Using Internet thinking to build cars, Tesla is the Apple of the automotive world?

Tesla's performance in 2021 was relatively strong, and in the face of fierce market competition, Tesla's annual car deliveries exceeded 900,000 units, continuing to lead the new energy vehicle market. And in the new year, Musk revealed that Tesla will not release new models, and there is no plan to launch cheaper models. In this way, Tesla will focus more on the brand market layout and other supporting services this year to ensure that it continues to maintain certain advantages in products and services.

According to a report by the Financial News Agency, Tesla investors who "know the inside story" revealed that Tesla is developing an app store, similar to Apple's App Store, so that car owners can download and use various third-party applications on their own. Teslascope, a media outlet that follows Tesla's development, also said that since May last year, Tesla has been preparing for the development of the app store related work.

Tesla, which has always played the role of industry disruptor, has set its sights on the development of the in-car app store, and perhaps it wants to use software services to promote the development of the traditional automotive industry and redefine "hardware" with software.

Why does Tesla need an app store?

Before the real rise of new energy vehicles, many traditional cars have a center screen that is difficult to describe as intelligent, with a seemingly grand appearance, but with only basic functions such as playing music, opening and closing the air conditioner and sunroof, and only mapping the functions of traditional physical buttons to the interface of the center screen. Many users prefer to use CarPlay and other smartphone access to the car system, the central control screen as a simple display screen use.

Along with the development of automotive intelligence, the center console is able to achieve more functions with the help of a more powerful chip to get rid of the dependence on smartphones. However, considering the compatibility of software and interface adaptation, many brands of central control screen more pre-installed system, in advance in the system to download and install the corresponding applications, these "restrictions" also highlights the value of the car APP application store, the existence of an exclusive application store to meet the user's more needs for car central control screen entertainment The existence of an exclusive app store can meet the user's needs for entertainment on the car's center console.

It is worth noting that Tesla's central in-car system is not Android, but a proprietary system developed based on Linux. The advantage of this system is higher integration with the car, can control and display most of the car's functions and information, and support OTA software upgrades, but in the number of third-party software is not as good as other Android car, some users do not like the system comes with the listening software, but limited by the system and can not facilitate the replacement of other APP.

In fact, Tesla has a layout in the central control of the car machine as early as 2019, users will be able to play the "Beach Car Racing 2" game on the Tesla, directly using the car steering wheel, throttle and brake to control the game's racing car. Thanks to the advantages of the high degree of integration of Tesla software and hardware, game manufacturers are able to mobilize some of the car's hardware to participate in the game and enhance the user's sense of game presence.

So why did Tesla choose this year to layout the APP app store? As mentioned at the beginning of the article, Tesla has no plans to release a new car this year, but in order to continue to boost car sales, Tesla needs to find new ways to stimulate user consumption and maintain the brand's market fervor outside of cars. You know, according to Musk's declared goal for 2022, Tesla's sales this year will be 50% higher than in 2021, that is, sales to reach more than 1.35 million units.

From the perspective of market development, Tesla's purpose of developing APP application store is mainly three things. One is to make all kinds of third-party APP on Tesla have a unified download space, on the one hand, to facilitate users to download and use, on the other hand, to facilitate the incentive for developers to develop special software for Tesla, to enhance the richness of the system exclusive software, in order to narrow the gap between the software ecology and the Android car.

Second, the existence of an exclusive APP application store can, to a certain extent, enhance the uniqueness of Tesla products. Whether in the automatic driving or in the "three electric" system, Tesla has a certain leading edge.Developing a more integrated app store for software and hardware in the automotive world will both facilitate Tesla's development of new product features and fit its role as a pioneer and disruptor in the automotive world.

Third, in the era of car intelligence, users have raised higher requirements for the security of the car system. Tesla's in-car system has been hacked, there are reports that foreign hackers cracked the Tesla security system in less than 1.6 seconds, many users can not help but doubt the security of the Tesla system.

