Just in the past August, Geely Automobile only got the third place in the narrow passenger car wholesale sales, lagging behind the popular fried chicken BYD is understandable, but the overall sales performance in August is not as good as Chery in many market segments, which is really a bit surprising.
In the first eight months of this year, Geely’s cumulative sales are 984,800 vehicles, which has fallen to the fifth place in the ranking of car companies, and in the independent brand, it also lost the top three, committed to BYD, Changan, Chery. To say that Geely does not work hard, but its problem culture, benchmarking culture and striver culture, each point does not allow Geely to stop and pursue better.
Perhaps Gan Jiayue, CEO of Geely Auto Group, knows better than anyone else what Geely is facing? What’s next? On the eve of the Galaxy L6 conference a few days ago, Gan Jiayue communicated with several media including “Automobile Commune”, and revealed Gan Jiayue’s summary of Geely in the past two years, the judgment of the next situation, and the confidence to usher in a new cycle of development.
Therefore, even if Geely has lost the independent sales crown for five consecutive years, but for Geely, which has reached the top, it is not attached to the cloud roll cloud Shu on the top of the mountain, not to sit on the champion, but firmly adhere to their understanding of car building and user experience, continue to use high value and high quality, to promote the sustainable development of enterprises.
To create new energy, “new infrastructure” first
“We have misjudged the speed of new energy transition and development.” Gan made no secret of the reasons why Geely lost the championship in the past two years and was relatively passive in the early stages of new energy development.
The automotive industry is like this, the seed of investment and strategic planning 3-4 years ago may not bear fruit until 3-4 years later. To say that Geely at that stage did not realize the importance and prospect of new energy? Not really, it has put forward a grand new energy plan in 2015, which was very advanced at that time, when Geely also committed to the Changan Great Wall, the annual sales are only 80,000 more than the current champion BYD.
On the one hand is the rapid rise of Geely’s development momentum, on the other hand is the forward-looking layout of the future, in the context of limited energy and resources, Geely chose to do the scale first. In Mr Gan’s words, “the strategic direction should match the allocation of resources”. Geely’s strategic direction in the 3.0 era is to use scale to form enterprise and brand influence in China.
Therefore, at this stage from 2017 to 2021, Geely takes advantage of a wider range of car sea tactics to cover more market segments, sit firmly on the independent champion throne for five consecutive years, and use the advantages of scale to consolidate the entire R & D, manufacturing, sales and user system, and expand the base to prepare for more brutal competition in the future.
Obviously, the market is not always smooth sailing, and so is competition.
In the second half of 2018, when Geely was at the height of its development, it threw out a “live” view. To be honest, as just won the championship for the second year, and for the next three years, still leading the race, better than others, talking about “living” does feel a bit like Versailles. But the fact is that after 2019, the epidemic, the lack of core, the battery price increase, the price war and other black swan events in the industry have indeed brought heavy losses to the automotive industry, and even disrupted the pace of the participants.
Therefore, when Geely is still in the harvest joy of the 3.0 era, it has planned a layout for the next stage of enterprise evolution.
“Old things can not be reused, in order to do a good job of new energy and intelligence, it is necessary to small batteries, electric drives, chips, large platform architecture, operating systems, algorithm computing power, intelligent vehicle and other fields to carry out a wide layout.” Gan Jiayue said that these are the new infrastructure in the era of new energy intelligent vehicles, without a good infrastructure, there is no way to talk about the next generation of car competition, let alone iteration and evolution.
Time pulled back to October 31, 2021, Longwan technology meeting, Gan Jia Yue announced the comprehensive promotion of “intelligent Geely 2025” to implement the “nine Longwan action”, the 2-hour press conference, is the new young CEO in the face of future automotive competition in the depth of thinking and planning.
Now, 689 days have passed since that huge technology show, and it seems that everything at Geely is going according to the plans and expectations of the young CEO. Gan Jiayue believes that before this, Geely new Energy is to solve the problem, and after this, Geely is trying to solve the problem of good or bad.
It should be noted that, according to the character of Geely before it has done it, the technical event on October 31, 2021, also marks that Geely’s stated results are already on the cusp. The full launch of e-CMA architecture, SPA architecture, SEA vast architecture and the gradual landing of related models have allowed Geely to fully enter the era of frame construction vehicles.
On the basis of intelligent architecture, coupled with the operating system, chip, cloud data computing, satellite technology and other branches of the union into an intelligent science and technology ecological network.
