news

Old car owners are anxious, and so is Zeekr. On the evening of August 14, after the Zeekr Legal Department urgently "started work" and issued a statement that "in response to a large number of false news, relevant evidence has been fixed and the police have been called", Zeekr officials also released a "user Q&A" to answer "why the iteration is so fast". Regarding the Zeekr 001, which "three swords were honed in one year", the Zeekr official and the Legal Department "one played the good cop, the other played the bad cop".

Two days ago, Zeekr launched the 2025 Zeekr 001, which is the third renewal of the model within a year and the second iteration within half a year. The intensive update speed of the 2023, 2024 and 2025 models of a model within a year has made old car owners angry. At the same time, the 2025 model has increased configuration and reduced price, and is equipped with the Hao? Han Intelligent Driving System 2.0, which makes old car owners feel "backstabbed". Whether Zeekr should empathize, compensate old car owners or even refund the price difference has become the focus of attention. After the automotive industry entered the "software-defined" era, not only Zeekr, but also various car companies have accelerated the iteration speed of new cars in recent years, and the situation of "backstabbing" old car owners is not uncommon. Industry insiders believe that under the "involution" competition in the automotive industry, who can be the first to "kill" has become a must, and how to balance the relationship between products and old car owners requires car companies to find new ways.

Dissatisfied with “Sharpening Three Swords in One Year”

On February 27 this year, the 2024 Zeekr 001 was announced to be on the market, with a price range of 269,000 to 329,000 yuan. However, half a year later, on August 13 this year, Zeekr launched the 2025 Zeekr 001, with a price range of 259,000 to 329,000 yuan. Among them, the new model is the first to be equipped with Zeekr AIOS and Haohan Intelligent Driving 2.0. It is understood that because the old models use the Mobileye intelligent driving solution, and the 2025 models use the Haohan intelligent driving solution, the Mobileye intelligent driving solution uses a different layout scheme in terms of underlying chips, system control, wiring harness layout, etc., and there are two sets of solutions at the system and hardware levels. Therefore, Zeekr said: "The old models cannot be replaced."

If the 2023 models that can be purchased before February this year are included, it means that consumers can buy three Zeekr 001 models from 2023 to 2025 this year. Some netizens call it a "very magical phenomenon". The replacement speed of "three updates a year", coupled with the inability to replace the new intelligent driving solution for the 2024 models, immediately caused dissatisfaction among the owners of the 2024 Zeekr 001. On the night of the launch of the 2025 Zeekr 001, the official live broadcast room of Zeekr was extremely lively. Some users with the names of "Unscrupulous Zeekr" and "Zekr Return Money" were "brushing gifts" and "brushing the screen" in the live broadcast room, saying that Zeekr is an unscrupulous merchant. Zeekr officials said that they understand and respect the feelings of users, and are well aware of the importance of trust. Therefore, they provide old car owners with a car purchase voucher worth 10,000 yuan, so that old car owners can buy the latest Zeekr products at the best price.

But the old car owners are not buying it. A Beijing Business Daily reporter saw on the Black Cat complaint platform that after the 2025 Zeekr 001 model was launched, the platform received a large number of complaints from car owners. Among them, one car owner said that less than a month after buying the car, Zeekr 001 launched a new model, and the new car became an old car in seconds, directly depreciating. After that, some car owners went to Zeekr headquarters and stores to defend their rights.

In response to the dissatisfaction of the car owners, Zeekr officials and the legal department "appeased" and "reported" on the Weibo platform. On the evening of August 14, the Zeekr Legal Department posted on Weibo that in response to the release of Zeekr's 2025 new products, a large number of organized rumors, photoshopped pictures, fabricated personal attacks and other false information have appeared on the Internet platform recently. The company has secured relevant evidence and reported to the police, and will severely investigate the legal responsibilities of all rumor makers in accordance with the law.

After that, Zeekr officially released "2025 New Product Release Answers to User Questions" on Weibo to respond to a series of questions from consumers. Zeekr said that in February this year, after the launch of the 2024 Zeekr 001, the vast intelligent driving equipped with Zeekr 007 was widely praised by users and the industry. Many potential users of Zeekr 001 called for the choice of the vast intelligent driving solution. At the same time, the company's brand NPS (Net Recommended Score) survey also found that intelligent driving is one of the factors that influence users to choose Zeekr 001. Therefore, the internal decision was made to launch a self-developed intelligent driving solution to provide users with more choices.

Regarding the dispute between Zeekr officials and Zeekr old car owners, some netizens said: "Xiaomi 'three years to sharpen a sword', Zeekr 'one year to sharpen three swords'." Another group of netizens believed: "I can understand the feelings of old car owners. The compensation wave of car companies is not smart and has angered old users. But according to market rules, car companies control product prices and product launch time, and they cannot always slow down the development progress."

