The overseas market is a new growth point for GAC's future performance.

　　Source: GAC

　　In the 1920s, large-scale automobile competition began to spread between "General Motors" and "Ford". The latter quickly took the lead in the popularization of automobiles with the help of the T-shaped car and occupied an absolute advantage in the market.

　　In 1927, General Motors established a dedicated design department within the company responsible for automotive exterior design. In the end, with the design of a new car, it broke the monopoly of the Ford T model on the mid to low priced car market for over a decade. Afterwards, other car companies also established independent design departments.

　　This automotive history left a deep impression on Zhang Fan, Vice President of GAC Research Institute and European General Manager of GAC R&D Center. The difference is that the automotive market is currently undergoing an important transition from fuel powered vehicles to intelligent vehicles. The similarity lies in the fact that cars still face a global market, and in order to better participate in competition, car companies need to leverage global research and development and design.

　　Establishing research and development centers overseas has become a choice for many car companies. Geely, GAC, SAIC, Changan, BAIC, Chery and other automotive companies have research and development bases located throughout the United States, Germany, Italy and other places.

　　Among them, GAC Group has established research and development centers in the United States and Europe, with GAC Research Institute as the core. The design team is located in Guangzhou, Shanghai, Los Angeles, and Milan, covering 18 professional fields such as automotive forward-looking strategy research and design, exterior design, interior design, color and material design, and interactive experience design.

　　Unlike other car companies that established their design center in Turin, in October 2022, GAC Europe R&D Center was officially listed in Milan. Zhang Fan introduced that he had previously considered numerous European cities and ultimately chose to land in the local area on the advice of St é phane Janin, Director of Guangzhou Automobile Milan Forward Design Center. It's an hour's drive from Turin here, which not only takes into account some of the resources of car design, but also delves deeper into the forefront of innovation and creativity

　　Currently, Milan has a design team of fifteen people, and Zhang Fan stated that the team will maintain a size of around twenty people. Most of the company's projects adopt a bidding approach, where "the three countries and four regions work together to come up with a plan, compete in the same competition, and select the best

　　On April 21st, the 2023 GAC Design Competition with the theme of "Instantly Future" was officially launched. At the same time, GAC also released the second concept car in the CAR CULTURE series - VAN LIFE concept car.

　　Source: GAC

　　In fact, the overseas market is a new growth point for GAC's future performance. Previously, GAC released a "trillion yuan GAC" plan, which stated that by 2030, GAC Group would achieve an annual revenue of trillion yuan, with an annual revenue of 60 billion yuan in overseas markets and an annual export of 500000 vehicles.

　　Data shows that in 2022, GAC Group achieved 2.48 million and 2.434 million automobile production and sales, with year-on-year growth of 16% and 13.5%, respectively.

　　At this year's Shanghai Auto Show, GAC stated that it will strive to achieve double-digit year-on-year growth in automobile production and sales in 2023. Yin Jie, Director of Brand Public Relations Department of GAC Group, said, "Internationalization is the sector where we have made the biggest progress this year.

　　Source: GAC

　　The following are the Q&A transcripts of Zhang Fan, Vice President of GAC Research Institute and European General Manager of GAC R&D Center, and St é phane Janin, Director of GAC Milan Forward Design Center, in response to media outlets such as Future Automotive Daily (with modifications):

　　Q: How do you see the trend of more and more domestic brands starting to establish design or research and development centers overseas?

　　A: From the perspective of GAC, the main goal is to support the internationalization goal, with research and development being the first and design being the first. In fact, as early as 2017 and 2018, GAC was planning to enter the US market. At that time, we built three centers in North America, but later due to Sino US relations, the project was affected, leaving only Los Angeles. However, the strategic intention of GAC's internationalization has not stopped, and now every Chinese enterprise that is developing steadily and going far has this intention, and will also go overseas for corresponding layout.

　　If in the early stages of the development of Chinese car companies, people were talking about survival issues, and using overseas forces can help us have some invincible capital in the domestic survival war, then the future will be more about development issues. How can we see it accurately and walk steadily, we need to have an overseas perspective. Having sufficient talent and resources to support development is the advantage of establishing research and development centers and design centers overseas. We can see it, and other companies can also see it, but we hope to do our best. In fact, during this Milan Design Week, GAC has become a part of it. As an automotive design center, we showcase our design works, design environment, and even some design ideas and process methods in an open manner to the outside world, which is very rare compared to the past.

　　Q: From a design perspective, what changes do you think there have been from traditional cars to intelligent cars?

