Author: Tian Hui

EAUN (the brand name of Guangqi New Energy Automobile Co., Ltd.) has celebrated its first anniversary since its independence announcement at the Guangzhou Auto Show last year.

In the past year, EAUN has achieved impressive results:

• In terms of sales, it is expected to sell 110,000 vehicles in 2021 and is among the top three in the mainstream market with sales of more than 100,000 vehicles.

Why does EAUN sell so well?

We can easily see some direct factors, such as:

• At the product level, it has continuously introduced strong models. AION LX Plus, which debuted at the Guangzhou Auto Show, is the first electric vehicle with a range of over 1,000 km, achieving 1008 km (CLTC condition). AION S is the best-selling A-class pure electric passenger car. AION Y and AION V are models with outstanding product strength in the same class, and the terminal market is in short supply.

• In terms of channels, GAC New Energy Auto has built 166 car cities and 113 supermarkets store in major cities across the country. The cumulative number of channel terminal stores has reached 279.

• In terms of production capacity, the annual production capacity of the GAC New Energy Intelligent Ecological Factory is 100,000 vehicles. Due to the surge in user orders, the utilization rate of production capacity has exceeded 140%. In addition, at the beginning of 2022, the first 200,000 production capacity expansion of the factory will be completed. At the same time, the second 200,000 production capacity factory will also be built and put into production by the end of next year, and it will have an annual production capacity of 400,000 in 2023.

However, EAUN is only one year old, and even if we include its predecessor, Guangqi New Energy, it is only a company that has been established for less than 5 years. Therefore, the sales volume, products, channels, and production capacity are actually the result of doing things right rather than the reason.

At the Guangzhou Auto Show, GAC Group and GAC New Energy senior executives held several press conferences and accepted multiple interviews, during which they introduced some in-depth information, including:

• The battery technology of the AION LX plus with a range of 1008 km is self-developed, and plans to self-produce batteries and strive to have self-produced batteries account for a certain proportion by 2025.

• The models developed in collaboration with Huawei will be launched in 2023. However, in terms of autonomous driving, most of EAUN’s models will still be equipped with self-developed autonomous driving technology.

• EAUN has released the self-developed Xingling electronic and electrical architecture, which is a vehicle-cloud integrated centralized computing electronic and electrical architecture that integrates control components, strengthens computing power, and supports rapid vehicle iteration and upgrading.

Moreover, EAUN has also reformed its system and mechanism. At the end of August this year, the EAUN mixed-ownership reform was fully launched, and employees will have the opportunity to hold company shares, with the introduction of strategic investors and listing to be determined in the future.The in-depth information is helpful for us to understand the success of Aion, where capability builds competition and talent determines capability, behind which lies strategic choices and institutional mechanisms.

A representative example of Aion’s choices in intelligent driving is the fact that, despite Huawei’s outstanding ability and public favor, Aion has always kept the key competitiveness in its own hands.

Self-developed and partially self-produced battery cells

The 1008-kilometer range of the Guangzhou Automobile E-AION LX Plus is not a research model for endurance competition, but rather the result of Guangzhou Automobile E-AION’s research and development in electric vehicle technology.

According to the publicly available information in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s new energy vehicle promotion catalog and the tax-free catalog for vehicle purchase, the power battery of the Guangzhou Automobile E-AION LX Plus 1008-kilometer range version uses a 144.4kWh ternary lithium power battery, with a battery pack weight of 690kg and an energy density ratio of 205Wh/kg, making it one of the most energy-dense models among mass-produced vehicles.

The system energy density is outstanding, and the prerequisite for this is, of course, high-specific-energy battery cells.

In terms of battery cells, Guangzhou Automobile E-AION uses “sponge silicon negative electrode strip battery technology”. This technology adds soft silicon strips like a sponge to the battery’s negative electrode. Compared to the conventional graphite, the expansion and contraction of silicon during charging and discharging are limited and buffered, it won’t break, and it can store more energy like a sponge can store water.

The core advantage of this technology is that it significantly reduces the weight and volume of the battery, achieving a 20% reduction in volume and a 14% reduction in weight for the single-cell battery of the power battery, with the same amount of electricity.

Aion’s technicians said that the current energy density of the sponge-silicon negative electrode strip battery cell is 280Wh/kg, and will reach 315Wh/kg in the future.

The sponge silicon negative electrode strip battery cell is just one of Aion’s self-developed battery technologies. Before the Guangzhou Auto Show, Guangzhou Automobile E-AION also launched the AION V Plus model with 6C charging capability.

In terms of power battery systems, Aion has developed the magazine battery system safety technology. This technology includes ultra-high temperature-resistant and stable battery cells, super-strong heat-insulated battery safety cabins, high-speed cooling systems, and the fifth generation of all-time battery management systems. Under the support of these five technologies, battery safety is greatly improved. Even the entire pack of ternary lithium batteries can’t be lit by a needle prick.

