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When mentioning SAIC-GM-Wuling, the first thing everyone thinks of is: "If the people need it, Wuling builds it". Indeed, "Building cars for the people" has been the core philosophy Wuling has upheld since its inception. From the Hongguang that swept the nation to the Hongguang MINIEV, Bingo series, Starlight family in the new energy era—SAIC-GM-Wuling has created miracle after miracle in the market凭借 its precise market insights and powerful manufacturing capabilities.
However, with the deepening of new energy intelligent vehicles, the automotive industry is undergoing profound changes. In this round of transformation, can the former "King of Cost" cope with this round of transformation and continue to stand firm in the new wave of competition.
History is delivering this report card. Although the automotive market competition is fierce, internal strife, and intensifying competition, SAIC-GM-Wuling, which held up pressure, did not forget "building cars for the people", and always kept pace with people's needs, once again achieved self-breakthrough.
In the just passed September, SAIC-GM-Wuling received many good news: monthly global sales of 132,045 vehicles, cumulative breakthrough of 1.05 million in the first three quarters; cumulative overseas sales of more than 1.6 million units/sets. Huajing S delivery volume has risen steadily for 5 consecutive months, deliveries again hit a new high, cumulative breakthrough 30,000 vehicles.
What makes SAIC-GM-Wuling able to continuously upgrade product technology according to "people's needs"? With curiosity, in the hot August, I found the answer in Liuzhou: Behind the visible sales and hit products, is SAIC-GM-Wuling's innovation-driven core drive, is the self-driven force of silently transforming from a traditional automotive manufacturing enterprise to an "electrification, intelligence, digitalization, globalization" enterprise, and more importantly, is a development path of exploration, development, and fighting for user upgrades melted into the corporate gene.
Build cars that people need! High-level intelligent driving, high quality is no longer the privilege of the "few"
I first walked into the Guangxi New Energy Vehicle Laboratory. It is rare for an OEM to have its own new energy vehicle laboratory. More importantly: The Guangxi New Energy Vehicle Laboratory built an open platform, led by eight academicians forming an academic advisory committee, councils composed of the first echelon enterprises of various industries, and five "enclave R&D centers" in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan, and Changsha, bringing the most cutting-edge talent and technology in first-tier cities back to Liuzhou for landing and integration.
In one sentence: R&D in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Integration in Guangxi, Application in ASEAN. It keeps its complete vehicle and manufacturing system intact, yet opens its doors to embrace the best technical resources from the world, avoiding falling into closed self-defense.
This also enabled SAIC-GM-Wuling to embrace the world's most high-quality and advanced technology immediately. Implemented in products, Huajing S comes with a set of high-end configurations including Huawei Huakun Intelligent Driving, HarmonyOS Cockpit, 2000MPa ultra-high strength steel body, Shenlian Battery, etc.
At the same time, Huajing S can bring Huawei intelligent driving down to the 150,000-200,000 price range, which relies on its underlying automotive manufacturing essence. Li Tianhui revealed: "SAIC-GM-Wuling does not simply pile together parts from big brand suppliers like Huawei and CATL and rely on low prices to catch attention. Instead, relying on the core capability accumulated by SAIC-GM-Wuling over decades—supply chain integration and system engineering capability, using a set of schemes such as wind resistance optimization, vehicle lightweighting, and system energy consumption optimization, to improve range and experience under cost control, replacing single-point internal competition with systems thinking, and putting high-end technology into a family SUV within 200,000."
Although the era is different, the complete industrial logic behind SAIC-GM-Wuling has not changed. "What Wuling wants to do is break this cognition. Technology should not be the privilege of the few. Technology equality is the true direction of the era," said Li Tianhui.
And Huajing S had almost no large-scale advertising investment at the beginning of its launch. One month after launch, relying on a large number of ordinary users' spontaneous review sharing, it became the first in the mid-to-large SUV reputation list. This spontaneous recognition from ordinary consumers exactly confirms the vitality of this logic.
The essence of high-tech equality is a car-making closed loop around user needs
The logic of "high-tech equality" of SAIC-GM-Wuling works, supported by its system capabilities accumulated by the enterprise for a long time—technological innovation capability, intelligent manufacturing capability, industry chain integration and collaboration capability, user insight capability, etc.
As everyone knows, the industry has never lacked low-price cars, nor cars that pile up configurations. What is truly scarce is the complete loop system capability from user insight, technological R&D, supply chain integration to flexible manufacturing.
