Author: Chang Yan

To be humble, I may be one of the people who write the most in this industry every year, but attending too many events actually makes me remember fewer moments.

Only two come to mind at the moment:

The first one was in May 2017 at the Nut Pro launch event, when Luo Yonghao revealed a shocking turnaround in the phone’s design, and I was there writing my report live.

The second one was in November 2017 when Elon Musk pulled a Roadster 2 supercar out of a Semi Truck at the end of the event, while my article had already reached 6,000 words.

In the following five years, such astonishing turnarounds seemed to have disappeared.

Until Jidu’s CEO, Angela Hsieh, gave us an “Oscar-worthy” impromptu performance.

Six days ago, just before the “Jidu Evolution Day” launch event, we had the opportunity to interview Angela Hsieh at Geely headquarters. Jidu defined this conversation as finding “people with critical influence,” so the questions had a great deal of potential for conflict. Here is an excerpt:

Q: We can easily find negative comments from car owners about Jidu’s intelligence online. What internal problems did Jidu have before?

A: Because Jidu started early, the 8155 chip was not mature when we developed the vast architecture, so we chose 820A first.

Q: If 820A was a wrong decision, why charge for the 8155 scheme?

Today, one week later, we all know the result of this confrontation. Just 30 hours after the interview, Angela Hsieh announced a free upgrade plan on the spot at the launch event, causing a sensation and even the next day, I was surprised to see car owners sending me banners through my own friends circle saying “Congratulations, Congcong is awesome!”However, when it came to the awkward moment during our interview, An Conghui neither impatiently revealed the ace that GYON is about to launch for free upgrade, nor did he let his pride show on his face, but calmly and thoughtfully said, “I can’t answer that question right now. In fact, after the launch of the GYON architecture until April 15th, GYON has been working on the problem of changing chips, and we will talk about the specific benefits and policies tomorrow.”

Thinking back now, it is difficult to say whether the decision behind both the so-called “performance” and the one that actually stirred up the Chinese electric vehicle market overnight was a difficult one.

Starting from the most difficult part

For an established industry, “always wanting to do the most difficult” is a reward for the winner.

But for emerging industries like smart cars, “doing the most difficult” can only be regarded as a praise for values.

Because many times, difficult means not easy to do quickly.

According to An Conghui, GYON is a company that likes to do difficult things from the bottom to the surface.

“GYON cut into the smart pure electric vehicle and technology segment market which is the most difficult. This is also the differentiation of our competition from other brands.”

At the bottom, An Conghui believes that choosing a pure electric platform as the design platform from the beginning is a “difficult” thing. He said that he expressed to the group from the beginning that pure electric products should use special pure electric platforms, and it is impossible to convert from gas to electric. At the same time, “the new platform should only serve pure electric, and it is impossible to serve both gas and electric on the same platform”.

This means that all of GYON’s technology development is accumulating for pure electric models, and it is also trying to fully tap and exert the value of pure electric platforms. For example, he revealed that the upcoming GYON MPV can still ensure that the interior space is spacious with various advanced configurations, which is the advantage of the pure electric platform. “Doing both gas and electric will definitely affect each other.”

On the surface, GYON’s choice of segmented markets is also a challenge. An Conghui said, “001 Hunter Gear is all-encompassing,” and “the MPV at the end of the year is also a great challenge, but it is an important segmented market for large families.” GYON has been competing and laying out on important models in major markets, which is also a characteristic of “difficult choice.”On this Evolution Day, GAC NE (short for “Guangzhou Auto New Energy Automobile Co.”) has added a new dimension to the competition of intelligent vehicles, which is also one of the characteristics of “doing difficult things”. In addition to the traditional intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving, GAC NE has added “Intelligent Driving” as a new dimension. Upon examination, this is not simply emphasizing the addition of a good-driving product in the category of intelligent electric vehicles, but deeply interpreting how superior software can provide greater imagination space for driving’s definability in the trend of “software-defined cars”.

We have written the corresponding interpretation article for the activity released on Evolution Day that evening, which everyone can check out. However, the technology that was not presented on Evolution Day may be GAC NE’s phased achievement of “doing difficult things”.

An Conghui, the CEO of GAC Group, indicated that GAC NE is expected to launch a sedan priced at 250,000-300,000 yuan in the future, and after releasing the drift mode soon, GAC NE will open up more dynamic, definable items and modes to users. “This is when it’s at the dual-motor stage. Just imagine how much definable space there can be with three or four motors.”