Therefore, in the field of power batteries, Guangzhou Automobile E-AION already has the ability to research and produce safety, high-rate charge and discharge, and ultra-high energy density batteries with different technical lines.Regarding the production of power batteries, GAC Aion has already earmarked a small area within its Guangzhou factory for battery production. According to Gu Huinan, General Manager of GAC Aion, battery cells are the core technology and the most important part that requires independent and controllable production. “GAC R&D Institute began researching battery cells 5-6 years ago, and after the mixed ownership reform, the relevant technology will be transferred to Aion.”

“We are currently building related battery production lines and striving to complete construction by the end of next year. By 2025, we hope that Aion will achieve a certain level of self-sufficiency in the battery and battery cell fields,” said Gu Huinan.

Self-research as the Main Strategy for Intelligent Driving

The future of the automobile industry will undoubtedly be intelligent vehicles.

After electric vehicles proved their potential to replace traditional fuel cars, intelligent electric vehicles were seen as the new product that can replace them. GAC Aion has already launched the ADiGo intelligent system in the field of intelligent electric vehicles. However, after facing more competition from internet rivals, GAC Aion has prepared a backup plan, the StarLing electronic and electrical architecture.

At this year’s auto show, GAC debuted its next-generation electronic and electrical architecture, the StarLing architecture, which can achieve hardware compatibility and software upgradability, providing a platform for continuous value-added for automobiles.

The StarLing architecture is an electronic and electrical architecture that integrates vehicle-cloud computing, central computer, intelligent driving computer, and information and entertainment computer’s core computers supporting pure electric, hybrid control areas. It is constructed using high-speed Ethernet and 5G technologies, enabling centralized computing of vehicle-cloud integration.

Compared to the previous distributed architecture with 53 electronic control units, StarLing architecture reduces the number of control units by about 20 while improving computing power by 50 times and reducing wire harnesses by about 40%. Meanwhile, by using high-speed Ethernet in the vehicle, data transmission speed is increased by 10 times, realizing hardware compatibility and software upgradability and making upgrading as simple as upgrading computer hardware.

Furthermore, by adopting independent encryption management modules which support multiple algorithms including national encryption standard, SECOC algorithm, and redundant designs for braking, steering and electrical systems to ensure ASIL D level security.

In order to simplify the architecture and overcome a series of industry problems such as the difficulty of unifying underlying software and code, GAC has set up a R&D team of over a thousand people and invested 12 billion yuan in the successful development of the StarLing architecture with more than 150 core patents, of which more than 80% are invention patents.

The arrival of GAC’s StarLing architecture will greatly accelerate the intelligent transformation of Aion products, and in terms of autonomous driving, the architecture supports L4 and higher-level autonomous driving, enabling users to enjoy a full-scenario autonomous driving experience on highways and in urban environments, and comprehensively opening the future of intelligent travel.

During the interview, a reporter asked Gu Huinan about the progress of GAC Aion’s cooperation with Huawei in intelligent driving.古惠南 stated that working with Huawei is just utilizing their advantages in the field of autonomous driving. As an ICT company, Huawei has its own strengths. “We will have corresponding cooperation with them in this field, but more importantly, we will follow our own path of independent research and development. By 2023, vehicles equipped with Huawei technology will also be put into the market. However, most of the cars will still be equipped with our own independently developed technology. Cooperation and independent research and development will run in parallel.”

Whether it is the development of batteries, intelligent driving or smart cabins, they all reflect the main logic of Aiways Automobile – as a host factory, it is necessary to control the core technologies of the future.

古惠南 said, first of all, “we will adhere to external cooperation, but a more important way is to run cooperation and independent research and development in parallel. Whether it is EV or ICV technology, Aiways Automobile insists on independent research and development and industrialization, but will also cooperate externally with both paths running in parallel.”

Reform of the System and Mechanism

Research and development needs talents, and talents need incentives. High salaries alone are definitely not enough, and there must be more incentive measures.

At this year’s auto show, Aiways Automobile announced that it will complete mixed ownership reform in 2022, and employees will have the opportunity to hold shares and list the company.

With the launch of the Aiways brand by GAC New Energy, GAC New Energy will be independently listed as a joint-stock company in the future.

At the time of independence, GAC Group gave strong support, transferring some personnel and patents to GAC New Energy. With the steady increase in sales of Aiways Automobile, the future independent listing of GAC New Energy after mixed-ownership reform is expected to be favored by the market.

From the information revealed by Aiways Automobile at the Guangzhou Auto Show, Aiways will comprehensively strengthen its efforts in the fields of electric vehicles and smart vehicles, from power battery cells to vehicle platforms, as well as future electronic and electrical architectures, all have independent planning by Aiways.

Who will execute? Of course, it will be Aiways engineers.

“In this industry, talent is still the key, and it needs organizational guarantees. For employees, Aiways employees can hold shares now, and enthusiasm will be greatly improved,” said Gu Huinan.

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.