Author: Qiu Kaijun
The saying goes, “The more you polish grass shoes, the more they look alike.” This saying aptly describes Evergrande’s progress in car making.
At this year’s Shanghai Auto Show, Evergrande Auto was more open than ever before: 9 cars were exhibited, there was a press conference, factory tours, and open and private media interactions. While people have doubts about the completion of the 9 exhibit vehicles, Evergrande Auto is gradually turning from a question to a fact.
At the Shanghai Auto Show, Evergrande Auto answered the basic questions of what they are building, how they are building it, and how they will sell their cars. It seems that nothing can stop them now.
What are they building: Exhibition of 9 luxury and ultra-luxury vehicles
Exhibiting 9 new cars at the same time, Evergrande has indeed set a record.
“In such a short period of time, no automobile company has ever launched such a diversified lineup of models,” said Dai Lei, the newly joined deputy CEO of Evergrande Auto, at the press conference. “Moreover, these 9 vehicle models have already entered the mass production and development stage and will begin production in the very near future at Evergrande’s factory.”
Dai Lei said that these 9 vehicle models can cover 95% of the global high-end luxury car market share, enabling Evergrande to have a very diversified product line.
Looking closely at these 9 vehicles, their appearances are all cool and luxurious, their sizes are relatively large, and they are positioned as either ultra-luxury or luxury cars.
Dai Lei summarized the 3 common characteristics of the 9 car models: “each car is a work of art”; “the ultimate intelligent technology experience of cars that moves with the heart”; “each car is an intelligent mobile third space.”
Dai Lei also briefly introduced the characteristics of each car model. “The range of Evergrande’s entire vehicle series reaches up to 700 km, and some models exceed 800 km.”
Among them, Evergrande’s flagship vehicle, the Evergrande 1, is the world’s first pure electric D-class flagship sedan, with a length of 5320 mm, a wheelbase of 3170 mm, and a range of 760 km, comparable to the ultra-luxury models of Mercedes-Benz S-Class, Bentley, and other brands.
Meanwhile, the pure electric ultra-luxury B-class SUV, Evergrande 9, with a length of 4810 mm and a wheelbase of 2910 mm, has a high range of up to 810 km.
Unfortunately, almost all the Evergrande exhibit vehicles cannot be observed closely. The exhibit cars are all covered with black film, and the interior cannot be seen.At the Evergrande booth, in addition to 9 models being exhibited on the main stage, the Hengchi 1 and Hengchi 5 are displayed in the front of the booth, which are not accessible to the media for close observation or photography inside the cabin. However, some Hengda car investors who made reservations were able to sit in the car.
Why are these two models displayed separately?
Fang Qi, Executive Vice President of Evergrande Global Research Institute and Dean of Vehicle Technology Research Institute, responded during a media interview that the two models with the largest (Hengchi 1) and the smallest (Hengchi 5) sizes are the most difficult for the electric vehicle platform.
Liu Yongzhuo revealed that the pre-sale of Hengchi will be launched at the end of this year or the beginning of next year and the production plan will be arranged according to the actual situation. “Judging from the current situation, since we are planning to achieve an annual production and sales volume of one million vehicles by 2025, it is impossible to have only one model for pre-sale. Of course, we will share our decision with the public at the first time when launching pre-sale.”
During the interaction with the media, Liu Yongzhuo also revealed that Hengchi 1 and Hengchi 5 will be the first two models delivered.
How to make it: Shanghai and Guangzhou factories conduct trial production
“I announce that Hengchi automobile will enter comprehensive trial production in the fourth quarter of this year, and will be delivered on a large scale next year.” In the speech of Evergrande Auto press conference, Liu Yongzhuo announced it loudly and used it as a promise at the end of the speech.
During the interaction with the media, he also revealed that Hengda’s Shanghai factory and Guangzhou factory have started trial production.
On April 19th, Hengda Automobile also organized a group of media to visit Hengda Automobile Shanghai base in Songjiang.
According to the information provided by Evergrande Auto, the stamping workshop of Shanghai base adopts the fully automatic high-speed stamping line of German Schuler, and the automatic boxing system is composed of robots made by Japanese Fanuc. It realizes full automation of production, boxing and transportation. The body workshop adopts the German Kuka equipment and technology, with an automation rate of 100%, creating the world’s most advanced high-end intelligent “black light factory”; the coating workshop adopts the German Durr production line, with flip-type transfer of pretreatment electrophoresis and dry paint mist separation. The glue spraying and painting are 100% automated, and the whole process is intelligent and environmental-friendly.
The Shanghai base currently uses the components of the NEVS93 from Guoneng for trial production, and will carry out production-related work of the Hengchi series models in the future.
“The current production base of Hengda has the conditions for trial production, and from the perspective of production capacity, it is definitely sufficient now. Of course, our factory construction work will be promoted according to the relevant requirements of the country,” said Liu Yongzhuo.
