The annual wholesale sales of vehicles reached 5.464 million units, maintaining the first place in China for 16 consecutive years. SAIC motor has just released a full-year announcement that in the past year, independent brands, new energy vehicles, and overseas exports have achieved double-digit rapid growth. What is even more gratifying is that in the "new track" of electric intelligent networking, SAIC's innovative business is accelerating its sprint and taking the lead in many fields.
In 2021, SAIC's own brand sold 2.857 million vehicles (of which Roewe and MG brands sold about 800,000 units together), accounting for 52.3% of total sales, exceeding 50% for the first time; new energy vehicles sold 733,000 units, an increase of 128.9% year-on-year, ranking first in China and second in the world, and in developed countries such as Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the sales of self-owned mg and MAXUS new energy vehicles exceeded 50,000 units. In terms of products, the high-end intelligent electric brand Zhiji Automobile, the first product "Performance Flagship True Intelligent Car" Zhiji L7 completed the batch of off-line. SAIC Motor also established Feifan Automobile, a "user-oriented data-driven technology company", to accelerate the development of the mid-to-high-end intelligent electric vehicle market.
Going overseas, SAIC motor's overseas sales reached 697,000 units last year, an increase of 78.9% year-on-year, winning the top spot in the domestic car company list for six consecutive years, and its products and services entered more than 70 countries and regions around the world, forming six "50,000-car-class" regional markets in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the Americas, the Middle East, ASEAN and South Asia, of which the overseas sales of the MG brand of "China's single brand overseas sales champion" reached 360,000 vehicles, ranking among the top ten single brands in 17 countries around the world.
Establish technical advantages and comprehensively transform into a user-oriented high-tech enterprise
With the vigorous development of revolutionary technologies such as new energy, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things, automobiles with a history of more than 100 years of development have ushered in a huge opportunity for subversive changes. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, SAIC Motor will invest 300 billion yuan in innovative fields such as intelligent electric vehicles, accelerate the pace of independent innovation, and comprehensively transform into a high-tech enterprise. In 2021, SAIC motor invested more than 60 billion yuan in the field of innovation, and nearly 3,000 patents were authorized, forming a team of 10,000 software talents.
Aiming at the key pain points of users, SAIC's new generation of power battery system, which is zero thermal runaway, cost-effective, fast charging, quick change and upgradeable, has been officially put into production recently. In the future, SAIC will also make every effort to tackle the serialized "three electric systems" with long endurance, multi-energy gradients and multi-drive systems, and strive to strengthen the new generation of electric vehicle platforms that can be upgraded, expanded and quickly replaced. By 2025, SAIC motor will officially launch solid-state lithium batteries with high safety, high energy density and commercial applications.
With the goal of "software-defined car", in the future, SAIC Motor will strengthen the independent control of the "brain and soul" of intelligent vehicles such as soa software platform and central centralized electronic architecture through self-research of global core software, and strive to create a "software car" with user experience as the core, with massive application software, thousands of people experience, and intimate microservices.
At present, SAIC motor has cultivated 20 "science and technology innovation small giants" such as Jie Hydrogen Technology, Zhiji Automobile, Feifan Automobile, Zero Beam Technology, Youdao Zhitu, Saike Intelligence, Lianchuang Electronics, etc., to empower industrial transformation and upgrading through scientific and technological innovation, and will actively use the capital market to promote the industrialization and commercialization of innovative achievements. Recently, Jet Hydrogen Technology has launched a new Jet Hydrogen Kaiyuan series fuel cell system, stack power, stack power density, system power and other core technical indicators, benchmarking the world's top level represented by Toyota. At present, Jie Hydrogen Technology has started the spin-off and will become the first "science and technology innovation small giant" under SAIC to achieve listing.
Focusing on sustainable development, SAIC Volkswagen ID.4 X, ID.6 X, ID.3 "family series" electric vehicles have been launched in three consecutive shots, and their monthly sales have reached a new high since their listing, and they have now approached the 10,000 mark. SAIC-GM introduced the Ultium Aotene electric vehicle platform, and the first mass-produced Cadillac pure electric medium and large SUV LYRIQ officially opened pre-sale. SAIC-GM-Wuling innovated to build gSEV global small pure electric vehicle architecture platform, and actively explored the blue ocean market of small new energy vehicles, with cumulative sales of related products exceeding 750,000 vehicles.
