On April 21, 2021, at the 2nd floor of Evergrande Auto’s booth at the Shanghai Auto Show, the 42 Garage was invited to participate in a media exchange conference with the theme of “product planning and development progress.”
The 42 Garage and other media outlets had in-depth communication with Liu Yongzhuo, the president of Evergrande New Energy Automotive Group, Fang Chi, the executive vice president of Evergrande Global Research Institute and the director of the vehicle technology research institute, and Ralf Seyler, the general manager of Magna Engineering China.
The following are the key information points obtained during this media exchange conference:
1. Nine models have been released
Evergrande Auto currently has 14 vehicle models under simultaneous development, and Evergrande Hi-Tech Automobile Group has released 9 models (1-9) that are all on the same platform and cover product positioning from A to D level, with a range of over 700 kilometers.
2. Prioritized development of the Hengchi 1 and Hengchi 5
The layout of the booth indicates that the flagship sedan, Hengchi 1, and the A-class SUV, Hengchi 5, are the main models being promoted. Evergrande Auto stated that it generally prioritizes the development of a large and a small model on the same platform. Hengchi 1, as one of the largest and most advanced models in the Hengchi product line, has higher standardization difficulties for each project. On the other hand, more optimization is needed for the spatial layout of the Hengchi 5 as the smallest model.
3. Top-level battery R&D team
As the most crucial component, Evergrande is currently pursuing two directions in battery supply – utilizing the best on the market or having the Evergrande Auto Battery Research Institute consisting of more than 1,000 researchers. The leader of Evergrande’s battery technology development is Director Li Junxiu, who was the former director of Korea’s SKI Battery Research Institute, who has been leading the team for more than two years and focuses on lithium iron phosphate and ternary lithium batteries. Evergrande’s self-developed power batteries will also be mass-produced in the second half of this year. Evergrande Auto is also considering holding a “Battery Day” event.
4. If you’re going to do it, do it well
This is Evergrande’s consistent approach. For a world top 500 enterprise with total assets of 2.3 trillion yuan and annual sales of over 700 billion yuan, it is necessary to find an industry that matches its own scale and size. The new energy vehicle industry has huge potential, and Evergrande’s existing resources and scale are a match. The simultaneous development of 14 models is due to the goal of achieving an annual production and sales of 1 million vehicles by 2025.
5. Sales networkHengchi Automobile will have 36 experience centers, 1,600 sales centers, and 3,600 self-operated and authorized centers. With the help of the world’s largest real estate and automobile online and offline trading platform “Fangchebao”, it can cover 238 cities in China, 43,000 stores, nearly 400,000 professional brokers, and 21.28 million ordinary brokers, thereby building a strong online and offline sales channel. The sports industry is also an important automobile sales channel. In addition to the Hengchi logo on the team uniforms of Guangzhou Evergrande Football Club, there will be more organic combinations of the two.
6. Strong Partnership with Top Supplier Magna
Magna is involved in the development of three Hengchi models: Hengchi 1, 3, and 4. During the development process, Magna will lead the conceptual design, engineering design, and prototype testing of the vehicles. It will comprehensively cover the benchmarking of vehicles, target setting, virtual simulation, physical testing, and design and process validation of components and full vehicles.
7. Deliveries In 2022
In terms of production and delivery, Hengchi Automobile stated that it will begin trial production in the fourth quarter of this year and start deliveries next year. The delivered vehicles may be more than one type, but this has not been disclosed in detail.
8. Intelligent Cockpit and Autonomous Driving
In the H-Smart OS Hengchi Intelligent Network System jointly developed with Tencent and Baidu, users can choose Tencent or Baidu. The two ecosystems may have some differences, but both will be very rich. Only Hengchi Automobile users will have this choice. In terms of intelligent driving, Hengchi will have L4-level unmanned parking functionality and a sensor combination that supports L3-level autonomous driving.
9. Investment
Hengda has invested a total of 47.4 billion yuan in the field of new energy vehicles, and R&D investment has reached as high as 24.9 billion yuan. The team is a very important aspect of this investment. The team currently has more than 8,700 people, including over 3,500 R&D personnel and 22 international top experts. In addition, Hengda has also acquired a large number of core technologies through acquisitions and cooperation, including development cooperation with Magna, the formation of a design alliance with 15 world-class designers, the acquisition of intellectual property rights for the 3.0 architecture from Benteler, and joint R&D of a three-in-one powertrain with hofer.
10. Charging Network
Hengchi Automobile has paid great attention to the overall industrial chain of upstream and downstream of new energy vehicles from the beginning. Hengda has established a joint venture company, State Grid Hengda, with State Grid to meet community’s intelligent charging needs. Hengda Property is an independent listed company that not only manages more than 1,400 large-scale communities, but also manages some comprehensive properties not developed by Hengda, including residential and commercial buildings. Based on the properties managed by Hengda Property, Hengchi has opened up a new battlefield and will consider announcing its layout in this area in the future.
ConclusionAccording to Liu Yongzhuo, the president of Evergrande Auto, two years ago Evergrande Auto could have been considered an outsider to the auto industry, but now this is no longer the case. Evergrande Auto is pursuing a development strategy of overtaking through lane-switching, and is opening up a path towards global automotive resources.
From the time when the Evergrande Hengchi 1 was criticized as a mere PowerPoint concept to the present-day Hengchi 5 which has already been test-driven by the media, Evergrande Auto has not provided any explanations. Nonetheless, it has steadily progressed with its production plans through concrete actions.
Source: Evergrande Auto Media Communication Meeting
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.