During the design, development, and verification stages before mass production, Evergrande’s current solution is still to rely on the power of partners.## Magna builds three high-end models for Evergrande Auto
Ralf Seyler, the General Manager of Magna Engineering in China, also attended the media communication meeting of Evergrande Auto. Ralf Seyler introduced that Magna had developed three high-end models for Evergrande Auto.
He described Magna’s role as follows: “During the car development process, Magna is responsible for the concept design, engineering design, trial production, and testing of prototype cars. It covers the entire design and process validation of the benchmarking, target setting, virtual simulation, physical prototyping, component systems, and complete vehicle. During the co-development process, EVERGRANDE R&D personnel are dispatched to Magna to work with engineers. Evergrande and Magna R&D personnel jointly conduct benchmarking analysis and vehicle testing, and the vehicles are tested in various test fields in Europe.”
In terms of intelligent network connection system, which is an important part of intelligent electric vehicles, Evergrande Auto joined hands with two giants, Tencent and Baidu, to develop the H-SMART OS Hengchi intelligent network connection system.
“From an ecological perspective, our customers can choose Tencent or Baidu. The two ecosystems have some differences, but they are both very rich,” said Liu Yongzhuo.
On March 25th, Evergrande Auto released an advertisement titled “Hengchi’s Intelligent Technology,” listing the intelligent network connection functions that Hengchi products will have. Basic functionalities currently used in the smart car industry are all included.
According to Liu Yongzhuo, “the Hengchi vehicles we will deliver in the future will all have these experiences.”
In terms of the critical power battery of electric vehicles, Liu Yongzhuo introduced that to avoid being bottlenecked, Evergrande had laid out the battery from the beginning. “We have introduced the team of Li Junxiu, the dean of SK Battery Group, as early as possible… Li and his team have been doing battery research for a long time. Our battery mainly consists of ternary lithium-ion batteries and lithium iron phosphate batteries. As for hydrogen fuel cells, our research institute also has a team doing corresponding research.”
Liu Yongzhuo said that for the time being, hydrogen fuel cells are more suitable for commercial vehicles. From the perspective of economy, stability, safety, and compatibility, ternary lithium power batteries have obvious advantages. “Solid-state batteries are also actively being developed. This is one of the technical paths, and there are many problems to be solved.”
At the press conference, Liu Yongzhuo said that the world’s leading power battery products with high specific energy, high safety, long life, and ultra-fast charging would also be mass-produced in the second half of this year.
How to sell: 400,000 professional managers
Judging from the momentum shown by Evergrande Auto, it is already on the verge of mass production by the end of this year or early next year.
How does Evergrande plan to sell cars?Liu Yongzhuo introduced at the press conference that Evergrande Auto will build 36 Hengchi show experience centers, 1600 sales centers, 3000 self-operated and authorized maintenance and after-sales service centers in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.
The integration of the sales of houses and cars by Evergrande is logical. Liu Yongzhuo said that the sales of Evergrande Auto will be connected to the “House Car Treasure,” the world’s largest online and offline trading platform for real estate and cars built by Evergrande.
Liu Yongzhuo said, “House Car Treasure covers 238 cities, has 43,000 stores, nearly 400,000 professional managers and 22.38 million real estate brokers, connects more than 13 million households, 8300 strategic partners, as well as hundreds of millions of Evergrande fans, which lays a solid foundation for our future rapid sales growth.”
In terms of charging services, Evergrande established a joint venture company with State Grid Corporation of China called GNH EV focusing on intelligent charging services for community parking spaces. Liu Yongzhuo also revealed that GNH EV not only utilizes the resources of more than 1,400 large communities controlled by Evergrande Property, but also expands its market to non-Evergrande developed comprehensive properties to provide charging services.
In addition, Evergrande’s charging platform, Xingluo Charging, is also available. As of February 2021, Xingluo Charging has been launched in 22 key cities including Beijing and Shanghai, accessing more than 80% of the leading operators across the country, providing services for more than 50 small and medium-sized operators, and accessing over 20,000 charging stations, covering over 200,000 charging piles.
With the establishment of the organization, platform, and charging services for sales and after-sales services, when Evergrande Auto’s products go on the market, just like the scene we saw before where everyone sold houses, it may become a scene where everyone in Evergrande sells cars, and the sales force should be amazing.
Looking at it now, Evergrande’s self-summarized “Using global car-making resources for us” car-making law is about to reach full maturity.
This “car-making law” should solve the problem from 0 to 1 without any issue. However, the goal of Evergrande Group’s Chairman Xu Jiayin is to become the largest and strongest new energy automobile group in the world, selling 1 million vehicles in 2025 and 5 million in 2035.
Moreover, Evergrande is positioned as luxury and ultra-luxury, and traditionally, the user base of luxury and ultra-luxury is relatively smaller. Therefore, Evergrande will still need to innovate its profit model to achieve from 1 to 10, and then 100. This will be an important aspect for us to observe Evergrande in the future.
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.