Nanjing IVECO： High-end light trucks go beyond offline to enter the high-end market
On September 26, 2012, the first self-developed high-end light truck – "Beyond", which has attracted much attention from the industry, was grandly rolled off the production line at the Nanjing Jiangning factory. Xiao Guopu, vice president of SAIC Motor Group and chairperson of Nanjing Iveco Automobile Co., Ltd., Fabio Mingrino, global vice president of Iveco, Zhou Liang, general manager of Nanjing Iveco Automobile Co., Ltd., and Ni Feng, executive deputy general manager of Nanjing Iveco Automobile Co., Ltd., attended the ceremony and delivered speeches. Famous movie star Jiang Wu was also present as the spokesperson of this high-end light truck.
The advent of Transcendence officially sounded the clarion call for Nanjing IVECO to fully enter the high-end light truck field, indicating that Nanjing IVECO’s market strategy has taken a landmark step.
High-end, win "quantitative change" with "qualitative change"
In recent years, the domestic light truck market structure is accelerating transformation. From the perspective of the proportion of each model, the market share of low-end models is gradually being covered by mid-to-high-end models. Especially after the implementation of the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan", the state actively encourages enterprises to compete and transform, and the commercial automobile industry is also facing a "transition from big to strong". With the continuous improvement of safety standards, emission regulations and fuel economy requirements, the requirement for light truck technology upgrades is becoming more and more urgent, and the high-end industry has become an inevitable trend in the future development of the light truck market.
Since 1958, our country’s first self-developed light truck leap into the market, after more than 50 years of development, as an important part of China’s automobile industry, light trucks have become the most concentrated independent brands in China’s automobile industry and the largest export share of the sub-sector. After joining the WTO, light trucks account for an increasing proportion in China’s automobile export strategy, but the export market has always been dominated by Asia, Africa, South America and other regions, making it difficult to enter the European and North American markets with higher emission standards and safety performance requirements.
In order to improve the global competitiveness of its own brands, break through existing bottlenecks, and achieve new results in the global market, China’s light trucks must establish new development ideas, while maintaining cost-effective advantages, increase product technology research and development efforts, from low-end to high-end, win quantitative change with qualitative change, and comprehensively improve product quality.
"Beyond", a new benchmark for autonomous high-end light trucks
As one of the most successful cooperative enterprises between China and Italy, Nanjing IVECO has always taken the global strategy of "based at home and going global" as its development direction. While meeting the needs of the domestic low-end market, it integrates its advantageous resources and increases the integration of high-tech. It uses the world’s most advanced light truck products as a benchmark and competitive model. Relying on the advantageous resources of SAIC Motor Group and the technical heritage of Italy IVECO, under the cooperation of many parties, it tracks the new global automotive technologies and processes, and studies the regulations and market needs of China and other countries in the world. Through the new model of "joint development and independent innovation", it has created a high-end light truck model that surpasses this cutting-edge technology, laying a solid foundation for expanding the international market including Europe, America and other countries.
It is reported that this high-end light truck named "Beyond" is Nanjing Iveco, with the full support of the shareholders of SAIC Motor Group and Italy Iveco, through the cooperation of Chinese and foreign technicians, costing hundreds of millions of dollars and four years of painstaking research, before it can be manufactured. The product, whether it is power system, safety performance, intelligent technology or comfort, has international synchronization and domestic leading standards.
As a product with the most cutting-edge technology level today, Transcendence has the four characteristics of "high efficiency, safety, consideration and quality". It is a high-end light truck that integrates strong power, avant-garde shape, environmentally friendly emissions, low carbon and energy saving. Transcendence adopts the technology-leading Fiat power chain system, equipped with an F1C engine that can be upgraded to the national V standard, turbocharged intermediate cooling and a 4-valve high-pressure common rail EFI system, ensuring the product characteristics of high power and low fuel consumption, and the comfort and handling of the vehicle are also improved.
Beyond the full use of European standard design, with up to 32 patents and 15 key technologies. During the entire development process of the product, the company has conducted a lot of experiments and know the real situation for mainstream light truck products at home and abroad. From dynamic performance to internal and external styling, various performance objectives are finely divided into 482 subjective and objective evaluation indicators, which are used as the general requirements for design, manufacturing and verification. In addition to conducting strict performance tests, the R & D team of Nanjing IVECO has also formulated a complete subjective evaluation system to investigate the subjective feelings of drivers and passengers on the product. The subjective evaluation team composed of multi-national technicians repeatedly evaluated the prototype and put forward improvement opinions, providing a scientific basis for the improvement of various performance levels of the vehicle.
The scientific and rigorous development process runs through the entire development process of the product from R & D to production: VE/VA value engineering, SE engineering, quality engineering, vehicle matching engineering; 3 million-kilometer reliability test, RGT and other life tests; SQE review; WCM global manufacturing system…, beyond not only carries the expectations of Nanjing IVECO to fight the high-end light truck market with science and technology as the core competitiveness, but also will serve as a new benchmark product for independent high-end light trucks to fight the high-end light truck market.
The Road to "Created in China"
The advent of transcendence will break the current pattern of Japanese products thriving in the domestic high-end light truck market, form a situation in which Europe and Japan compete and divide equally, and gradually create a new era of "independent brands synchronizing the world". As Zhou Liang, general manager of Nanjing IVECO, said: The development of a brand requires a long-term accumulation process. From "Made in China" to "Created in China" is by no means achieved overnight. To achieve this transformation, Chinese commercial vehicles must first build a "reliable Made in China brand". Independent research and development and innovation do not mean building cars behind closed doors, but rather combine superior brands, combine their own strength, and integrate core technologies to create a reliable and respected independent brand.
To complete the revival of independent brands, not only must we have ordinary products as support, but also need to form breakthroughs and innovations in the high-end field. The advent of Nanjing Iveco’s high-end light truck "Transcendence" has found a broader development path for China’s light trucks. I believe that in the near future, more domestic light truck manufacturers can create their own high-end light trucks through a research and development model such as Nanjing Iveco’s "joint development and independent innovation".