Those who know Geely Automobile will be familiar with the development trajectory of the Galaxy.
Since the end of 2014, a generation of beautiful Chinese cars represented by the Borui, Boyue and the new Emgrand series has been a force awakening of Geely Automobile in the era of fuel vehicles. Although the times are changing today, the trajectory of the Milky Way is very similar.
L6、L7 opened the basic disk,Galaxy E8 played the tonality of Geely new energy,Subsequently,The seemingly long overdue Galaxy E5 quickly increased。 Geely New Energy's Galaxy picture scroll will be fully rolled out in 2024.
In this era of polarism, Geely is still trying to maintain its strategic focus and rhythm. This is a sentence that is easy to say, but combined with the current market structure, it makes people feel sore when they think about it. It involves all aspects of anxiety and persistence of a car company.
Today, we start with Chen Zheng, Vice President of Geely Automobile Group, from design.
Chen Zheng joined Geely Automobile in 2022, and within a few days of taking office, he encountered home quarantine in Shanghai, and his initial integration with Geely was completed with dozens of colleagues in the Geely Shanghai Innovation Design Institute.
Top designers, clay modelers, interior and exterior designers, and young people collide and merge in such an atmosphere, bringing team mutual trust and team confidence that are instantly bred like inspiration.
Chen Zheng said that at that time, he had to talk to Geely Automobile Group CEO Gan Jiayue for a long time every day to discuss the design concept of Galaxy and the development of Geely's design team.
At that time, several models of the Galaxy were launched simultaneously in this small design center. It is a race against time when the outside world is still, like reading in the middle of the night, smelling the rooster dancing before dawn. This contrast is the most sensitive stimulus to inspiration in the realist world of commercial design.
One of the feelings that Chen Zheng has been expressing since that time helped him and his team understand Geely culture in an instant, and establish a three-dimensional and sustainable understanding of the galaxy.
The first thing I understand is a kind of strategic trust.
Chen Zhenghe's design team's greatest happiness comes from Geely's strategic self-confidence. For Galaxy, Geely's technology and R&D background is strong enough, and the result is that even in the face of a difficult market, Geely is still doing systematic design thinking.
In his view, the success of the car is in the whole huge system, the more plates can resonate in a car, the smoother the success will be. Geely's system and the head of Geely Automobile Group, Mr. Gan, gave the design team the "space" they wanted most: that is, they had a clear product and brand concept, and there was plenty of design leeway. In a systematic product such as automobiles, the integration of design and all aspects of the entire brand is the sustainable path.
In an exchange with Chen Zheng at the end of September, "disenchantment" became the favorite word used by the Chinese utilitarian car designer. This meaning expresses the mental barrier that needs to be broken in the first step towards independent thinking and development of Chinese automobile design.
In the early days of China's automotive development, designers spent long periods of time in Turin, Tokyo and Munich learning the entire automotive design process.
But now, China's car design has developed to a stage where it needs to be disenchanted, otherwise it will not be able to continue to progress. For example, today, many companies have found that the trend of Tesla has not only led to the difficulty of continuity in the design of many brands, but also the complete learning of many functional designs. Therefore, it is much more important to return the mood of Chinese designers to the essence of the product at this stage than the drawings that are stunning and hotly searched.
For commercial product designers, it is necessary to focus on disenchantment. Disenchantment is the key word of the times in Chinese automobile design, and the establishment of this keyword is not based on design, but on the strategic sustainability of the entire brand.
At the turn of that special spring and summer, Gan Jiayue gave Chen Zhenghe the design team a brief on the phone about the three dimensions of Geely Automobile: the unique model of Chinese-style globalization - Run, the most complete new energy R&D technology system - and, and the most advanced and independent scientific and technological system capability - new.
To this day, the general spirit of the brief has not changed. Chen Zheng said with a smile that perhaps at this time, the file name number of the same type of brief in some enterprises has reached 30.
It's quite hard to make the synopsis clear, because if you don't see this, you can't actually understand how the design drawings of the galaxy unfold. It's as if many people now envy Lei Jun for drinking wine and eating meat in the era of traffic marketing, but few people look at the penance behind him.
Chen Zheng has obtained the force of disenchantment in Geely, and he and his team have successfully mastered and exerted this power.
This is manifested in the multiple systems of thinking that Chen Zheng has given to the entire Geely design process.
The first is the basic idea that process is more important than aesthetics.
Make a product. This is the first nature in his eyes, which is the first in the design work.
This 1 consists of three parts. Make it according to the best quality allowed by the conditions, make it according to the best cost, and make it at the fastest speed.
Taking speed as an example, the initial market position brought by the four products of the Galaxy series so far to Galaxy comes from the maturity of the product definition, the relevance of the market strategy, the recognition of the technology brand, and so on. However, on closer inspection, the value of speed in the real market is incalculable.
