“If we don’t have the ability to subvert ourselves, we’re going to have to be subverted.” A few days ago, Great Wall Motor Chairman Wei Jianjun in an interview with reporters, said, “Doing business is nothing good, always in the face of adversity, you do not go, do not fight, others will fight.” If you can’t come up with products that go beyond others, there’s no way out. “This is the first time Wei Jianjun has faced the media and publicly expressed his thoughts on whether the Great Wall can survive next year, following a thousand-word open letter and a short video of his feelings.
On July 20, Great Wall Motor released three technology brands: Lemon, Tank and Coffee Intelligence. In Great Wall Motor’s view, the launch of three technology brands kicks off its transition from a traditional carmaker to a global technology travel company.
“The names of all three technology brands share a common feature, the English name is well known, which will lay the foundation for the internationalization of the Great Wall.” In Wei Jianjun’s view, relying on the previous “focus strategy”, the Great Wall has gained a foothold in the domestic market. Next, the Great Wall should insist on “going outwards” in order to have a new breakthrough.
Goal: Pickup, SUV market segment is the world’s first.
According to Great Wall Motor, “Lemon” platform and “tank” platform since 2015 to start research and development, a cumulative investment of more than 20 billion yuan. Among them, the “lemon” platform is mainly for passenger cars, taking into account the different models from the A0 to the D class, and covers SUVs, cars, MPV three categories of products, power aspects take into account the EV, HEV, PHEV, FCV and other forms.
The “tank” platform is a vertical platform for hard-drive SUVs, and its powertrans are planned to include 2.0L gasoline, 2.0L-P2, 3.0L-P2, and 2.0L diesel engines. In addition, as The Great Wall Motor’s intelligent brand, “Coffee Intelligence” covers intelligent cockpit, intelligent driving and intelligent electronic and electrical architecture, is Great Wall Motor’s intelligent system for the future of travel, but also to drive Great Wall Motor to global technology travel company transformation of the digital engine.
In this regard, Northeast Securities forecast that the new platform will greatly enhance the great wall car model product strength and competitiveness, help Great Wall Motor to start a new round of product cycle, and with the platform-based product sales share continues to improve, the platform-based effect of the reduction will gradually reflect, Great Wall Motor gross margin level will continue to improve.
It is worth noting that among these three technology brands, Wei Jianjun seems to have a more exclusive interest in the “tank” platform.
“We have goals and strategies to get the off-road SUV category and pickup category first, so we’re going to have to work on this set of things.” “Our idea is to create a platform for off-road SUVs and pickups, and while the market for this category is not too large, there is good market space in North America, Southeast Asia, Russia, the Arab region, the Gulf region and Africa, ” says Mr Wei. “
Adjusting the organizational structure The Great Wall insists on “going out”
Nowadays, the domestic automobile market has entered the era of stock competition. Some analysts pointed out that a large number of resources are rapidly gathering to head enterprises, market differentiation will become more and more obvious, and the overall growth of the automotive market and even negative growth will become the “new normal” of China’s auto market, which is bound to force autonomous car companies to the international market.
For Great Wall Motor, “going out” will become the main channel of its brand globalization. Wei Jianjun believes that if Chinese car companies want to achieve globalization, it is impossible to succeed without sustained challenges.
Great Wall Motor has to keep going out. Wei Jianjun admitted to reporters, “In the past, we are used to rapid success, in the future we must fight a long-lasting war.” “
In Wei Jianjun’s view, Great Wall Motor will never change. To this end, Great Wall Motor has made a series of adjustments to its organizational structure.
It is understood that Great Wall Motor on the one hand will be the brand, commodity planning, research and development departments through. Among them, in the commodity planning stage, the front and rear end of the functional departments should be involved, so that the whole enterprise in the process more attention to market competition, consumers, get more effective information;
In fact, the unit is similar to Toyota Motor’s “CE(Chief Engineer) system”, where new products are developed with a vehicle development center, CE, which communicates and coordinates with planning, research and development, production and other departments and can report directly to the Board of Directors. At the same time, this combat unit itself to establish KPIs, performance, the company fully authorized.
Wei Jianjun said: “Organizational change is internal, through a period of practice, but also received some results, one of its objectives is to turn large companies into several small companies, with better flexibility and initiative.” “
“If we’re sorted, we used to focus on technology, and in the future we’re going to let people who know more about technology focus on technology.” And how to let him pay attention to technology, from the management mechanism to work up and down, this is my primary concern. Wei Jianjun said, “We always emphasize the construction of high-quality management mechanisms and competitive platform, and I am actually more concerned about managers, how to activate talent, so that more people are willing to come to this platform, realize value, show themselves, this is the most important.” “
It is reported that Great Wall Motor’s group of employees has nearly 60,000 people, including more than 7,000 research and development team, research and development personnel accounted for more than 10% of the total number of employees. There is a view that talent will gradually become the core of Great Wall Motor’s competitiveness.