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it’s the annual golden september and silver october again, and it’s the critical month to boost sales.

according to the forecast of the china association of automobile manufacturers at the beginning of the year, china's auto sales in 2024 may exceed 31 million, an increase of more than 3% year-on-year. specifically, passenger car sales will reach 26.8 million, a year-on-year increase of 3%. as of august, passenger car production and sales reached 16.141 million and 16.157 million respectively, a year-on-year increase of 3% and 3.3% respectively.

looking specifically at august, passenger car production and sales in august were 2.221 million and 2.181 million, up 9.4% month-on-month and down 2.3% and 4% year-on-year, respectively. this obviously did not repeat the off-season situation of last year.

in terms of completion, only 60% of the annual sales volume was completed in the first eight months, and the future prospects are not optimistic.

however, the greater the pressure, the greater the hope. at present, all car companies are betting on the golden september and silver october, hoping to achieve a boom in these two months. so we have seen such a scene. since entering september, in less than half a month, more than 15 new generation and modified models have been launched. on september 10 alone, there were as many as 7 new cars launched.

there are classic fuel models such as passat and haval h6, new energy models such as wenjie m9, and new challengers such as lynk & co z10 and jiyue 07.

of course, the most eye-catching are the new cars of fuel brands. the main reason for this is that at a time when new energy vehicles are popular, the changes in fuel vehicles are obviously more eye-catching.

this year, saic volkswagen released two heavyweight models, tiguan l pro and passat pro. from the naming, it can be seen that the new pro name is in the style of science and technology. in terms of publicity, saic volkswagen promotes tiguan l pro as the most powerful intelligent gasoline car under 800,000 yuan. in terms of intelligence, it far exceeds audi q7 and bmw x5, crushes bmw x3 and q5, and even "steps on" the higher-level bba; passat pro is launched, and is even more labeled as "smart", a very emotional product, equipped with a series of software and hardware configurations that are not inferior to mainstream new energy models.

after new car manufacturers claimed that they had the best models within 500,000, 5 million, and 10 million yuan, traditional fuel car companies finally learned the marketing tactics.

not only volkswagen, but toyota has also taken an important step towards intelligence.

gac toyota and momenta have jointly created the toyota pilot end-to-end high-end intelligent driving system, which will be first installed on the bozhi 3x model and is expected to be launched next year. in addition, it has also cooperated deeply with huawei and will be equipped with the hongmeng cockpit, integrated into the hongmeng intelligent car-home interconnection ecosystem, and realize the full-scenario interconnection between people, cars and homes. on april 12, 2024, toyota textile (china) announced a cooperation with didi autonomous driving. earlier in 2019 and 2020, toyota had signed cooperation agreements with pony.ai and momenta.

on july 15, 2024, saic-gm's nop smart pilot assisted driving system was officially launched. the system has been applied to 348 cities in china and can travel more than 400,000 kilometers. officials claim that it is the first joint venture automaker in china to launch a high-speed pilot assistance function.

the three major luxury brands, audi, mercedes-benz and bmw, are equally unwilling to be outdone.

in september, mercedes-benz announced that it would invest more than 14 billion yuan with its chinese partners in the development and production of new products. in the past five years, mercedes-benz has invested 10.5 billion yuan to accelerate its intelligent process in china, with a research and development team of more than 2,000 people. audi is the first brand to adopt huawei's intelligent driving solution. the new generation of audi a5 will be equipped with this solution and is expected to be officially launched during the 2025 shanghai auto show.

bmw has established four major r&d centers in beijing, shanghai, shenyang and nanjing, which is the bmw group's largest and most complete r&d system outside of its headquarters in germany. tencent, alibaba, china unicom, navinfo and others have become partners.

this shows that the global auto giants have realized the urgency of intelligence, and the elephant has already begun to turn around. although they are in a state of catching up, there are already predecessors who have paved the way, and the latecomers are still catching up very quickly.

with the joint venture brands' increasingly obvious momentum in intelligence, it is foreseeable that the chinese auto market will usher in a new round of intelligent competition in the future.

in august, a total of 31 brands in the chinese auto market pushed 46 versions of ota, covering 65 models. among them, 11 joint venture brands released 16 versions of ota. for example, bmw pushed the 07/2024 version to its entire series at the end of august. this upgrade mainly optimizes the performance and functions of the car system to make the driving experience smoother.

ford began to push the r10 version of edge l on august 27, adding a car-machine interconnection function, which allows both android and apple phones to easily connect to the car-machine system. at the same time, the "personalized profile" function was renamed "driver preferences", adding more settings for driver position, rearview mirrors and other preferences. moreover, these settings no longer require logging into the car-machine system to be performed directly; the car-machine map has also been upgraded, and the authorization period settings for sensitive personal information of related functions have been improved.

saic-gm is also actively promoting ota upgrades. recently, saic-gm launched the v3.2 ota (over-the-air) upgrade for the e4 model. in terms of charging functions, it allows users to manage the charging process more flexibly, including presetting the start and end time of charging, and setting the target power. once the battery is charged to the specified power, the system will automatically stop charging; in terms of digital keys, new support is added for huawei mate series and p series mainstream models, and huawei watch 4 and watch 4 pro smart watches are also included in the support range.

at the same time, the interactive experience has also been significantly improved.

in june, saic-gm launched ota push of v3.1 car system for buick gl8 es lu zun and verano pro models. the main contents are the upgraded voice engine, optimized dashboard interactive interface, added some entertainment apps, improved account security, and optimized account login interaction and association logic.

in terms of intelligence, joint venture car companies are using ota to make up for the gap they have fallen behind in order to cope with the market pressure brought by new energy vehicles. judging from the above ota upgrade content, joint venture brands are currently upgrading car systems, smart cockpits, voice operations, etc. in the future, with the launch of new models and the installation of new hardware, such as advanced assisted driving, the direction of ota upgrades will also change, and they will eventually provide the same level of intelligent services as chinese new energy brands.

all this shows that joint venture brands are actively seeking change, rather than lying flat as some people previously believed.

nothing in this world remains unchanged. in the past, joint venture brands did lag behind in electrification and intelligence, but a temporary lag does not mean that joint venture brands will lag behind forever, nor does it mean that joint venture brands will lie flat. at present, joint venture brands are catching up in many aspects, cooperating with industry leaders while investing resources in research and development.

as a consumer, we hope to see such a scene. only when more strong players come in, the market will be more vibrant. what do you think?