"If the people need it, Wuling builds it", essentially, is a car-making closed loop around user needs.
In the new energy vehicle era, what are users most worried about? Safety!
In the new energy era, "safety is the greatest luxury". In the Guangxi New Energy Vehicle Laboratory, it can be seen that SAIC-GM-Wuling uses an IPX9K water resistance test chamber. Through high-temperature and high-pressure water columns, it sprays the battery pack's shell. The pressure of the water column is 12.5 MPa, equivalent to the battery pack can continuously encounter the strong flood impact of a flash flood, with no effect. At the same time, a full lifecycle test of the battery pack is conducted. A single test of a battery pack must reach more than 1.5 years, completely eliminating "quick-made cars".
At the same time, it is equipped with a four-comprehensive vibration test equipment, which can simulate user vehicle scenarios to lock in faults that occur during use, accurately analyze where the problem lies, and find solutions for responsibility attribution in the era of intelligent driving.
In the specific high-tech equality product creation, SAIC-GM-Wuling's approach is: The enterprise acts as that "thread stringing pearls".
This thread strings together three capabilities: At the production end, it is a flexible and efficient smart island manufacturing system, allowing innovation to truly land as products; At the supply chain end, find and match suitable suppliers, walk through "self-controllable core components, mainstream traditional suppliers, and suppliers 'co-creation'" three routes; At the product end, it is product definition capability with real user scenarios as the source, making every vehicle aim at real needs. The three capabilities are interlinked, jointly realizing the original intention—meeting the "people's needs" of the new era.
In the hands of SAIC-GM-Wuling, there is a hand that others find hard to copy—massive downward market data accumulated from over 32 million users, plus a capillary network formed by more than 3,000 stores across the country. Town roads, non-standard parking spaces, intersections with heavy electric vehicles mixing, narrow bends at village entrances, these the most down-to-earth Chinese road conditions are collected continuously.
This map is SAIC-GM-Wuling's unique "scenario-driven" model. This also makes the real road data from counties and townships injected into the model when cooperating with Huawei for Huakun Intelligent Driving, to optimize parking and narrow road passing algorithms.
"It's not simply taking Huawei's solution and installing it on the car, that would only result in homogenization; we empower each other and achieve success for each other," Li Tianhui summarized Wuling's cooperation model with Huawei.
Many automakers do intelligent driving today, training data mostly comes from wide and neat urban roads in first and second-tier cities. Others imagine in the lab how Chinese families drive, SAIC-GM-Wuling walks into streets and alleys, to see how users actually drive. In intelligent driving, SAIC-GM-Wuling has already taken a big step forward, making it more able to understand and match the new era's "people's needs".
Of course, people's needs also include price. How does SAIC-GM-Wuling maintain cost advantages with flexibility?
The form changes, but the original intention remains unchanged! Three capabilities define SAIC-GM-Wuling's present and future
Innovation capability, autonomy capability, and three-electric system are the heart of new energy vehicles. SAIC-GM-Wuling did not hand the heart over completely to external suppliers, but incubated Sake Tech, building a billion-level local three-electric industry chain. Most links such as battery cells, battery PACK, electric drive, and electronic control achieved self-research and self-production.
So far, SAIC-GM-Wuling's three-electric local matching rate has reached 100%, a complete industrial cluster is right at the door. Local matching, flexible intelligent manufacturing, digital full-link connection, this set of combination punches squeezed out redundant costs step by step in manufacturing, logistics, and operation links. This is not cutting corners, but reconstructing manufacturing with new quality productive forces, allowing the same money to buy better materials and more advanced technology.
Insisting on autonomy? Besides concerning an OEM's control over core technology and costs, behind it is also the autonomy of R&D time processes.
But if both self-research and joint with top tech enterprises, will it fall into building a carriage behind closed doors or lose initiative?
SAIC-GM-Wuling's answer is a set of open yet rooted self-technology system—"Tianling Shen" architecture. "Tian" is the vehicle architecture and intelligent manufacturing model, "Ling" is Lingmu Intelligent Driving, Lingyu Cockpit, Lingxi Power, "Shen" is core components like Shenlian Battery. This underlying architecture is willing to "slow down, be a bit silly" long-term polishing the foundation. Once the foundation is solid, the upper-level products facing the market can flexibly and quickly iterate, launching annual models every year to respond to users' constantly changing new needs.
Shenlian Battery has maintained a safety record of zero self-ignition in collisions to date, the entire three-electric system has been verified by millions of real vehicles on the market.
