioritize.
"Firstly, whether it's electric cars or gasoline cars, I will never buy the first batch of cars. Secondly, when everyone drives electric cars and gas stations close down, I will consider switching to electric cars."
A car company engineer's statement, although somewhat extreme, indicates that new car manufacturing cannot ignore traditional hardware craftsmanship issues. Perhaps Jike 001 and NIO ES7 have started a remedial course, and more car companies will follow up in the future. (This article first released the Titanium Media APP)

This article is adapted from Titanium Media, article | Photon Planet, author | Wu Xianzhi, editor | Wang Pan
Original link: 2022, Car Chassis Battle - Titanium Media Official Website (tmtpost. com)
First image source @ Visual China