Car companies, marketing rhetoric cannot solve the problem

After the fatal accident involving NIO's NOP, Li Xiang, the founder of Ideal Auto, posted a message on WeChat Moments, calling on the media and industry organizations to unify the Chinese terminology standards for autonomous driving.

At that time, Li Xiang said, "Don't use any extra Chinese characters to avoid exaggerated publicity that may cause misunderstandings among users. Exercise restraint in promotion and invest in technology, which will benefit users/industries/enterprises in the long run.

Li Xiang’s circle of friends quickly sparked industry discussions. Finally, Li Xiang posted another circle of friends, saying that he had listened to more reliable suggestions, which are summarized as follows:

L2 = Assisted Driving

L3 = Advanced Driver Assistance

L4 = Autonomous Driving

L5 = Autonomous Driving

It is also said that such a statement can maximize the control of expected values ​​and avoid automatic and assisted driving appearing in the same state. Assisted driving is the responsibility of the person, and the appearance of the word automatic is the responsibility of the car.

This was a good suggestion, so almost a week after the NIO accident, on Friday night, the Li Auto official website was changed.

On Ideal's official website, the assisted driving system that is currently standard on the Ideal ONE model has been adjusted from the original [AD Advanced Assisted Driving System] to [AD Assisted Driving System].

The word "advanced" was deleted to control user expectations.

Coincidentally, on the same day, Xiaopeng’s official website also adjusted the text description of its own driving assistance technology.

In previous official promotional materials, Xiaopeng's assisted driving was called "XPILOT Autonomous Driving Assistance System". After the modification, the word "automatic" was replaced by "intelligent".

Xiaopeng accepted Li Xiang's suggestion, but not completely.

I guess Xiaopeng Motors thinks its functions are smarter than those of Ideal Motors. To unify the terms would be an insult to the efforts of our own R&D personnel.

In fact, companies don’t need to worry about naming.

According to the "Automobile Driving Automation Classification" issued by my country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, driving automation levels are divided into six levels from 0 to 5 - this is the new national standard for the classification of autonomous driving levels.

Currently, the functions that most companies can achieve belong to Level 2 or Level 1 according to the regulations of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. That is, "combined driving assistance" or "partial driving assistance".

Instead of renaming their assisted driving technology, what car companies should really do is to let consumers know clearly what their products can do.

No matter how it is named, the assisted driving system is just a system concept that involves multiple sub-technical functions. However, there are slight differences in the sub-functions that can be achieved by different companies in the same level of assisted driving systems.

Taking several car companies with relatively large voices on the market as an example, no matter how they name their assisted driving systems, the functions of the entire driving system can basically be divided into two major parts: automatic cruise control and automatic parking. The difference that is most likely to confuse consumers is mainly in the automatic cruise function.

The Auto Prophet has summarized a picture of car companies' communication language for assisted driving technology. It can be clearly seen that words such as "automatic" and "hands-off" that can easily mislead consumers are not uncommon in marketing language.

In essence, what car companies really need to do is far more than just adjusting their wording.

The first is self-restraint and user education. In order to avoid risks, most car companies will clearly state their assisted driving functions, and the responsibility for driving safety still lies with the driver. But such regulations are like the privacy terms in mobile phones, which are difficult for users to really take to heart. In addition, the exaggerated sales language of car salespeople can easily be misunderstood by users.

User instructions and online tests for assisted driving functions are particularly important.

For example, Xiaopeng Motors previously launched the automatic navigation assisted driving NGP function. If the car owner wants to use this function, he must watch the function introduction video on the App and pass the test questions before he can turn on this function in the assisted driving setting menu on the car computer.

Moreover, the 5-minute function introduction video cannot be fast-forwarded. The second half of the video is almost entirely about warning car owners of things they need to pay attention to, including: the need to watch this video before handing the vehicle over to others for use; NGP is not fully autonomous driving; the driver should hold the steering wheel throughout the entire process, observe the road conditions, and make timely judgments.

The 2021 Ideal ONE needs to go through two training steps when it is delivered to users. First, when picking up the car, the user will be given a "Must-Read for Assisted Driving". After activating the vehicle, the user must watch a video on the assisted driving function before the relevant function can be enabled.

This kind of educational process needs to be popularized.

Secondly, it is the product level. Currently, most models with assisted driving rely on judging whether the driver has his hands on the steering wheel to assess whether the driver is focusing on the road. From practical experience, this is an "attention review" that can be easily bypassed.

A few overseas luxury brands will place a driver attention monitoring camera on the dashboard to ensure that the driver not only keeps his hands on the steering wheel but also keeps his eyes on the road. Such double insurance is obviously more reliable.

The increase in hardware will significantly increase the cost burden of automakers. But safety has always been the area that the automotive industry should pay the most attention to.

Simply changing the marketing language will not solve the problem, the problem must be addressed from the root.

Author: Zhang Bowen

Source: Zhang Bowen