There is a car brand that produces electric vehicles with a luxury and personal positioning, which is not easily sold on a large scale. Furthermore, this car has an impressively high rate of return once it hits the streets, and one of its big labels is “a toy for the rich.” Yes, the brand I am referring to is called GAC, or more specifically, its subsidiary, GAC Aion.
Compared to other new electric vehicle brands, GAC Aion does not have a particularly strong presence, which combined with its lack of marketing makes it appear to many people as if the brand is struggling.
Shocking! GAC Aion Outperforms Porsche on Sales
In fact, the sales performance of GAC Aion in its target market has been quite good in recent months. In September of this year, GAC Aion sold a total of 641 units of its HiPhi X, outperforming Porsche’s Taycan and taking the top spot on the charts for electric cars priced above 500,000 yuan. It is worth mentioning that Audi’s e-tron sold a total of 226 units that month, and Mercedes-Benz’s EQC had a total sales volume of 319 units, which combined were still fewer than GAC Aion.
Although the total number of sales is not large, the market where GAC Aion’s HiPhi X operates is definitely a luxury consumer market. To be able to persuade consumers who are sitting on piles of cash and considering buying a Porsche, BMW or Mercedes-Benz, to instead spend hundreds of thousands of yuan on buying GAC Aion, a brand with limited brand influence, it seems that this brand really has something special? This makes me even more excited for their second car model.
Generally speaking, if a flagship car model does not bankrupt a company and even becomes moderately well-known, it is an industry standard to then launch a more affordable and mass-produced product. Just imagine if GAC Aion also created a smaller version of the HiPhi X, priced within the 300,000 – 500,000 yuan range, wouldn’t that be quite competitive?
Just as I held onto such hope, after watching a storyline-less, wholly CGI video of Ding Lei’s personal show, my expectations fell. As the movie credits rolled, a car drove into the venue, which led me to understand that GAC Aion did not want to enter the market so soon, but instead wanted to continue playing the high-end game.
A Concept Car Going into Mass Production Again
As the HiPhi Z slowly drove towards the center of the venue, I believe that many of the guests couldn’t wait to take out their phones to take pictures, but unfortunately all phones were sealed before entering the venue. The reason why people are excited is because the actual car is almost identical to the patent application drawings that were leaked online in July. Ding Lei also stated that 95% of the HiPhi Z is ready for mass production, and they are still working hard to make the remaining 5% a reality.From the appearance point of view, the length and width of HiPhi Z are similar to HiPhi X, but the most obvious difference is that HiPhi Z is a sporty GT model. Due to the limitation of body height, HiPhi Z did not feature the iconic scissor doors. However, it still adopts the design of doors opening in opposite directions, which is cool enough. Additionally, there is a digital light strip on the side of the vehicle, running across the front and rear doors. It can display the current status of the vehicle and interact with pedestrians outside.
Keeping the conceptual style as much as possible has always been the style of HiPhi’s appearance. HiPhi X has tasted some sweetness in design, but its performance in intelligence is not satisfactory. As a vehicle that comes from the concept of “2041” and is the flagship model of HiPhi’s 3-5 year market strategy, what kind of imagination does HiPhi Z have in terms of intelligence?
As for intelligence and interaction, HiPhi has also spent a very long time introducing their new intelligent product that appears on HiPhi Z – HiPhi Bot.
HiPhi Bot is not a humanoid robot, but an integrated AI assistant in the car, which is an upgraded version of the current HiPhi Go system. If the little robot of Nomi endows Nomi with a sense of life, then the sense of life of HiPhi Bot is more straightforward and masculine. This is because the central control of HiPhi Z has canceled the three-screen design and replaced it with a rotating screen design. The screen can be rotated 90 degrees horizontally and listen to the position of sound, tilting towards the interactive party. However, the multi-dimensional rotating screen also has an obvious drawback, which is that the mechanical arm structure behind the screen is exposed outside, and there are certain safety hazards.