Intelligent success or failure

In the "software-defined" era, the speed of new car iteration continues to accelerate, and the phenomenon of "backstabbing" old car owners is not uncommon. Previously, the new BYD Formula Leopard was launched with a price reduction of 50,000 yuan, which also caused dissatisfaction among old car owners. And Xiaopeng's new P5 model switched to the Dimensity system, which made it impossible for old models to update the system, which also triggered the rights protection of old car owners.

Zhao Zhanling, a lawyer at Beijing Jiawei Law Firm, said that not only automobile products, but also electronic products such as mobile phones, are currently iterating very fast. From a legal perspective, this is a strategy formulated by the company based on its own pace and market conditions, and there is nothing wrong with it. The key issue is that if consumers can provide clear evidence to prove that the company or salesperson promised not to launch new models within a certain clear period of time when purchasing the car, but then launched new models during this period, it may constitute fraud, but the core is that clear evidence needs to be provided to prove it. In addition, in terms of rights protection, he also recommends that consumers use formal legal channels to rationally protect their rights.

At the same time, it is difficult for old car owners to accept that a "new car" becomes an "old car" within half a year. At this time, there are also differences between car companies and consumers on whether they should empathize and provide compensation and make up the price difference, and whether cars are fast-moving consumer goods. Since the entry of new car-making forces, the concept of automobile electrification has been continuously strengthened. At the new product launch conferences of various car companies, chip computing power, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, and charging speed were interpreted in detail by the heads of car companies as important selling points, so that traditional car companies are currently increasing the length of interpretations of intelligence and computing power when releasing new cars.

A sales manager of a joint venture brand told the Beijing Business Daily that in recent years, consumers have compared the models of traditional joint venture brands with those of domestic brands, and the focus of the comparison is on the application and performance of intelligence. Consumers are more inclined to choose more intelligent models, which has become one of the advantages of domestic brands in grabbing market share from joint venture brands. At present, in the cognition of some consumers, more advanced chips, more powerful computing power and intelligent systems are also used as standards to measure whether a car is advanced and easy to use. Zhang Yang, the owner of new energy vehicles, said that when driving fuel vehicles in the past, he paid more attention to performance and economy, but after purchasing new energy vehicles, he focused on whether the intelligent chips were advanced and when true autonomous driving could be realized.

Therefore, the substantial upgrade of the 2025 Zeekr 001 in the intelligent driving solution has made old car owners even more dissatisfied. It is understood that the 2025 Zeekr 001 adopts the Haohan Intelligent Driving 2.0 system. Chen Qi, head of Zeekr's intelligent driving, introduced that Haohan Intelligent Driving 2.0 is built based on lidar and dual NVIDIA OrinX intelligent driving chips. In the "2025 New Product Release Answers to User Questions", Zeekr also responded that the old models cannot be replaced with Haohan Intelligent Driving, because Zeekr 001 adopts the version of the Haohan Intelligent Driving solution, which uses different layout solutions from the Mobileye Intelligent Driving solution in terms of underlying chips, system control, wiring harness layout, etc., and there are two sets of solutions at the system and hardware levels. In the eyes of the outside world, under the background of electrification and intelligence, the fast digestion of automobiles on the product side has become a trend, but on the price side, automobiles are still bulk consumer goods, so it is difficult for consumers to accept the fact that the purchased vehicles will be "eliminated" in a short period of time.

"Running like crazy"

In fact, for car companies, rapid iteration does not mean abandoning car owners, but also responding to pressure from market competition.

Compared with traditional car companies, new car companies often use higher-level smart cockpits and smart assisted driving chips to strengthen their own innovation labels. They compete for "first release" like smartphone companies to strengthen their own innovation labels. Therefore, in the promotion of many smart electric vehicles, companies are emphasizing "first release". Zhu Jiangming, founder, chairman and CEO of Leapmotor, once said: "In the past, domestic automobile companies generally updated a new generation of products every four years, while foreign countries may take six years. In the era of smart electric vehicles, I think it should be updated every two years because it is an electronic product." Lin Jinwen, vice president of Zeekr, said that the current market competition is very "competitive" and Zeekr needs to provide the best technology and products to users as soon as possible to achieve a good enough market performance.

In addition, for newcomers in car manufacturing, achieving sales volume has also become a key issue. Car companies need to continuously iterate to improve the overall level of their models and grab market share through new models. The financial report released by Zeekr Auto showed that it suffered a net loss of 2.22 billion yuan in the first quarter of this year. Previously, Zeekr had just landed on the capital market and hoped to achieve profitability as soon as possible. Zeekr CEO An Conghui also said that the company's goal is to break even within this year.

"Automakers are accelerating product upgrades in the hope of further stimulating market sales." In the view of Zhong Shi, an expert from the Expert Committee of the China Automobile Dealers Association, new energy vehicles and traditional fuel vehicles have different iteration logics. The advantage of new energy vehicles lies in intelligence, and the rapid update of intelligence has also accelerated the iteration speed of automobile products. There is nothing wrong with rapid iteration itself, which is in line with market laws and corporate strategies. If a company has new technologies, it must upgrade quickly to be more competitive.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Liu Xiaomeng