The existence of the Tesla car APP application store, the third-party APP shelves and distribution channels in their own hands, can form a closed-loop software ecosystem similar to the Apple App Store, not only to reduce the probability of users unintentionally exposed to Trojan horse programs, but also to form a software audit wall, as far as possible to block the hidden channels for hackers to hack into the system through third-party software.

Third, in the era of car intelligence, users have raised higher requirements for the security of the car system. Tesla's in-car system has been hacked, there are reports that foreign hackers cracked the Tesla security system in less than 1.6 seconds, many users can not help but doubt the security of the Tesla system.

The existence of the Tesla car APP application store, the third-party APP on the shelves and distribution channels in their own hands, can form a closed-loop software ecosystem similar to the Apple App Store, not only to reduce the probability of users inadvertently come into contact with Trojan horse programs, but also to form a software audit wall, as far as possible to block the hidden channels for hackers to hack into the system through third-party software.

It is also worth noting that in terms of content layout and operation of the app, Tesla, like "Azure", has launched a number of brand peripherals, including whistles, mugs and golf umbrellas. On the one hand, these products can tap the consumption potential of users and enhance the company's revenue channel.

On the other hand, Tes' peripheral products can be seen as an attempt to cultivate users' consumption habits in advance, so that some owners can develop the habit of paying attention to Tesla's products and lay the foundation for the promotion of the APP application store afterwards. Even in the purchase channel and commodity display, the future Tesla can APP-based in the center console display of goods, forming a set of closed-loop "owner economy" circle, and the APP application store is the core of a variety of new features and new marketing play, expand the Tesla function, service and commercialization of the development boundary.

I believe that Tesla has developed its own FSD chip and central control system, the development of APP application store is sooner or later, a complete set of self-research software and hardware system can be more development initiative in their own hands. In the world of new energy vehicles, APP application store still has a lot of imagination, especially in terms of revenue, car center control screen charging system software is still a blue ocean, Tesla if you can get a foothold in the field, the future may be able to rely on the operation of APP application store to expand the revenue channel.

Internet thinking of new energy car companies

In the role played, some traditional car companies are more like to treat themselves as pure car providers, taking into account the cost of vehicles, marketing and sales, the intelligent system of the central control car machine using third-party manufacturers' products, car sales and after-sales rely on dealers of 4S stores. The existence of this interval, invariably increased the distance between consumers and car companies.

As for many new energy car companies are how close to the user how to come, in addition to their own development of customized car system and self-operated sales system, some manufacturers even moved the vehicle into the mall sales, so that users can buy ordinary goods like shopping for cars.

For traditional car companies, cutting channels to develop a direct store system, vigorously laying out brand peripheral products and paying attention to software operations are more difficult to imagine. Or the traditional car companies are a big boat is difficult to turn around, has formed the company's operating model and dealership system is difficult to change overnight, so they are more commonly used to develop new energy brands to explore the road.

Many new energy car companies are different, most of the mainstream new energy car companies were founded after 2010, along with the development of the mobile Internet wave, Internet thinking has become part of the spirit of their brand operations, the "car" as the core of the product matrix rather than all.

Does this model look familiar? In fact, it is similar to the idea of building the product system of Internet manufacturers, using one or several software as the "fulcrum", and then launching other supporting software to form a certain number of product arrays. Similar to WeChat as the core of the Tencent system of software, Jitterbug as the core of the byte system of software.

What can be said is that the change in thinking about car making has determined that car companies such as Tesla need to focus on the construction of private domain traffic, for them, not only want to sell cars to make a deal, but also want to attract users through a variety of ancillary services and peripheral goods source of consumption, more aspects of the user's life to stay within their own product system.

The car app store is only one aspect, I think Tesla will also launch more categories of services and peripheral products. As for the traditional car companies facing transformation, if they still build cars (including new energy vehicles) in a pure hardware way, without focusing on software and user operations, they will eventually be abandoned by the trend of the times, when we look at their attitudes, and we may see Nokia and BlackBerry and other cell phone manufacturers are no different.