In terms of functionality, according to on-site demonstrations, HiPhi Bot should be able to have basic voice interaction capabilities, at least with continuous conversation and multi-directional interaction capabilities, and can easily complete various instructions of the driver and the co-driver.Translate to English Markdown text while retaining the HTML tags within the Markdown, outputting only the corrected and improved parts in a professional manner:
In addition, HiPhi Z also presets various modes, such as the “Rocket mode” demonstrated on-site. When this mode is activated, the central control screen can display a racetrack, and all interior and exterior lights will instantly “ignite” to create a special interactive mode. When combined with the vehicle’s power output in the driving mode, HiPhi Z can showcase its most unique and powerful performance in a short amount of time, similar to the “boost mode” of some supercars. The difference is that supercars attract attention through their engine roar, while HiPhi Z displays its personality through its lighting.
Of course, as a car model targeting the future market, relying solely on these “gimmicks” alone makes it difficult to attract consumers who are generally more knowledgeable.
Ding Lei also announced on-site that HiPhi Z’s intelligent hardware uses the most advanced and popular products currently available on the market, such as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8155 chip for in-car cabin interactions.
In terms of driving assistance, HiPhi Z will use two 8 million pixel cameras to form a forward stereo perception. The chip used is currently the most powerful on the market, Nvidia Orin X.
Therefore, hardware is definitely not a problem, but the experience depends on GAC’s software development capabilities.
By the way, we already mentioned that HiPhi Z is a GT model, but GAC named it Digital GT.
From the name, it seems that Ding Lei is also betting on the intelligence card. HiPhi Z’s significance for the brand is not just a flagship car that is younger but also a car that has a true connection with “intelligence.” This is also Ding Lei’s personal obsession.
Suffocating for a Dream
What is Ding Lei’s obsession with digitalization and how is it related to his own experience?
Although Ding Lei, as the CEO of GAC, has devoted most of his life to the automotive industry, he studied physics in his student days, and his idol was famous physicist Albert Einstein. Ding Lei also hopes to become an outstanding physicist like his idol and use his scientific research to deepen people’s understanding of “time.” Hence, even though he is involved in car manufacturing, he still has a scientific dream in his heart.
So in his view, although everything cannot live forever, thoughts and time can. Therefore, he integrates the concept of intelligence and digitization into the design of HiPhi Z. The multi-axis and multi-dimensional screen inspiration come from the concept of digital immortality, which diverges like life. As a physicist, Ding Lei hopes to achieve his own physical dream through digitization.听到这里，我仿佛梦回高中课堂，差点睡着。说到底我不关心别人梦想，我只在乎高合一直这么高高在上，亏钱吗？还够用多久，做双旗舰的考虑是什么？果然，台下的嘉宾大多和我一样现实，都对资金的问题更感兴趣。
丁磊坦言，现阶段他压根不考虑规模化的事情。他很不喜欢「走量」这个词，此前身在传统汽车行业，为了走量，他做的许多产品其实并没有打磨到最完美的状态。
诚然，汽车行业需要规模化，但是丁磊不首先考虑价格和量。而关于资金的问题，丁磊也稍有回避，只是称高合资金使用率极其高，不用太过担心。
现如今，他更愿意做用户喜欢的车，在 HiPhi Z 项目开始之前，高合做了一项调研，调研结果发现 66% 的用户希望高合能够继续做前卫创新的车。
任何人做任何事情其实都是要靠力量驱动的，可能是金钱的力量，可能是爱情的力量，丁磊对 HiPhi Z 倾注的心血，可能就是梦想的力量在驱动吧。
高合双旗舰的战略其实与特斯拉非常相似，甚至名字尾缀字母都很相似，但如今特斯拉已经靠 Model 3 在全球都形成了非常可观的规模化，而高合似乎还需要一些时间。
但是对我们自主品牌来说，高合已经迈出了非常重要的一步，0已生1，1如何生2、如何发展到枝繁叶茂？压力还在丁磊身上……
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.