At the same time, there are three intelligent systems built up by energy system, manufacturing system and service system, from the perspective of Raytheon hybrid, pure electricity, electricity exchange, methanol, etc., to build a more complete form of energy; The industrial Internet platform, the 4.0 intelligent manufacturing system under the black light factory, and the full-value, full-link intelligent service system centered on user experience and combined with the digitalization of the whole scene have so far appeared in front of consumers.
“Geely has been focusing on laying the foundation and practicing internal skills in recent years, and doing a good job of basic technology and resources through our technological advantages and capabilities.” Mr Gan says Geely has a strong drive and can solve problems quickly when it sees them.
Why is the Milky Way moving so fast?
Returning to Geely Galaxy, the core position of Geely new energy, from the announcement of the Galaxy Series in February this year, to the delivery of Galaxy L7 for 3 months, with an average monthly sales of 10,000 vehicles, becoming the fastest smart electric hybrid SUV delivery model to break 10,000. A few days ago, Galaxy’s second model Galaxy L6 also ushered in the delivery of the market, officially cut into the intelligent hybrid car market.
Almost at the same time, Geely Galaxy’s third model, which is also Geely Galaxy’s flagship sedan Galaxy E8, will also officially usher in the communication cycle. In fact, at the Geely Galaxy press conference at the beginning of this year, Gan Jia Yue announced that he would launch seven smart electric hybrid models in two years, and three models arrived in the first year as scheduled, Geely Galaxy’s speed can be said to be very fast.
In fact, according to Gan’s understanding, the reason why the galaxy is so fast is because planning and strategy are done early. In the second half of 2020, Geely very clearly judged that it must be “two-pronged” in the two lines of pure electricity and hybrid power, and then the “two blue action plans” were born, one hybrid and one pure electric. Around May 2021, Geely formulated the plan for the Galaxy, which will become the backbone of Geely’s comprehensive transformation into a new force.
Later, according to this positioning, Geely Group matched the corresponding resources, and also carried out “four independent” actions for the Galaxy Series, including independent stores, independent teams, independent funds and independent accounts. The assessment logic of the Galaxy Series also changed, which used to emphasize orders, but now depends on the driving experience and the source of clues, and uses “change” to promote the system to the new.
“There is no place for change, and if an enterprise wants to develop, it must have the idea of continuous change.” Gan Jiayue said that the exploration of new energy pioneers did not do well, there is nothing good to hide, the root cause is to investigate what is not done well. According to Gan Jia Yue’s understanding, the logic of fuel vehicles and new energy are all different.
So Geely made the Geometry Research Institute independent, and the effect was immediate, and geometry sold particularly well after 2021. Later, the Geometry Research Institute reversed and dropped the Geely Brand Research Institute, and from the organizational structure, Geely embarked on a new stage from “beginning to new” to “comprehensive to new”.
In addition to fast models, fast delivery, and fast sales, the rapid development of the Galaxy series is supported by fast channels. At present, Geely has specially built a new brand image and experience standards for the Galaxy. Gan Jiayue said that there are now more than 450 galaxy channels, which are changing every day and will reach about 700 by the end of the year.
It can be said that up to now, almost no company and a new product sequence can have such a development speed as Geely Galaxy, behind which is Geely’s firm move forward in the face of strategy. Gan Jia read with “choose the right way, with the right people, good money” nine words summed up how to do new energy, split point of view, choose the strategic direction, product direction, investment should also keep up, and have the same ideas and confidence of people to do together, but also do a good job of value distribution.
Of course, the rapid development of the galaxy is inseparable from the new energy and new infrastructure mentioned above, such as frame construction vehicles. The reason why the structure of the car is important is simply the DNA of the car, which has a decisive role and influence on the performance, intelligence, safety, design freedom, experience excellence and other aspects of the product, and is the “core strength” of the car.
Of course, the Flyme auto operating system and Geely Galaxy N OS operating system, which cooperate with Meizu, have created a new digital vehicle ecological experience for users. The first self-developed 7nm car-scale SOC chip has been mass-produced and installed on Lynk & Co 08, with more powerful computing power to provide hardware support for the car in the cockpit digitization and intelligent driving.
As a new infrastructure of computing power and algorithms, Geely Star Intelligent Computing Center integrates intelligent driving, big data, artificial intelligence and cloud computing, with its computing power reaching 8.1 billion billion times per second. What users can perceive is that based on simulation training and calculation, Geely launches new models faster, and the intelligent vehicle function can be more popular and easy to use. It is worth mentioning that the intelligent computing center also won the 185th place in the global Top 500 computing power, ranking first in China’s listed manufacturing computing power, creating a new milestone in the field of automotive intelligence in China.