Regarding GAC NE’s cooperation with Geely and Meizu, An Conghui also stated that “the ecological systems of the cockpit and mobile phones should be seamlessly integrated. Meizu has very good technology and accumulation in the mobile phone industry, and for the future of GAC NE, we will also launch a fusion similar to that of mobile phones. This is an inevitable trend.”

“We are like this: we apply one generation, reserve one generation, and develop one generation. This is what GAC NE has learned over the years,” said An Conghui.

What is GAC NE? In the interview, I asked a few questions, and An Conghui gave a more ingenious summary when answering: “What is GAC NE?”

For a brand with only one mass-produced car, attempting to interpret a brand with one product is very biased. This problem is even more obvious for GAC NE. 001 was originally developed as a LYNK & CO electric vehicle and bears strong LYNK & CO branding in design and style. Just like Tesla entered the mainstream market through Model 3 and XPeng Motors stood firm in intelligent innovation through P7, I am curious about the positioning that An Conghui’s GAC NE truly wants to occupy.

An Conghui gave a double-sided answer.

On the one hand, he believed that a brand’s image “depends on the culture and values of an enterprise” and requires the company to “do real things, not just talk about them”. This requires the enterprise “to maintain a long-term strategy, not just a short-term one”.

“On the other hand, ‘brand needs accumulation, precipitation, and common recognition among users and industry peers. The definition attempted by the manufacturer itself has no value. Only when users truly perceive and identify with it, will it be the ultimate image of the brand.'”

“‘(XPOWER brand) cannot be fully defined until today. It is only the first half of the marathon.’ I believe that all brand positioning, including some new challengers, do not represent the future and may change.”

“I think for XPOWER, what it is, you ask me, and I’ve been asking myself and the team.”

But at least for An Conghui, there are two pieces of data that prove the value of the XPOWER brand to users.

One is recognition, “We have tried to do a used car business on the APP, not to make money. Last month, the top five brands for the cars traded in for XPOWER electric cars were BMW, Honda, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and Tesla respectively.”

The second is the rate of value preservation, “From the perspective of the value preservation rate, we have calculated for half a year and found that the value preservation rate of our products is 89.67%, the highest among Chinese pure electric vehicle brands.”

“‘Crossing the river by feeling the stones’ was a term coined by An Conghui in his answer to this question, and I circled it in my own notes, but it was deleted by XPOWER’s PR team from the shorthand transcript. But I think feeling around more is not necessarily a bad thing.”

Changes and the Future

XPOWER’s CEO is under a lot of pressure, but XPOWER’s driver is not.

Surprisingly, An Conghui experiences his own products very frequently.

Not only was the very early XPOWER 001 product delivered to him, but in many of his current travel scenarios, “An Conghui will even ask the driver to sit in the passenger seat and experience the feeling of driving himself.”

Even among new challenger brands in China, being able to say that the CEO spends a long time test-driving their own products would be redundant to describe; it only applies to a few people.

But this long-term immersion undoubtedly has significant implications for a CEO to understand himself and the industry, especially in scenarios where such individuals like An Conghui hold two positions at once.

“I have transitioned from traditional automobiles to intelligent pure electric ones, and many people believe that I am still a traditionalist. However, the culture at Geely is all about innovation, learning, and constantly challenging oneself. The transformation of my identity represents the culture of Geely, which is very important for a successful enterprise that can adapt to different changes.

During this transformation, An Conghui said that he saw three major changes: the first was on the product side, including product research and development, manufacturing, logistics, and procurement; the second was on the user side, with a vast ecosystem; and the third was on the capital side, which is significantly different from traditional automobiles in several major fields.

“My role as Group CEO and also Jidu CEO is itself a challenge. Currently, I focus more on Jidu, and as chairman of Geely Automobile, I mainly deal with strategic issues. This approach also enables the entire Geely to develop better and more positively. Jidu can obtain resource support and is moving faster in the Geely Holding Group’s intelligent pure electric sector, which can also drive and influence Geely’s development.”

An Conghui said that after becoming CEO in 2012 and experiencing years of pressure, he found the “best period” in 2014 because he knew clearly what would be reflected tomorrow.

“So, what feeling can An Conghui have in 2022 that is like 10 years ago?”

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.