*This article is reproduced from the Autocarweekly WeChat official account.
Text: Mr. Wang
In the era of fuel-powered vehicles, when we talk about high-end brands, the first thing that comes to mind is the three German luxury brands BBA, or the iconic dream car brand Porsche. Those so-called second-tier luxury brands, in the eyes of ordinary consumers, are just synonymous with high cost performance. In the fuel-powered vehicle market, real high-end brands actually have no cost performance, and what people are actually buying is the brand itself.
However, in the era of electric vehicles, this impression has quietly been shattered.
When consumers consider buying an electric car, they will ask themselves a question: What exactly am I buying?
My understanding is that they are buying an experience they cannot get from a fuel-powered vehicle. Electric vehicles have a unique imaginative space that cannot be compared with fuel-powered cars. This is an era of brand power reconstruction, and consumers have become less willing to accept very high brand premiums. “If the endurance is low, then the car is just not good” has almost become a consensus; if it is not smart enough, the car is outdated; even if the design is too conservative, it will become a strong reason for consumers to refuse to buy. At this point, the understanding of brand power is actually closely linked to the product strength itself, and this feature is particularly evident in the era of electric vehicles.
Mainstream electric vehicle brands have also lived up to expectations, introducing models with unique characteristics, using product strength to speak, step by step, using details and technology to create truly high-end products, separating themselves from the “premium” high-end models in the past fuel-powered vehicle era.
Among them, the newly independent GAC Aion, which has not yet been in business for a year, is particularly representative. On June 23, Aion launched the AION S Plus, which is a new car that has been upgraded from the first-generation AION S after a three-year break. Although it is only added with the modifier “Plus,” the comprehensive upgrade of the new car from appearance, safety, power, and intelligence shows the high-end brand power demonstrated by GAC Aion in the second half of the competition in the new energy field: more advanced, more up-to-date, more fun, and higher quality.
The first pursuit of high-end products by consumers is advanced technology.
In “The Grandmaster”, the description of kung fu is straightforward: one horizontal and one vertical, right, stand up; wrong, lie down. Similarly, “technology” is also pure, and it is something that cannot be embellished by gorgeous words, slogans, or PPT. It is the core essence of an electric vehicle.
Ultimately, whether a product is high-end or not, it all comes down to the technology used.
GAC Aion has a very clear understanding of this aspect. The platform it uses is the GEP 2.0 aluminum alloy pure electric exclusive platform, which is based on the “battery + electric drive” layout that GAC has led the industry in for two generations. It can not only meet the development needs of low center of gravity and lightweight, but also improve safety and space utilization.
A high-end electric exclusive platform first focuses on safety.In the past, we have seen many gasoline-to-electric car conversions, in which either the battery is placed under the rear seats, affecting the weight distribution, or the battery is suspended under the chassis, which not only affects the vehicle’s maneuverability, but also has the risk of being damaged and causing fires.
For electric vehicles, the safety of the battery pack is equivalent to the safety of the entire vehicle. GAC Aion places the battery pack in the center of the chassis, with strong bottom beams on both sides to minimize the impact of collisions on the battery pack, thereby enhancing the safety of the entire vehicle.
Secondly, range anxiety is a common concern, so it is necessary to optimize key indicators with technology.
Take this AION S Plus as an example. With a body length of 4810 mm, it not only achieves a wheelbase of 2750 mm for quasi B-class cars, but also has a 70 kWh battery pack, which ultimately achieves a leading range of 602 kilometers.
You may ask, does a larger battery necessarily mean longer range? This statement is not absolute.
Because electric vehicles have a weight-to-power ratio issue, blindly adding a larger capacity battery not only increases the weight of the entire vehicle, limiting the improvement of the range, but also increases the cost for consumers.
To solve this problem, besides using aluminum alloy to minimize the weight of the entire vehicle, another solution is to reduce wind resistance as much as possible.
Under high air resistance, 60% of the power conversion of new energy electric vehicles is used to fight wind resistance, indirectly affecting the range.
In addition, a series of factors such as battery, range, and wind resistance also determine the performance of the vehicle, and technology is needed to achieve optimal performance.
Previously, GAC Aion’s concept car ENO.146 broke the global low-drag record, and AION S Plus inherits its legacy, becoming the global lowest drag production car in its class with a drag coefficient of 0.211Cd.
So what are the benefits of lightweighting? This vehicle can achieve 0-100 kilometers per hour acceleration in just 6.8 seconds with a single motor.It is reported that GAC Aion has globally pioneered the high-performance dual-motor “4-in-1” integrated electric drive, which realizes deep integration of dual motors, controllers, and two-speed reducers, and will be equipped with front-wheel drive on the AION LX four-wheel drive vehicle, with acceleration of 0-100 km/h in the 2-second range, let us wait and see.
For electric vehicles, superior acceleration performance is almost an inevitable mission and unique charm of electric vehicles compared to gasoline vehicles. From the platform, endurance, wind resistance, and acceleration performance of AION S Plus, “advanced” has become the brand gene of Aion, promoting the brand to achieve high-endization with advanced technology, which is the answer given by Aion to the market and consumers, far more practical than some peers that use a high premium for harvesting.
Young people’s understanding of high-end is trendy
In every era, there are different aesthetic tendencies. A brand that is committed to providing high-end products is not hesitant to explore the styling language, internal design, and communication methods with young users, nor is it reluctant to stick to tradition and convention.
As a brand targeting the young consumer market, GAC Aion not only creates a youthful feeling for the brand logo, but also brings a “Starship Runabout” styling to the AION S Plus, an A+ family sedan. Even if you have not stepped into the cabin, you can feel that it is a high-end vehicle that condenses technological crystallization, incorporating trendy elements into every detail.