In fact, not only the Galaxy is rising fast this year, including Geely’s independent Polkrypton brand, its development is also significantly faster than the new force brand, at present, it has delivered more than 150,000 vehicles in 2 years, 001 has become the champion of 300,000 yuan pure electric SUV, 009 has become the pin crown of 500,000 yuan pure electric MPV, and polkrypton has also built 348 supercharges. Covering 90 cities, it has more than 2,000 supercharged parking Spaces, the first in the country.
In the words of Gan Jiayue, if you want to get things done, don’t leave yourself a back door.
To the top of the mountain, will not be sentimentally attached to the clouds
Back to the topic at the beginning of the article, after Geely lost the championship, did it panic? The answer in the minds of the Gan family must be no.
In fact, whether it is an enterprise or an individual, the goal must be to reach the top before the road to the top reaches the peak. But when the highest goal is reached, seeing the scenery on the top of the mountain, having a broader vision and mind, will make it discover a whole new value and meaning. So is Geely? The comprehensive transformation from rapid development to high-quality development is Geely’s latest attitude in the face of industry competition.
In fact, Gan Jiayue has mentioned on several occasions Geely’s five major standards for car manufacturing, that is, safety, comfort, performance, energy saving, and intelligence, and is committed to achieving benchmarking in each field.
Safety Needless to say, from Volvo, Geely is well-known in terms of safety, because from the body to the battery to the intelligence, safety is a system engineering. Especially in the era of new energy battery safety, since it has become a pain point for consumers, then battery safety must be extreme.
To this end, Geely launched the Shield battery safety system, Gan Jiayue said: “In the battery cell, acupuncture experiment is our basic entry standard, and the structure of the battery pack has been optimized, ten cells, four vertical and four horizontal structure, very strong; There is also the standard, which is more stringent than the national standard.”
It is understood that the national standard of the battery is a flat 1-meter drop, and Geely’s standard is a 2-meter drop on three sides; The national standard of seawater immersion experiment is half an hour, and the Geely Shield battery is 24 hours; The national standard of fire test requires direct combustion for 70 seconds and indirect combustion for 60 seconds, and Geely’s standard is to increase all by 50%. After these harsh tests, the battery does not catch fire and does not explode.
In terms of performance, because China’s high-speed speed limit is 120, most domestic new energy sources only reach the maximum speed of 150, 180 or so, because these manufacturers believe that they do not need to spend additional costs to improve the performance of consumers. But Geely doesn’t think so, so the top speed of the Geely Galaxy L6 is 247km/h.
Because speed is a symbol of technical strength, it is the risk of safe driving and performance experience. Just like Bolt and Liu Xiang usually do not use the champion’s results to walk and run, but the strength and physique of others are stronger than the average person. Just like the 3DHT gearbox, many people think that the single-gear gearbox is low in cost and consumers are enough. However, Geely believes that the performance and energy saving of new energy must match the gearbox, although the cost is high, it can make the performance and energy saving achieve a better balance and experience.
Of course, there are comfortable and intelligent experience, Geely previously talked about leap-over benchmarking, and now this benchmarking culture has become the best benchmarking to the industry and profession. An example of this is the Lynk & Co 08 23 Young sound system, its target is the opera quality, are defined by the audiophile level standards, and finally let consumers perceive the uniqueness of the Lynk & Co 08 sound effect. In addition, for Lynk and Silver, the experience of the target is a mobile phone, and now consumers can already feel the car as smooth as a mobile phone from Flyme auto and Galaxy N OS.
Not long ago, Geely upgraded the concept of “making everyone’s boutique car” to “making everyone’s smart boutique car”, which is a new goal and requirement for Geely in the second half of the intelligent car competition. In the Gan Jia Yue view, a product is not fine, depends on the logic behind where, Gan Jia Yue believes that fine is “genuine.” “A brand is someone who trusts you, knows you, knows you, trusts and owns you.” Gan Jia Yue stressed, “conscience, responsibility, reverence heart” this is the requirements of Jili car.
After more than 20 years of car building, “Dao Zheng Shu” can be said to have become a car building philosophy that Geely deeply understands and understands, which is the attitude and wisdom in the face of the industry’s internal volume and bad environment. Do you want to ask a sure man if he’s panicking? That in itself is a pseudo-question.