In April 2021, SAIC led the world's first automotive SOA developer conference, the SAIC Zero Beam SOA Platform Developer Conference. SAIC has reached a consensus with dozens of ecosystem partners, including Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei and other leading technology Internet companies, and will continue to carry out extensive cooperation in the fields of intelligent network connectivity, network security, 5G empowerment, and automotive chips, and share software and hardware bases and travel scenarios, work together to create an intelligent vehicle ecology, and explore win-win and shared development. At present, the number of zero-beam SOA platform developers has exceeded 4,000, and the relevant cooperation between SAIC and ecological partners such as Tencent, OPPO, ZTE, and Horizon is also actively promoting.
To create a winning trend for development, the four strategic projects accelerate the industrialization of innovative technologies
China's automobile industry is entering the "upgrading and transformation period" of development momentum, and there are structural opportunities such as high-end, personalization and scenario. With intelligent electric vehicles as the main carrier, SAIC motor actively promotes the continuous landing of innovative technologies and accelerates the transformation of technological advantages into a winning development trend around key projects such as Zhiji Automobile, Feifan Automobile, L4-level Robotaxi, and 5G+L4 Yangshan Port Intelligent Heavy Truck.
High-end intelligent electric brand Zhiji Automobile, the first product "Performance Flagship True Intelligent Car" Zhiji L7 achieved batch roll-off the production line. Focusing on the underlying innovation of Zhiji L7, it brings four new product architectures pioneered in the industry: high-end pure electric architecture provides advanced four-wheel steering and four-wheel drive, a new generation of domain fusion central computing digital architecture carries 521 functions, SOA atomized software architecture brings scenario-based intelligent interactive experience, and IM AD intelligent driving system brings users the "most human-like" intelligent driving experience.
The "smart new species" Feifan Automobile R7 launched at the 2021 Guangzhou Auto Show will be officially delivered in the second half of this year. R7 will be equipped with a high-level intelligent driving solution to build a "six-fold fusion" perception system that integrates lidar, 4D imaging radar, 5G-V2X, high-precision maps, visual cameras, and millimeter-wave radar, with all-weather, over-line of sight, and multi-dimensional perception capabilities, and improves the technical level and safety of intelligent driving to a new height.
SAIC Hobotaxi, which has been successfully landed in Shanghai and Suzhou in 2021, is equipped with a self-developed "soft and hard", automatic driving solution, realizing the organic combination of "mature travel operation experience" and "leading automatic driving technology". This year, SAIC Robotaxi plans to land in Shenzhen. In 2025, SAIC Motor will realize the mass production of L4 level intelligent driving vehicles, and form a commercial Robotaxi fleet to define a new form of shared mobility and achieve a sustainable and profitable business model.
SAIC's "5G+L4" intelligent driving heavy-duty truck, which integrates advanced technologies such as AI artificial intelligence, 5G, and V2X vehicle-to-vehicle communication, has successfully realized L4-level automatic driving, centimeter-level positioning, precise parking, interaction with automated port machinery equipment and the industry's only "one-to-drag four" formation driving in specific scenarios in Yangshan Port Area, providing port transportation customers with smarter, safer, more efficient and more environmentally friendly container transfer solutions. By the end of 2021, the cumulative test mileage of SAIC's intelligent driving heavy trucks has exceeded 2 million kilometers, and a total of 61,000 transshipment containers have been completed, reaching the leading level of the international commercial vehicle industry. In 2022, SAIC's intelligent driving heavy truck will reduce the number of safety personnel in the car and plan to transfer 100,000 containers.
Looking forward to the future, SAIC motor will firmly grasp the "user-centric", comprehensively exert efforts to "data determines the experience, software-defined car" of the new generation of electric intelligent vehicles, accelerate the transformation to a user-oriented high-tech enterprise with technological upgrading, business globalization, brand premiumization and experience extreme, create more intimate services and products for the majority of users, and make greater contributions to the innovation and development of China's automotive industry.
Author: Zhu Yue
Photograph: Zhang Yichen
Editor: Tang Weijie
Editor-in-Charge: Rong Bing
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.