Firstly, the trendy styling language. The AION S Plus uses a low-slung engine hood design for the wind-sculpted front face, which brings a smaller turning angle, making the airflow more smooth. The optimization of the front and rear bumpers and side skirts further gives it a more streamlined body line while further reducing air resistance during driving.
GAC Aion has also independently developed a variable-color paint called Ice Pink. This paint applies ultra-fine metal powder, and the color change can exceed four times that of ordinary car paint. It can present a bright and transparent gold powder color in sufficient sunlight and become full and deep when the light is dim.
This paint has now been equipped on AION S Plus, making it the most wide-ranging production vehicle with a variable color effect.
The trendy internal design is also full of technological content.
For young people, they understand high-end should appear both outside and inside the car. They also hope that the car can have cool technological configurations to show off their unique cars when friends get in.The 1.9 square meters panoramic sunroof of AION S Plus is capable of “carrying this heavy responsibility.” As the world’s first third-generation flexible electrochromic technology, the electrochromic film in the sunroof glass can be infinitely adjusted within the transparency range of 10%-60%.
But does the sunroof only change color? This is just a part of the trendy cockpit. By purchasing the official projector, users can play games and watch movies on the sunroof.
Imagine a 30-year-old new dad who can lie in the car while waiting for his child to attend early education, indulging in rare private time for adults by playing games.
Of course, communicating with young people in a trendy way is also essential.
Along with the launch of AION S Plus, a fun and trendy online “talk show” was held. Popular “homophonic puns” such as Wang Jianguo, Little Deer, Tencent Sports NBA host Meina, EAION user representative “100,000 car owner spokesperson” Dachuan, and Guangzhou Automobile AION CMO Xiao Yong teamed up to play games with young people and contributed to the most “humorous” new car launch event.
In fact, this is not the first time EAION has taken such a trendy approach to communicate with young people. The “King Glory” tournament and the refreshing “EAION Partner” marketing method launched during the pre-sale of Guangzhou Automobile AION Y all reflect the trendy genes of Guangzhou Automobile AION.
When the trend understood by the automaker fits perfectly with what users pursue, such positive trend will become mainstream, integrating the trendy DNA into the brand, gaining recognition and driving the whole brand forward.
Fun is the main melody of future high-end cars. Nowadays, young people no longer see cars as a single tool. They not only have extremely high requirements for entertainment systems but also hope that cars can think and be as intelligent as humans. This puts pressure on automakers to grasp the user’s thinking and provide more functions, which reflects the trendy and fun way of thinking.
From the most basic networking functions to now requiring 5G networks, AR/VR access, and real-time live streaming; from initially obtaining navigation and speed information to now require vehicle-road collaboration cloud computing to achieve all-round V2X.Translate the following Markdown Chinese text into English Markdown text in a professional way, retaining the HTML tags inside the Markdown, outputting only the corrections and improvements, and not providing explanations.
From the basic needs of watching movies and listening to music, to the current demands for watching 4K movies and listening to lossless music;
From the simple voice commands of understanding phone calls and changing songs, to the current demands of natural language input that can be interrupted at any time, and continuous conversation with voice assistants;
From manually turning on the air conditioning and opening the windows to refresh the mind, to various intelligent integrated scene designs;
From having to travel long distances to 4S stores to upgrade software and solve bugs, to now being able to complete vehicle OTA upgrades without leaving the bed at home...
Users have more and more demands. From the outside, this is a stylish and trendy electric car, but once inside, it becomes the user's private "smart entertainment living room".
Fortunately, AION S Plus supports all these new and trendy applications and interacts with users to evolve the vehicle continuously. "Fun" has deeply implanted itself in the brand DNA of GAC Aion.
Returning to the original intention, car production still needs to pursue quality.
In the new energy market, many places emphasize intelligence, but quality is rarely mentioned.
For many new automakers, achieving quality is not something that can be done overnight. It requires a lot of time and experience.
Many manufacturers offer lifetime quality assurance to attract customers, but due to poor quality control, customers cannot bear the high time cost of repairs and have to give up on these brands. The so-called lifetime quality assurance ultimately becomes an empty promise.
After all, high-end products are always associated with quality.
GAC Aion believes that it is better to make the car "unbreakable" than to promise lifetime quality assurance. As a result, electric vehicles exclusively produced in smart factories by GAC Aion have received user affirmation for their performance and reputation. According to the data I found, Aion is the fastest electric vehicle brand to reach 100,000 units sold within 3 years in the industry, with overall sales ranking among the top three.
In May, AION S also achieved cumulative sales of 100,000 units, and the newly upgraded AION S Plus will naturally have even higher quality. Mass user desensitization of driving big data can also drive continuous evolution of production processes, ultimately leading to upward development of the Aion brand and forming a good positive feedback cycle.
How does GAC Aion's brand DNA define the high-end electric vehicle brand in the electric era? After thinking about it, these four points are key.
First, high-end means technological evolution, with more efficient space, stronger performance, and longer range;
Then, high-end leads the industry trend and does not follow, directly targeting user G points;
Next, high-end makes vehicles more fun and smarter, creating emotional resonance with users;
Finally, high-end is the unremitting pursuit of quality, to create excellent product reputation.
These are the four elements rooted in the GAC Aion brand gene. Based on this, GAC Aion has been praised as a “practitioner of the epoch-making transformation of the automobile industry.”
Today, it is a transitional period from the overall era of fuel vehicles to the electrification era. How to build a high-end electrification brand, and what will be the future look of high-end electrification brands? The industry has been exploring, and GAC Aion is a worthy “pioneer”. Its products are based on the four elements of the brand gene, and reflect its characteristics, leading the overall development of China’s new energy industry.
Wishing the GAC Aion brand better and better.
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.