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Our reporter Chen Maoli reports from Beijing

"We should pay attention to the management of the entire product life cycle. In the era of software-defined cars, intelligent functions are becoming more and more common. We should do a good job in the management of the entire product life cycle so that we can achieve profitability through intelligence in the future."

Recently, at the Zero View Auto live broadcast program jointly organized by China Business News and China Economic Media Think Tank, Lu Shengyun, an expert from China Economic Media Think Tank and founder of Qianjue Shenzhi Consulting Company, told reporters.

Lu Shengyun believes that after entering the era of smart electric vehicles, in the "involutionary" electric vehicle industry, car companies need a full life cycle thinking.

He further shared: "Although the penetration rate of high-level autonomous driving is increasing year by year, the actual usage rate is not high. Although a product has many intelligent functions, users do not use them. Why is it useless? Is it because the product is not well made, or the promotion is not well done, or the differentiated positioning is not well done? This requires companies to think about and do a good job of product life cycle management."

Lu Shengyun also shared his views on "price wars", which can be said to be a game of price. One type is to reduce prices to capture more market share; another type is to raise prices to protect the brand and reputation. Just like "BMW took the lead in raising prices this time, and it will be smart to observe whether its competitors will follow suit."

The reporter noticed that in the luxury car array, BMW was the first to announce its withdrawal from the price war, followed by Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Volvo and other brands.

The reporter learned from Lu Shengyun that a "price war" is not only taking place in China, but also in Europe. European electric vehicles are in the promotion stage, and consumers are highly price sensitive at this stage.

Compared with fuel vehicles, electric vehicles are innovative products. The spread of such products has certain laws of communication. According to the theory of the laws of communication of innovative products, consumers in society are divided into five categories: the first category is innovators; the second category is early adopters; the third category is the early majority; the fourth category is the late majority; and the fifth category is the laggards who refuse to repent.

"Compared with China, the development of electric vehicles in Europe is at the early adopter stage of about 10% in the 'innovation curve'. For this group, the pricing of electric vehicles will be relatively high. As it moves towards the 'early majority' promotion stage, due to problems such as the incomplete new energy industry chain in Europe, the price of electric vehicles is high, and the early adopter group is highly price sensitive," Lu Shengyun introduced.

Lu Shengyun further analyzed, "For example, many of the first batch of Tesla owners bought their cars for the technology. But when Tesla models enter the mass production stage, early adopters are very sensitive to prices. Therefore, in Europe, which is at this stage, automakers will also use 'price wars' to seize market share."

Lu Shengyun emphasized: "Although Europe is a free market, it still has certain supervision. If a company wants to disrupt the market competition order by making losses, this is not allowed in Europe. German car companies have some ideas that are worth learning from. For example, BBA (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi) has always focused on the luxury car segment. The thinking of these car companies is: to be in the top three in a segment with a good living space, such a track has few competitors and high profits."

Lu Shengyun believes that car companies should focus more on "value war" and "volume" technology rather than "price war". "Recently, I saw two exciting news. One is that Uber Global and BYD have reached a strategic cooperation and plan to purchase 100,000 BYD cars for its autonomous driving services. The other is that the autonomous driving company Waymo purchased vehicles produced by Zeekr for autonomous driving testing. We have accumulated great technological advantages in the field of new energy, and we can consider exporting and cooperating with other companies. Xiaopeng and Volkswagen Group, and Leapmotor and Stellantis are very good examples of cooperation."

(Editor: Zhang Shuo, Reviewer: Tong Haihua, Proofreader: Zhai Jun)