"I earn 3,000 yuan a month and drive a luxury car in the Metaverse"

"I got a luxury car for free in the Metaverse. The car company lost money while I made money!"

"In fact, both customers and car companies have made money."

Nowadays, major automobile companies have gradually made arrangements in the field of metaverse, and their marketing methods may have already exceeded our imagination.

According to Ma Tianyi, chief analyst of Metaverse at Minsheng Securities Research Institute, the application of Metaverse in automobile marketing may be implemented in one or two years, and more car companies will adopt more diverse marketing methods in the future.

The young people in the game have their first luxury car

In February, Ferrari's CEO revealed that Ferrari has established a department focusing on digital services to explore potential opportunities in the metaverse world that combines the three elements of virtual reality, games and social networking , in order to enhance its brand effect in the virtual world.

As early as last year, Ferrari teamed up with Epic Games to use the Unreal Engine to introduce its new 296 GTB hybrid sports car into the game "Fortnite". This is the first highly realistic drivable vehicle in the history of the game. Players do not need to spend money to buy this car, they just need to encounter one in the game world.

“Our artistic and technical collaboration with Ferrari has been a great success, bringing the first experientially realistic vehicles to the cross-platform multiplayer environment of Fortnite,” said Epic’s Director of Advanced Projects. “Launching fully functional, photorealistically rendered vehicles in stylized environments like this is a great way to advance our vision for the Metaverse.”

Not only Ferrari, but also Porsche launched a supercar in the virtual world in March this year - the Vision Gran Turismo concept car. It was jointly created by Porsche and video game development studio Polyphony Digital, and officially debuted in the Gran Turismo 7 racing game launched on the PS4 and PS5 platforms, but there will be no physical car in the real world.

Porsche officials said: "It is of strategic significance for Porsche to increase activity in the game world. We can attract young and digital target groups in the game world where their car dreams begin."

Car companies are creating the metaverse, and users are "experiencing the joy of freeloading"

The above car companies choose to cooperate with games to let users experience the metaverse, while some car companies directly create a metaverse.

Last September, BMW and XR technology company Journee launched JOYTOPIA based on Web3D technology. All users can access JOYTOPIA through a browser without a username and password.

At JOYTOPIA, users can create virtual avatars to participate in dancing and crowd surfing, as well as watch bands perform from multiple different angles and get up close to the stage.

Fans who are unable to personally visit the BMW Hubs at Max-Joseph-Platz because they are not attending the auto show can also experience the visual highlights of the vehicles through JOYTOPIA.

Each section of JOYTOPIA involves a topic that is crucial to the future of the BMW Group. Among them, the "Re:IMAGINE" section is the core of the entire BMW brand family and is used to display important information related to the brand.

In this regard, BMW's Vice President of Brand Communication and Brand Experience said: "We hope to start a new dialogue with the audience and change the communication mode from brand interpretation to user interpretation. JOYTOPIA is a qualitative leap in the digital world. It enables us to take brand communication to a new level."

Similarly, domestic car companies are not to be outdone. On March 14, the "Lynk & Co Park" jointly created by Lynk & Co and Baidu was officially unveiled on the Baidu Xirang Metaverse platform and opened to the public for experience.

With the help of 5G, AI, cloud computing, VR and other technologies, "Lynk & Co Park" has replicated the Lynk & Co online showroom on a 1:1 basis, setting up three first-level scenes for fuel, new energy and performance vehicles, involving 6 car series and 12 models.

Users can immersively view cars in the virtual showroom, experience changing the car body color, opening the doors and trunk, feeling the interior, etc. At the same time, Lynk & Co Park can realize the seamless combination of online shopping and offline test driving and car pick-up.

Lynk & Co said that in the future, it will gradually unlock new experiences such as online auto shows, new car launches, virtual test drives, and virtual spokespersons in Xirang, and even allow users to have a more intuitive contact and perception of Lynk & Co's factory vehicle manufacturing, model testing and other production and manufacturing processes and production quality assurance systems. This vivid personal experience can drive users to consume with confidence.

Cars are in the Metaverse, and so are car models

In addition to building "metaverse cars" based on physical cars, there are even "metaverse car models" based on physical cars.

In March, Tencent created the first virtual image tailored for SAIC Volkswagen Lingdu L - "Ling", the energy messenger of the spicy city, which achieved a "spicy start" at the cross-dimensional launch conference of SAIC Volkswagen Lingdu L.

The virtual person "Ling" fits well with the "spicy aesthetic digital coupe" Lingdu L released this time. Under the command of "Ling", the online live broadcast of the press conference received a total of 40 million views and 30 million live broadcast interactions. On the day of the press conference, the cumulative number of deposit orders for Lingdu L exceeded 18,000.

Virtual human car models are not only good-looking, but also smart. In January, GAC Aion held the "First Metaverse New Car Launch in 2022", and Baidu AI Exploration Officer "Du Xiaoxiao" served as the host of the event.

Focusing on the theme of "Intelligent Travel for Thousands of Miles" , Du Xiaoxiao interpreted the performance highlights of Aion one by one, making the originally boring parameter explanation vivid and interesting, and connecting it with elements such as the metaverse and Mars experience.

Regarding the product highlight of AION LX PLUS with a range of 1008km, Du Xiaoxiao introduced it this way: "In the 'metaverse', 1008km is enough to drive from the Yellow Crane Tower in the Three Kingdoms period to the 'Slender Waist' in Guangzhou in 2022."

"Virtual people + cars" captures the interests of young users, and also allows "a more perfect debut of new cars" to be realized in a new way. This is a hot track now and in the future.

In April, Hyundai Motor Group announced a 2 billion won investment in Metaverse Entertainment, a subsidiary of mobile game developer Netmarble F&C, to fund a virtual human project.

Through this investment, the virtual human technology that the company is developing will be used in various projects in cooperation with Hyundai Motor, which may cooperate with the company's virtual influencer Rina and the virtual four-member girl group K-pop that is expected to debut later this year.

Buy a "Metaverse Car" and get a "Metaverse" for free

Zhang Xiang, a researcher at the Automotive Industry Innovation Research Center of North China University of Technology and an automotive analyst, once said:

"The Metaverse is a social space and also a network tool. Car companies can acquire users and fans in the Metaverse and convert them into potential customers in the future. Car companies can make arrangements in advance and use the Metaverse concept as a product highlight to attract consumers to buy cars, thereby increasing sales."

"On the other hand, the Metaverse can also provide entertainment, business, and office functions. In the future, when cars achieve autonomous driving, these functions will also be closely connected with cars."

In fact, these features will be available soon. In March, Audi announced that starting this summer, some Audi models will be equipped with the MIB-3 infotainment system that supports Holoride.

Holoride aims to bring VR into cars as a data-based entertainment experience, transforming everyday travel into a hyper-immersive experience by combining navigation and car data with XR. So far, immersive VR experiences have been primarily visual, but Holoride includes real-time physical feedback from the vehicle you are in, making the experience even more intense.

In addition, Holoride provides an in-car VR entertainment system for passengers to experience immersive games during their journey. According to the official website promotional video, the vehicle will be transformed into an animated car, spacecraft, etc., and the passengers will have different experiences as players.

I believe that with the gradual advancement of Metaverse-related technologies, whether it is "automotive marketing + Metaverse" or "Metaverse inside the car" , we are approaching a better future.