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Author | Wang Xiaojuan

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

From smart driving to battery technology, technology has become a prominent subject in the automotive industry, and car companies also hold technology days to showcase their technological strength.

On July 26, Ideal held a NVH Technology Day. Through this exchange, the outside world was able to get a glimpse of how this new force, which was established only 9 years ago, can gradually compete with old luxury cars in the field of NVH.

NVH (noise, vibration harshness) is an important indicator to measure the quietness of a car's interior. The higher-end the car model, the more attention it pays to NVH performance.

Ideal, which has not been manufacturing cars for a long time, has also made mistakes in NVH. Once, during a test drive event after the release of Ideal ONE, a test driver said that Ideal ONE had poor NVH performance in "performance mode".

NVH has thus become a pain in Li Xiang's heart. Within Ideal, the NVH R&D department was also pushed by Li Xiang himself. On the first day of the new year in 2022, the team leader also issued a military order, "If the problem is not solved, we will leave after the new year."

As we all know, the NVH capability of Ideal went from being questioned when Ideal ONE was released to Ideal MAGE and Ideal L9 taking the top two spots on the third-party test list. This is also a very specific example of Ideal's product polishing.

For users, once they get in the car, they start to feel the sounds coming from everywhere, including the sound of the car's parts colliding with each other, as well as the sound from the external environment. Not to mention resting, even after getting in the car, watching TV series, listening to music, etc., requires a quiet environment.

But it is not easy to do a good job in NVH, especially for car companies like Ideal, whose products take the extended-range route. It is inherently more difficult than car companies that take the pure electric route.

On the one hand, NVH is a huge systematic project. Unlike indicators such as acceleration from 0 to 100 km/h and top speed, it can be evaluated specifically and has clear technical routes to improve. In comparison, improving NVH capabilities is more difficult.

There are many parts related to NVH in a car. A car has about 10,000 parts, of which more than 30% are related to NVH. Therefore, if you want to have excellent NVH performance, it is not enough to just stuff some sound-absorbing cotton.

In addition, there are many scenarios that NVH needs to develop, including various driving dynamics, environment, temperature, weather, etc., which will affect the judgment of the overall sound.

What’s more difficult is that the perception of sound is always very subjective. Everyone’s hearing and physical senses are different. Sensitive people can detect noises that ordinary people cannot feel.

For example, Ji Xiangdong, senior director of R&D operations at Ideal Auto, complained that Li Xiang is a person with sensitive hearing and can always hear voices that many people in the team cannot hear.

In order to tackle NVH, Ideal has invested heavily in building many professional laboratories, such as sound insulation kit laboratories, modal laboratories, vehicle semi-anechoic chambers, smart listening rooms, etc., to test the sound blocking capabilities of different materials, etc. Many of these laboratories are the first in the industry.

Even the winding, bumpy roads in the countryside near Ideal's headquarters became part of the test. The engineers in the NVH department are very familiar with those roads, which are important scenes during testing.

And, when it comes to improving NVH capabilities, ideal engineers are always faced with a balance.

When the development of Ideal L9 was nearing completion, Li Xiang drove the L9 test car again and found that the road noise on the rough asphalt road was very obvious, not as steady as the sound of the BMW X7.

In the early stages of development, the NVH target of L9 was to match the BMW X7, and 85% of the NVH indicators were qualified. However, Li Xiang was still very dissatisfied with the noise of L9 when driving on rough asphalt roads, and insisted that the NVH indicators of L9 should exceed those of X7 in all aspects, not just meet the 85% level.

But at that time, there were only two weeks before the product was launched, and it was extremely difficult to find a solution that balanced factors such as vibration reduction performance, weight, reliability, cost, and time.

During those two weeks, the NVH team worked on an hourly schedule, even in four shifts, and conducted road tests 24 hours a day to ensure the reliability of the solution. The final solution was to use a resonant block, but if the resonant block was installed, it would be in a very conspicuous position on the upper fork arm, which would become an "imperfect" point of the Ideal L9.

Fortunately, Li Xiang finally made the decision. He believed that if this problem was not solved, L9 would not be sold at all. After balancing and compromising among multiple indicators, Li Xiang finally chose comfort and installed a resonance block.

In the end, L9 was under great pressure from public opinion, but its performance in NVH was indeed excellent.

Of course, there are many more balanced cases.

Many people can't hear the hiss sound of the air conditioner because the frequency band is very high. But Ideal finally decided to solve the optimization because some children are often sensitive to the sound of this frequency band. However, this optimization solution will increase the cost of more than 140 yuan for each car after the mass production of Ideal L9.

In addition, Ideal not only took into account the front and second rows when improving NVH, but also took into account the sound blocking of the third row.

Ideally, since it is positioned for families, the three rows of passengers are likely to be the elders or children, who are the groups that need more care.

Ideal NVH is not only for ourselves, but also for our suppliers.

As one of the selling points of Ideal, the refrigerator is also a factor that affects the NVH in the car. Engineers from Ideal's NVH department said that when they first contacted the supplier's refrigerator, the noise was too loud when it was running, which was totally unacceptable. They had no choice but to develop it together with the supplier. Later, this refrigerator was also selected by many car companies.

It is precisely because of the insight into user needs and the persistence in product experience that Ideal has gone from learning from others to being learned by others.

In March this year, Ideal MEGA was launched amid cheers, but after the launch, the sales were sluggish, which also caused Ideal to fall into a short-term morale slump. Even the modified L series was affected, and the monthly sales returned to more than 30,000. At that time, many people thought that Ideal might never recover, or at least be silent for a while.

But soon, Ideal's sales volume returned to 40,000 units per month, and did not drop sharply due to MEGA. Behind this is the fact that the automotive industry is still a product-driven industry, and good products can still be favored by the market.

Li Xiang's persistence in the "little thing" of NVH is also a profile of the rapid rise of China's new energy vehicles. In addition to the three-electric technology, the little "little things" that traditional car companies once took pride in in the fuel era are being conquered by Chinese car companies.