On the evening of August 30th, GAC Group released a preliminary announcement regarding the proposed mixed ownership reform and introduction of strategic investors for its wholly-owned subsidiary. By restructuring and integrating the new energy vehicle R&D capabilities and assets, GAC Group plans to promote the mixed ownership reform of GAC Aion and increase its capital and shareholding to introduce strategic investors.
In the future, GAC Aion will actively seek listing at an appropriate time and fully leverage the advantages of capital markets.
In 2017, the company planned to invest 45 billion yuan to establish the world-class GAC NIO New Energy Automobile Industrial Park and founded GAC Aion. GAC Aion creates the first exclusive pure electric platform in China and builds the first pure electric exclusive factory. The first model, AION S, was launched in April 2019, followed by AION V in June 2020. In September 2020, GAC Aion’s cumulative sales exceeded 100,000 units, becoming the new energy brand with the fastest achievement of reaching 100,000 units from the beginning of its establishment. In 2021, AION S Plus and AION Y were launched.
GAC Aion has an important position in the most mainstream consumer market of 100,000-200,000 yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 128.9%. Up to now, cumulative sales have exceeded 180,000 units.
In 2021, GAC Aion is expected to sell more than 100,000 units. In July, the company received more than 16,000 orders. Currently, the factory capacity utilization rate has exceeded 140%, and it is in a state of completely supply unable to meet the demand. GAC Aion has launched a 200,000 units/year capacity expansion project, with a planned investment of 500 million yuan, which is expected to be completed in early 2022, laying a capacity foundation to meet market demand and achieve higher sales targets.
With regards to the three-electric technology, the company’s bullet battery system safety technology that is immune to piercing, the ultra-high-speed battery technology that can provide a range of 200 kilometers after 5 minutes of charging, the 1,000-kilometer range sponge silicon negative electrode battery technology, and the “two-gear dual-motor” four-in-one integrated electric drive system will also be put into production soon, achieving a two-second acceleration to 100 kilometers per hour.
In terms of intelligent technology, GAC Aion has developed the ADiGO intelligent driving and interconnectivity ecological system, which covers core technologies such as intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, big data, and cloud platform. It also has a self-developed 5G V2X communication system. In 2021, GAC Aion became the first to globally launch the latest generation of intelligent variable focus LIDAR, and with Huawei, it will go into mass production of L4 automatic driving in 2023.
In terms of manufacturing capacity, GAC Aion’s intelligent ecological factory has four leading advantages, including digital autonomous decision-making, interactive customization, steel-aluminum hybrid flexible production, and comprehensive energy utilization. Especially, it has achieved the transformation of traditional large-scale production into large-scale interactive customization for the first time, fully meeting the personalized and high-quality needs of users and becoming a benchmark for “Made in China 2025”.In terms of marketing strategy, AION, a subsidiary of GAC Group, has gradually built five major value systems including “products, services, social interaction, scarce resources, and business co-creation” with its APP as the core, actively capturing user traffic. In July this year, AION’s first global brand direct experience center opened in Guangzhou Grandview Mall, marking the launch of AION’s “direct sales + distribution” dual-thread model.
The English name of “埃安” (AION) is a combination of “AI” and “ON”, implying the opening of the era of artificial intelligence. AION’s core values include “foresight, innovation, enterprising, trust, and sharing”.
In terms of future intelligent travel ecology, AION has formed strategic partnerships with innovative technology companies such as Huawei, Tencent, Baidu, iFLYTEK, and Horizon Robotics to create a technology innovation ecosystem, and jointly promote technological innovation in autonomous driving and intelligent cockpit. In the next two years, AION will cooperate with car-hailing platforms such as RUCAR, Baidu Apollo, Xpeng, and WeRide to deploy over a thousand L4 demonstration vehicles, comprehensively initiating research and layout of the future intelligent travel ecology.
Recently, Geek+ announced that it has received strategic investment from multiple star investors and has reached a valuation of nearly 9 billion US dollars. Meanwhile, Geely has announced its first mass wealth creation plan for over 10,000 employees by granting 167 million shares. Changan and Dongfeng also have mixed-ownership subsidiaries, but their scale is indeed smaller than AION.
🔗Source: AION
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.