Last month's Beijing Auto Show, with the concentrated presentation of 181 debut new cars and 71 concept cars, automotive design once again became the focus of industry attention. Inside the exhibition hall, there are avant-garde works that amazed the audience, new styles that subvert traditional cognition, and novel designs with niche shapes that have sparked a lot of discussion.

After the excitement, the industry consensus becomes increasingly clear, and the iteration speed of new cars is getting faster. How products can keep up with the market, technological development, and the most real needs of users have become highly concerned issues in the industry. Knowing is easy, but doing is difficult. To cope with rapidly changing market tastes, balance engineering feasibility and cost control, and find a balance between differentiation and mainstream aesthetics, how to solve this series of practical problems? On the stage of last month's Beijing Auto Show, Geely presented a practical example of systematic breakthroughs. At the press conference, Gan Jiayue, CEO of Geely Automobile Group, pointed out that "Geely is not a single point of technological innovation, but an intelligent technology system that integrates space and earth from three electronics to architecture, from chips and operating systems to intelligent cockpits, assisted driving, and even to low orbit satellites

The profound impact brought about by technological breakthroughs is also directly reflected in the design aspect. The Galaxy Light 2nd generation concept car, which debuted at the same time, confidently introduces the "oil electric integration" design style and the overall upward posture change of the overall shape, further confirming that the bottom support of the intelligent technology system unlocks unprecedented innovation freedom for design. When most brands are deeply mired in internal friction, Geely insists on the dual development of technology and design, which is also one of the core reasons for its ability to maintain long-term industry advantages. At the recent Blue Book Forum Design Session, Chen Zheng, Vice President of Geely Automobile Group, broke free from industry appearances and brought some new ideas to the industry by combining the 30-year design evolution of Chinese automobiles, brand practices, and market feedback. He shared three design reference indicators in the practice process of the four growth curves of Chinese automobile design, as well as his predictions on the trend of industry design styles. This practical and forward-looking thinking stems from Geely's years of systematic accumulation, steady upward brand momentum, and constantly rising brand value; More importantly, this thinking transcends the perspective of a single enterprise and provides a set of breakthrough ideas that are close to the market, anchored to users, implementable, and replicable for Chinese automotive design, injecting confidence into the industry's transformation.

01What is good design in the new era?

Many people mistakenly equate good looks with good design, but in reality, good looks are just the basic elements of good design. True good design is a comprehensive value system that takes user needs as the core, technology integration as the support, brand essence as the core, and aesthetic standards of the times as the standard, ultimately achieving a sense of luxury and high value recognized by users. But before the birth of a good design, there must be precipitation. There must be a large number of actual cases and data support, and it needs to be closer to the market reality and user needs. Finally, after time refining, essence can be really condensed. As Geely said on the Blue Book forum, before seeing the turning point clearly, it is important to know how the road ahead will be.

For the 30-year evolution of Chinese automotive design summarized by Chen Zheng on the forum, it can be understood as follows: the primary stage (from 1995 to 2005, design served as the basic function, which was the accumulation period of China's automotive design process), aesthetic awareness awakening (from 2005 to 2015, focusing on styling competition, design became the core competitiveness), brand sedimentation (from 2015 to 2025, design shifted from "beauty value" to shaping brand DNA), and system reconstruction (true innovation, from 2026 onwards, driven by full chain value, with the goal of industry benchmark level). However, it should be noted that these four stages are never a linear process of full synchronization and uniformity, but a complex evolutionary process of multi-stage parallel, brand stratification, and capability gradient growth. The real picture may be that a large number of brands are still struggling in the first two stages, equating design with form, while a very small number of top players have already entered the stage of systematic competition. This cognitive and skill gap is reshaping the industry landscape. In other words, the current design differentiation is essentially a 'misalignment of value definitions'. Most brands still consider design as a visual and stylistic issue. But for brands that have completed cognitive transitions, design has long become a systematic engineering problem, considering the comprehensive scores of efficiency, business, and globalization. Can design help consumers make choices faster? Can we establish a sustained premium capability for the brand? Can it cross cultural boundaries and resonate in the global market? The Chinese automotive industry has been suffering from internal competition for a long time, and the core lesion of internal competition is the lack of a true value anchor point. Only by shifting design from emotional creation to rational value driven, using a three-dimensional scale of efficiency, commerce, and globalization to replace the single standard of "whether it looks good or not", can we break free from internal competition and achieve deep innovation. So the significance of these four stages and different stages of transformation cannot be overemphasized.

02There should also be some new thinking about design style

When the penetration rate of new energy exceeds half or even reaches 60%, AI technology fully penetrates, and users return to rationality. Speaking out three things at the same frequency means that the underlying logic of car design has also reached the point of rewriting. On the Blue Book forum, Chen Zheng made two judgments that the industry should take seriously: the shift in design style towards the integration of oil and electricity, and the empowerment of AI in "cabin experience reconstruction" to achieve true technological inclusiveness. These two judgments accurately capture the deepest changes in the industry. Whoever sees through the trend first gets the ticket to the next stage. The iteration of the design language of the second generation concept car of Galaxy Light at the Beijing Auto Show, with the design style of "combining oil and electricity", has opened up a mainstream, global, and diverse new evolution, allowing design to return to its roots, truly serving users and functions, and giving every car a flagship level experience.

The question of how AI can empower cockpit experience also highlights the misalignment of shallow consumption of AI and equating AI with visual wonders while ignoring the real user experience. It has truly propelled the evolution of China's automotive design logic from "form following function" to "function serving emotion".

The outside world may wonder why Geely put forward such a leading and forward-looking viewpoint? The answer lies not in intelligence, but in accumulation. At the end of the day, it is the judgment accumulated from Geely's long-term deep cultivation of the market, users, and technology, as well as the landmark leap of Chinese design from following to forward-looking insight and proactive leadership. As a leading car company in the industry, Geely's thinking and practice in design have become a microcosm of China's mature design era. This evolutionary power that precedes the times is the most precious confidence of Chinese automotive design, and it will continue to drive the entire industry to break through and reshape the global design discourse. The rise of Chinese cars will inevitably lead to the rise of Chinese car design.