This article is reproduced from autocarweekly.
Author: Joey
One year ago, at the Guangzhou Auto Show, GAC Aion was officially announced as an independent brand. Through this independence, GAC Aion transformed from a model series under GAC New Energy to an independently operated brand. At that time, there were doubts about what GAC Aion could achieve after becoming independent. However, as another Guangzhou Auto Show is approaching, GAC Aion has delivered impressive sales figures.
Currently, GAC Aion’s sales remain in the top three in the mainstream market with a sales volume of over 100,000, and has reached 279 terminal channels. In the first three quarters of this year, the Aion brand has sold 78,700 products, and in October, it once again broke the monthly record with a terminal sales volume of 13,189 units, and orders surpassed 20,000 for the first time. If this pace continues, it will not be difficult for Aion to achieve sales of over 100,000 this year.
Although GAC Aion’s sales performance is not high compared to the overall sales of GAC Group, achieving 100,000 sales figures in just one year of independent operation is the dream of many “new forces” and “old forces” as well as those derived from “old forces and new forces”.
So what has GAC Aion done in this year to achieve such significant progress for the brand?
Stick to the technical route, becoming the technical “front face” of GAC Group
In fact, when GAC Aion just became an independent brand one year ago, GAC Aion’s general manager, Gu Huinan, defined the brand’s future development route, hoping that when people see GAC Aion, they will first think of “advanced, fun, trendy and high-quality” aspects.
Obviously, “advanced” is ranked first among these terms because in the race of new energy intelligent vehicles, without mastering core technology, one cannot master the future. At that time, people also believed that Gu Huinan, who always dressed in a “work clothes” style and exuded an engineering male vibe, was definitely able to produce something on the “advanced” point.
In 2021, the new energy vehicle market, especially the pure electric vehicle market, has exploded in a “arms race” concerning battery technology. Whether it is range or safety, there are new battery technologies and forms. Among them, BYD’s blade battery and GAC Aion’s magazine battery have left a deep impression on me.
Compared to traditional battery technology, the core of the magazine battery lies in packaging the previously whole battery pack into several different rectangular enclosures, in order to maximize the protection of the battery. By dividing into multiple battery packs, the magazine battery ensures that the vehicle will not be affected if a single pack is damaged or if there is a failure in thermal management, thereby alleviating people’s concerns about battery safety to a great extent.
Afterwards, Aiways also introduced the Hyper Charger technology and Porous Silicon Negative Electrode Battery technology. The Porous Silicon Negative Electrode Battery technology uses 50 patented technologies and can effectively reduce the volume of a vehicle’s power battery by 20%, with a 14% weight reduction. The AION LX Plus model, which was unveiled at this auto show, achieved a range of 1008 kilometers after installing this battery.
Clearly, with such battery technology, Aiways’ EV will have its own gold standard in the market. But Aiways’ mission is not only about EV, it also aims to lead the ICV technology field.
Based on that vision, Aiways introduced the “Starlab” architecture. With this architecture, Aiways’ products will be able to provide multi-dimensional functions, including intelligent driving assistance, intelligent cockpit, and fast development and iteration of intelligent scene implementation.
In other words, in the future, all relevant intelligent driving assistance scenes (up to L4 level or above), intelligent cockpit ecological scenes, and cloud-based low-code development platforms, will be integrated through this architecture. Finally, vehicular software will be opened to third-party developers, thereby creating an ecosystem of co-creation, co-construction, and sharing of vehicular software.
Clearly, within just one year, Aiways has become the flagship of a series of new technologies in the GAC group and has become the “face” of GAC technology. Looking back on Gu Huinan’s goals and vision at that time, one can feel that a blueprint is being realized.
Independent Operation: Making Aiways More Flexible
Of course, technology alone is not enough. Aiways’ independence is interpreted on a larger scale as being due to the increased flexibility brought about by enterprise mechanism reform, which has led to an increase in enterprise vitality.At this year’s Guangzhou Auto Show, Gu Huinan introduced the mode of change that GAC Aion has undergone: firstly, the company has cancelled many cumbersome administrative positions in the past and transformed into a project management system; at the same time, GAC Aion has implemented a three-level approval system, combined with the improved digital level, which has increased the overall work synergy efficiency of the company by 90%.