"If there is no full-link self-research and self-production capability, for a user's real pain point to land in a modification, it requires communicating layer by layer with suppliers, queuing, and doing experiments, taking at least a year or more. Now the market iterates products every year, such a pace simply cannot keep up." Li Tianhui said, for example, users in the Northeast need battery pre-heating in winter, optimizing thermal management in the South in summer, recalibrating chassis shock absorption in the overseas Indonesia market, only by holding complete R&D and manufacturing capabilities in hand can one quickly respond to different regions, different groups' real and fragmented needs.
Just having parts self-research is not enough, the revolution of production methods further released cost space. SAIC-GM-Wuling created the world's first intelligent island manufacturing system, saying goodbye to the linear assembly line that had been unchanged for over 100 years. Smart production islands that can be reorganized like Lego blocks have made multi-model mixed-line production the norm, greatly reducing the production line investment for new models, shortening R&D cycles, and improving material utilization and quality control stability.
Innovation is the never-ending hard strength of SAIC-GM-Wuling
SAIC-GM-Wuling's "Smart Island" is a production method developed based on the diversification of consumer needs, which has become the third production model after Ford's assembly line production and Toyota's lean production.
According to Manufacturing Engineering Director Chen Liang: With the practice of "Smart Island" production methods, product introduction and capacity ramp-up time have been shortened by an average of 30%, costs can also be reduced by more than 30%, while achieving zero errors, zero defects.
"The previous two production technology revolutions—Ford's assembly line, Toyota's lean production, were all led by foreigners. This third automotive manufacturing revolution, it should be led by us Chinese," as a participant, Manufacturing Engineering Director Chen Liang feels deeply proud.
In the exploration of new materials, "lightweight, environmental protection, low cost" is the main innovation momentum of SAIC-GM-Wuling. And this innovation capability can be interpreted as the sublimation of the innovative genes previously possessed by the enterprise in the new era.
"The arrival of the new energy intelligent vehicle era gives us infinite possibilities." said Li Wei, Director of Quality and Development of SAIC-GM-Wuling Procurement and Partner Ecosystem Center. She led "Bamboo Substitutes Plastic" and "Aluminum Substitution" and other green innovation projects—Currently, including Huajing S, many models, their trunk trim panels, headliner, floor, etc., have adopted bamboo fiber parts.
Li Wei revealed, China's new energy intelligent vehicles are in a leading position internationally, so it also gives her such research personnel more confidence and motivation. Different from simply purchasing from suppliers in the past, now in many aspects we will co-create with suppliers, at the same time, help supply chains improve efficiency, achieving two-way empowerment.
And SAIC-GM-Wuling's own innovation capability also empowers partners. Now the smart island model is not only applied to the final assembly workshop, actually we have expanded it to the body shop, also expanded to the KD workshop supplying parts overseas; in terms of supply chain partners, we have successfully expanded our partner Sake Tech side, Sake Tech electric drive, battery has also adopted smart island production method, at the same time, smart island is also expanding to overseas markets.
The essence is this innovation mechanism and atmosphere. Times changed, but Wuling's core capabilities, from Hongguang MINI EV to Starlight series, to today's Huajing S, Wuling has walked three different product phases, but there is one sentence that has never changed: "If the people need it, Wuling builds it".
In the past, this sentence meant making it affordable for more ordinary people to buy cars; today, its connotation has been updated: to allow more ordinary people to buy good cars affordably, to buy intelligent cars affordably. Many high-end intelligent technologies were once tagged as luxury goods, costing tens of thousands or more, as if high-level intelligent driving, high-quality body chassis could only belong to the few.
Some say, SAIC-GM-Wuling is going up, wants to make a high-end brand. But Wuling itself does not like the label "high-end". It pursues not price getting more expensive, but same price, giving users more and more value.
Today, the electrification wave is still surging, the intelligent competition has just begun, players come and go on the track, concepts emerge endlessly. Some car companies chase wind tunnels, some chase parameters, some chase traffic. And Wuling, still along the path it has walked for decades: First understand ordinary people's real travel scenarios, then mobilize global technical resources, relying on its own complete controllable supply chain and intelligent manufacturing system, to send better technology, to more ordinary families' hands.
Times always change, new technologies, new needs, new opponents keep appearing. But one thing has never changed: The truly lasting competitiveness has never been a single cool technology, but a complete capability to understand users, integrate resources, and build a reliable good car down to earth. This is the car-making logic that Wuling has never changed, and also its most precious confidence towards the next decade.