　　A: At the Shanghai Auto Show, you can see a watershed between cars from the old world and cars from the new world. This does not mean traditional car companies or new forces, but represents two different automotive design concepts. From the perspective of future development, how can we better grasp the trend of new car design and constantly strive to advance? This is actually a challenge that lies ahead of us, and the competition between us is also very severe and intense.

　　A very important issue is the convergence of everyone's design. New energy vehicles, whether in terms of appearance or interior, are becoming increasingly simple, with more sporty postures and concise body lines. In our terms, they are Tesla like and Porsche like. On the one hand, this is a new trend, but on the other hand, everyone is pushing towards the same path. How can we highlight differentiation. So I think from the perspective of future development, we need to constantly think about how to meet the diverse needs of consumers, how to find new paradigms, and establish our more unique and leading design style. This is also the mission that our forward-looking center needs to undertake.

　　Q: At present, everyone seems to be more concerned about the core indicators of three electric vehicles when facing smart cars. Will the design be weakened?

　　A: On the contrary, the most easy to standardize and modularize are the three electrics and platforms. On the contrary, the design is exactly what will present the brand product differentiation later. So I think future designers have a wide range of possibilities, but this path is also difficult because everything they need to do seems similar. When it comes to surpassing something, relying solely on changes in form is not enough. It is necessary to have a brand new setting. I remember in 2011, GAC launched a concept car E-linker based on a pure electric platform at the auto show. At that time, we put a bathtub in the electric car and proposed the concept that the car is a mobile living room. Many years later, we also saw some international brands expressing this concept on the car. The karaoke and movie watching in the car are actually fulfilling this demand. The question is, what is the next philosophy to guide car design? I am also raising this question for the team now, because with the guidance of concepts, it is possible to transform the design into specific forms and have some opportunities for truly cross level innovation.

　　Q: How does the Milan Forward Design Center and Guangzhou Design Institute interface and divide their work?

　　A: From the perspective of automotive design itself, we can divide it into forward looking design and mass production design. Forward looking design constantly explores and breaks through boundaries in the front, and some of these things may not be directly transformed into mass production. The mass production team is based on the current product definition, audience needs, and the entire car model strategy, to quickly and directly undertake the transformation process. However, both parties also need to be organically integrated, because over time, designers at the Forward Design Center will feel that they have no foundation and cannot achieve anything at all, and the sense of achievement for designers is not high. The mass production team may feel physically and mentally exhausted amidst various strict constraints on cost and technology. So we hope that both parties will participate in some foresight or mass production, but the proportion of each team will be different.

　　Automotive designers are actually a very challenging profession, as any of our projects are tendered. For very important projects, even studios in the Three Kingdoms and Four Regions will come up with proposals and participate in the bidding process. The final round of screening will be decided on a single proposal. This process is actually very rigorous, and designers need to invest a lot of energy, continuously output, and have very high requirements for psychological stress resistance.

　　Q: What is the current background of the Milan team?

　　A: Our design team consists of relatively young designers from Audi, those who have worked for a long time at Renault, and Chinese designers who have come to communicate in China. It is a mixed team.

　　Q: Is it intentional for a team of around 20 people to maintain this scale?

　　A: Through this period of work, it was found that a team of over 20 people is a very suitable size. No matter how much management span there is, it will be relatively large. No matter how little, there is no way to continuously produce good results. Currently, our Los Angeles team also has over 20 people.

　　Q: The design team of GAC is currently distributed in the "Three Kingdoms and Four Regions". As the main responsible person, how should we assess and manage them?

　　A: This is indeed a headache for me because many times, we do not realize the importance and difficulty of management. Just like when we established the Three Kingdoms and Four Regions in 2018, whether we have the ability to utilize these talent resources and continuously output them is actually a matter of another level.

　　During the exploration process, we also had crises, but through continuous optimization, we have now found some methods. There are several important principles among them. The first one is that the design industry is different from other industries. For the KPI of designers, you cannot say that you must draw a few charts today. It is more goal oriented, allowing them to present their professional characteristics, find their role in the team, and clearly divide their career paths. The second issue is how to establish mutual trust with foreign designers. In addition to frequent communication in language, the more crucial aspect is cognition, empathy, and helping them solve difficulties.

　　Another issue is the concept of management. The relationship with them is to build a platform to help them take off and make things bigger together. I won't give them too many restrictions. Also, it is necessary to turn this institution into a pool of living water, allowing communication between China and these international strongholds, which is actually very beneficial.