Under such an efficient work process, GAC Aion actively adjusted the operating mode of the enterprise, which is most evident in the layout of GAC Aion’s sales channels. Over the past year, GAC Aion has fully utilized the three models of directly operated stores, joint ventures, and dealerships to transform the previous automotive sales model into an online and offline, directly operated and dealership, as well as car city and supermarket model.
Up to now, GAC Aion has built 166 car city stores and 113 supermarkets in major cities across the country, with a total of 279 channel terminal stores. Obviously, it is the enterprise’s vigorous promotion, independence and more flexible sales strategy that has given GAC Aion stronger vitality. The benefits of doing so are obvious, and it is expected to achieve sales of over 100,000 vehicles this year, which is a satisfactory answer for the changes adopted by GAC Aion in the sales model.
Just at the end of August this year, GAC Group announced that GAC Aion is about to launch mixed ownership reform. In this reform, GAC Aion will seek external capital investment; at the same time, the three-electric R&D team of GAC Research Institute, consisting of more than 600 people, and some of the patent technology and research and development functions, have also been transferred to GAC Aion, which makes GAC Aion have its own R&D business and become a technology-based company that integrates production and sales; at the same time, the company will also carry out employee shareholding.
Obviously, such changes are a huge corporate mechanism change for GAC, a veteran automotive state-owned enterprise. For GAC Aion, the company has been given greater decision-making power and independence internally.
This independence will increase the company’s ability to resist risks under the impact of the wave of intelligence and become a leader. Cooperation with external capital, and even more technology companies, will enable more participants and peers to be introduced to the most important technology segment of GAC Aion, ensuring that they can maintain their leading position in the industry.
Allowing employees to participate in shareholding allows employees to truly participate in the entire process of enterprise development and growth, giving them a sense of belonging and achievement, thereby preventing possible personnel loss and keeping the company continuously full of vitality and competitiveness. More importantly, GAC Aion’s attempt is expected to provide a comprehensive reference sample for the overall transformation of GAC Group.## EAON’s Reform Road Continues
Of course, this vitality is not only reflected in the reform of corporate mechanisms, but also in the active integration with different cultural circles and different consumer groups, as well as in the long-term planning.
EAON realizes deeply that as a company that wants to create trendy car products, it must connect with young people. Earlier this year, Gu Huinan said in an EAON event that the company is embracing unique youth cultures.
This is what he said, and what EAON is doing.
During this year’s Guangzhou Auto Show, Guangzhou Automobile’s EAON introduced a co-branded AION Y model with cosmetic brand WOW COLOR, targeting young female consumers. In fact, this is not the first time that EAON has launched such a co-branded product.
Earlier this year, Guangzhou Automobile’s EAON also collaborated with King of Glory to launch co-branded skins, and actively participated in elements of young people’s favorite anime games. At the same time, they also collaborated with Happy Mahua to create a limited-time special comedy, hoping to win the favor of more multi-dimensional young consumers and further expand the product’s audience.
It can be said that after becoming independent, EAON, with its completely flexible and fully open operating mode and broad vision, has won the favor of the market and explored a new path for other brands of Guangzhou Automobile.
For Guangzhou Automobile’s EAON, which has just become independent for a year, it is impressive to achieve such results today, but they have no plan to stop. At the Guangzhou Auto Show, Gu Huinan released their new goal to the outside world.
Relying on strong technology reserves, Guangzhou Automobile’s EAON plans to launch a global leading new product in 2023, taking the lead in ushering in the era of L4 level intelligent assisted driving. In fact, this goal is not difficult to achieve.
At present, the combination of the second-generation intelligent variable focus lidar + high-performance intelligent driving computing platform can achieve L2++ level intelligent assisted driving batch delivery. Obviously, with the continuous improvement of Guangzhou Automobile EAON’s technological leadership, more intelligent driving assistance systems are expected to be rapidly launched in the near future.
At the same time, Guangzhou Automobile’s EAON has put its energy-saving and carbon-reducing goals into areas beyond pure electric vehicles, that is, the construction of “zero-carbon factories”.Currently, GAC Aion Intelligent Ecological Plant has achieved 15% of the clean energy needed for production through “photovoltaic + energy storage”, and is preparing to increase the proportion to over 30% through technological innovation. At the same time, GAC Aion plans to introduce wind power and nuclear power to achieve 100% clean energy supply, and to create the first zero-carbon factory under GAC Group in 2023.
Now, we know what Aion has done this year and what they may do next year. The question now is whether these things can be further accepted, and whether they can give birth to a better Aion at the Guangzhou Auto Show next year.
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.