As we all know, electrification is the future of the automotive industry.
In the face of industry changes, in the face of the sweep of the wave of electrification, coupled with a number of new forces to build cars and cross-border car manufacturing strongly broke into the track, so that the traditional giants who are seeking transformation, but also accelerated the pace of transformation. Following the high-end pure electric brand Avita, Changan Automobile's layout in the pure electric passenger car market has taken a new action.
A few days ago, we learned from the National Trademark Information Network that Changan Automobile applied for a new high-end pure electric brand trademark on November 19, 2021, and the new trademark is composed of parallelograms and diamonds, which is more concise than the existing Changan Automobile LOGO. At the same time, Changan Automobile has also registered a series of trademarks named "Kaiyuan", "Kaiyuan Automobile" and "Kaiyuan Technology", and it is expected that high-end pure electric brands may be named Kaiyuan Automobile.
Although the trademark is still in the process of registration, we have been able to search for "Qiyuan Auto User Service" from the WeChat public account, and its profile is: Changan New Energy Vehicle Official Service Account, providing New Car Information, Test Drive Appointment, Appointment Maintenance and other services for Changan New Energy Vehicle Owners and fans, and the account subject of the public account is Chongqing Changan New Energy Automobile Technology Co., Ltd. Just when everyone speculated that the new brand released by Changan New Energy was officially named "Kaiyuan Automobile", on March 14, the certification name of the public account suddenly changed from "Kaiyuan Automobile" to "Changan Deep Blue".
Although Changan's new high-end electrification brand has not yet finalized the brand name, there is no doubt that the high-end brand road under the trend of new energy, Changan Automobile, the leader of Chinese brands, must participate.
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For Chinese brands, high-end is not an easy way to go.
Pushing the hand back the hand of time for ten years, Chinese brands such as Chery have already impacted the high-end market, but unfortunately have little effect. In recent years, there have been many Chinese brands trying to move forward in the past, among which the real can stand firm in the market, stable to obtain sales scale is Geely Lynk & Co and Great Wall WEY, although still facing the price ceiling is difficult to further break through and other huge challenges, but the current two major brands with more than five years, has anchored their mainstream position in the high-end of Chinese brands.
Times have moved, and the city has changed.
Under the wave of electrification, China's auto industry has accelerated the pace of transformation, from traditional car companies to new car-making forces emerging from all walks of life, in order to complete the surpassing of foreign brands in the electrification track as soon as possible.
With the accelerated pace of electrification development, it has once again promoted a wave of Chinese brands to launch their own high-end intelligent electric brands. For example, the Great Wall has the salon brand, Geely has launched the Krypton brand, Dongfeng has the Lantu and M brands, SAIC has Feifan Automobile, and BAIC Group has the ARCFOX brand.
Previously, Changan joined hands with Huawei and CATL to launch the Avita brand. In order to make long-term plans, Changan Automobile chose to launch a new high-end electrification brand again, obviously preparing to open a new round of the road of attack.
It is reported that the model codenamed "C385" previously released by Changan Automobile will become the first product under the new high-end pure electric brand. The first C385 truck also rolled off the production line at the end of 2021 and is expected to debut on April 21 (Beijing Auto Show Media Day). Officially, it integrates L3+ level advanced assisted driving, super collector electric drive, AR ecological smart cockpit, high-frequency pulse heating and other configurations, and is scheduled to be listed in the middle of this year.
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From Avita to the new high-end electrification brand, where does Changan Automobile's confidence come from?
The first is financial support. On January 24 this year, Changan New Energy took the lead in completing a B round of financing of 4.977 billion yuan.
Then on February 22, Changan Automobile released an announcement showing that the investment plan of the company and its holding subsidiaries in 2022 was 8.05 billion yuan, of which 3.246 billion yuan was invested in fixed assets and 4.804 billion yuan was equity investment. And the huge investment to what field to invest, Changan Automobile said: fixed assets will be mainly used for new energy structure adjustment and product planning, around the production capacity and research and development links, to make up for the shortcomings brought about by the accelerated development of new energy; and equity investment will be mainly used to support the Chinese brand new energy brand, the scale of upgrading, further expand overseas markets, and deepen the close relationship with partners, to create controllable full-stack intelligent capabilities, continue to layout travel and industrial ecological expansion.
In general, whether it is a fixed investment or an equity investment, this more than 8 billion yuan of funds will be injected into the track of Changan New Energy in 2022. Coupled with the 4.977 billion yuan brought by the previous B round of financing, Changan New Energy has prepared a rich financial reserve for this transformation battle at the beginning of 2022.
If the abundant capital reserves provide a long-term guarantee for the transformation of electrification, then the continuous breakthroughs and increasing maturity in the technical level such as platform research and development are the confidence for Changan to once again impact the high-end market.
As early as 2017, Changan Automobile released its new energy strategy "Shangri-La Plan". At present, Changan Automobile has developed APA1, a pure electric drive platform with completely independent intellectual property rights, and has launched Changan's new generation of ultra-collector electric drive and electric drive high-frequency pulse heating technology. Previously, Changan Automobile also released an iDD hybrid system based on Blue Whale Power, which can last more than 1,000 kilometers.
At the same time, Changan Automobile has also continuously increased its investment. During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, Changan New Energy will invest about 10 billion yuan in the development of electric drive systems, battery systems, electronic control systems, thermal management systems and low-energy consumption integration, and plans to break through 500 innovative technologies and add 3,000 patents to achieve independent control of core technologies.
In addition, in terms of intelligence, Changan Automobile also released the "Beidou Tianshu Alliance" strategy in 2018, covering three major areas: automatic driving, intelligent interaction, and intelligent interconnection.
Up to now, Changan Automobile has mastered more than 200 core technologies, realized the installation of more than 70 intelligent functions on mass production models, and mastered more than 30 key core technologies of L3-level intelligent driving assistance. At the same time, according to the plan, Changan Automobile will achieve mass production of L4-level intelligent driving assistance in 2025.
From financial support to intelligent platform technology, these technologies that support the product itself from the actual point of view have solved a series of worries for the birth of Changan's new high-end electrification brand.
Write at the end:
It is not easy for an elephant to turn around, but this is an era of challenges and opportunities.
According to Changan's plan, Changan New Energy's sales target is 200,000 vehicles in 2022 and 700,000 vehicles by 2025, and "become one of the top two new energy brands in China". Obviously, Changan New Energy's ambitions need more practical support.
Therefore, after the high-profile layout of Avita, Changan has launched a new high-end electrification brand, which constitutes the "twin stars" of Changan Automobile's high-end electrification. In the future, the two will complement each other and jointly promote the electrification transformation of Changan Automobile.