Although we can't see it in the hot search, in fact, on the basis of the product, the speed of the galaxy has given the most intuitive pressure to the strong friends. And design, as long as you are original, then it is the most time-consuming link in the whole new car link, and it is also the link that is most likely to squeeze out time.
And quality, speed, cost, these do not come from artistic inspiration, from the process. In fact, a reasonable process of disenchantment can also nourish inspiration.
In the design of the entire galaxy, Chen Zheng believes that speed is the key factor to success on the basis of doing other things that should be done well.
The second is to transform Geely's design brief into a systematic design language.
The first is in the styling design. The styling design of the Galaxy E5 is a complete reflection of the design ideas of the Geely design team.
It's a process of zeroing in and reinventing.
This is a mainstream A-segment SUV that is positioned globally.
The process of backwards is from the greatest common divisor of global aesthetics to the aesthetic core of the Geely brand. Therefore, the first process is from the aesthetic origin and brand core of global design, Chinese design, Jiangnan-style aesthetics, and Geely design.
This is like a cultural and aesthetic Silk Road, which is finally merged into Dunhuang, the fruit of the fusion of strong self-cultural connotation and narrow-minded openness.
In this process, what is naturally integrated is the insight into the delicate expectations of users. Still like Dunhuang, thousands of years later, we can still see the most real and delicate desires of the people at that time.
It is worth mentioning that Dunhuang is Chinese, but he has never been done exclusively by the Chinese. The same is true for Chinese design, Mr. Chen said, and his first chat with many of the foreign designers he invites is usually like this:
What I'm good at as a designer, what I'm not very good at, and I think you're very good at that, so our collaboration is bound to be very productive. Geely is such a company, and its core is something that we must integrate and respect together.
Many "unruly" and "conceited" design masters immediately understood that he did not come to Geely to show off his historical muscles, but to jointly do a good job in Chinese car design and Geely design.
The core found by Galaxy is "Wenrun", and E5 is the interpretation of Wenrun in the most popular and rational market. This is the key word for Geely, a Chinese car company, to make the most solid progress in globalization, and it is also the temperament of Geely nurtured by water and soil.
When we look back, we know how difficult it was to make such a design choice. In today's discourse environment, even many professionals and media are difficult to "disenchant" when facing car design. The requirement of recognition is almost thrown out by people of various identities at various car appraisal meetings.
The E5 was taken out before the launch, and the good words that could be heard in the design process can be imagined to be few. Only in this way can Geely Automobile's concentration be precious.
A product that has to run in dozens of markets around the world, a product that wants to seek the greatest common divisor, must have the impulse to stay away from "words are not amazing and endless".
In the process of achieving warmth, the wisdom of subtraction is even almost brutal, and the red line of restraint needs to be repeatedly tested by the emotional short video public opinion field.
Instead of complaining about the information environment, we should build self-confidence commensurate with the changing environment. This is the resilience of a business that faces its users directly.
Taking Dunhuang as an example, he was not born in the hinterland of the Central Plains with music and harmony, but on the narrow and long Silk Road, on the back of the positive words of cultural integration and a hundred flowers, there must be a chaotic, complicated, and antagonistic public opinion field, wild nonsense and wealth-making myths, and every day the silent majority of the audio-visual is messy.
But Dunhuang is so warm and beautiful here for thousands of years. The grand narrative and the miracles of the emperor do not have such a long vitality in the wind and sand of Dunhuang, and the tweeters and hot searches cannot pass through the cycle. This is the power of reason. Only by truly integrating can we be far ahead of time.
This is also Chen Zheng's original intention to take the team to Dunhuang to do a cultural traceability in the two years of life and death designed by Geely.
Commercial design, it doesn't seem to be as lofty as art design, and it is impossible to endure the loneliness of art, but to remove the false and retain the true, pay attention to the core, and gain insight into the real practical spirit, on the contrary, it is related to the thousand-year-old art of Dunhuang.
Geely, Chen Zheng and the Geely design team are all practitioners of pragmatism, but pragmatism is not the simple "don't you just match what you do" hawkerism as stated in the short video. Even in Dunhuang, which is the most alive in history, the hawkers will disappear very quickly.
What Chen Zheng wants to express is his experience of Chinese design, and to establish a pragmatism that dares to remove the false and retain the truth, face the essence, and face the user.
And this is also the corporate philosophy of Geely in the face of this era, daring to adhere to globalization, daring to build a complete intelligent system capability, daring to calmly unfold the picture scroll of the galaxy, and daring to define products like the galaxy E5.
To put it in Li Shufu-esque language, I will always give the best I can to users.