Recently, the brand-new high-end electric vehicle brand of Great Wall, code-named "SL" project, surfaced. All kinds of signs, including industrial and commercial registration message, are pointed by the sword. The Great Wall is actively laying out around this brand-new high-end electric vehicle project, and the brand release is imminent.
Fu Xiaokang, the vice president of Great Wall Motor, who is known as the "Great Wall News Spokesperson", responded to the concerns of the media and the outside world, saying that "the tide is coming, and our generation will devote themselves to the game", which greatly confirmed the accuracy of the news.
After combing the car, Ledou found that the high-end SL project of the Great Wall will be newly established. "Salon Star" company is the carrier, and the brand name of the model is "Soul". At present, Shanghai Salon Zhixing Industrial Co., Ltd. has been registered, and Li Peng, the founder of Dou Xian Intelligent and the digital executive of Great Wall Motor, is the legal representative of Salon Zhixing.
At the same time, Great Wall Motor recently registered trademarks such as "Soul", "Great Wall Soul" and "Moving Soul" in the State Trademark Office.
Further information shows that the business scope of Salon Zhixing Company covers not only vehicle sales of new energy vehicles, research and development of Internet of Things technology, software development, etc. , including power exchange facilities, waste power battery recycling and charging pile sales.
It can be seen that the core of the Great Wall "SL" project is the deep layout of intelligence and electrification, and its tentacles may extend to the joint markets such as power battery recycling and energy storage.
As the legal representative of Salon Zhixing Company, Li Peng has been deeply involved in the automobile+technology industry for many years from Tier 1, a foreign-funded first-tier enterprise, and founded the travel technology company "Dou Xian Intelligence" in 20 19.
In May this year, Li Peng was hired by Great Wall Motor as a digital executive, leading the release of the smart brand "Coffee Smart" of Great Wall Motor.
Li Peng, CEO of Great Wall Motor Digitalization, Interprets "Coffee Intelligence"
It is reported that the operation mode of Salon Zhixing will be different from the affiliated brands of car companies in the past. It will operate as an independent company and brand, and its brand and product positioning will be aimed at the new forces of electric vehicle manufacturing such as Tesla, Weilai, Ideality and Tucki.
Product forms may cover SUVs and cars, and both pure electric and extended-range electric may be involved.
Although more information about the "SL" project and Sharon Zhixing Company needs to be further released and observed, a very clear signal is:
A new round of "smart electric vehicles" is on the brink of melee. After Dongfeng, SAIC, Chang 'an and other traditional OEMs, the Great Wall, the leader of SUV, is also gearing up, and it is only a matter of time before it is officially announced that it will enter the market.
At this moment, there is a general question: In 20 16, Great Wall Motor has built a "China luxury brand" WEY from the Haval brand alone, so why should it build a brand-new high-end brand now?
Moreover, it is also very important that since WEY brand was released with great fanfare at the end of 20 16, in just two or three years, Great Wall has successively released the exclusive brand of Euler electric vehicle and the high-end pickup brand of Great Wall "Cannon".
And on 20 18, we also signed a contract with German luxury brand BMW to establish a joint venture and cooperation relationship. The high-end electric vehicle "beam car" project has also started construction in Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu.
The beam project is expected to be completed and put into production in 2022, including electric domestic MINI and Great Wall BMW joint venture electric vehicle brand models, which will be introduced to the market one after another.
Since Great Wall Motor has made a lot of layouts in the electrification of new energy in recent years, and there are more than one or two new companies and brands, and the products cover low-end to high-end travel, why should wey brew and build a new brand at this time?
An intriguing change is that since the middle of this year, the position and title of Li Ruifeng, the former senior vice president of Great Wall Motor and general manager of Great Wall Motor Sales Company, has changed "quietly":
The core title has become-chief marketing officer of ——WEY brand.
Li Ruifeng, Senior Vice President of Great Wall Motor, General Manager of Sales Company and Chief Marketing Officer of WEY.
Anyone who cares about the Great Wall knows that Li Ruifeng is a rare "endogenous" handsome talent of Great Wall Motor. Since graduating from college in 2003, he has been working in different positions in the sales line of Great Wall Company. In 20 14, he was officially promoted to the general manager of Great Wall Motor Sales Company, responsible for the marketing of Great Wall Motor's brands.
If you ask Li Ruifeng how much weight he holds among the core executives of Great Wall Motor, you can see from a small detail:
As we all know, around 20 18, when Great Wall Motor began to expand and concentrated on building new brands and expanding its business in various sectors, it once recruited many "marketing giants" who were already well-known in the industry at that time, creating a historical precedent for the multi-brand operation of Great Wall.
Micheal Ning, Ada and Liu Zhifeng made a report at the summary and commendation meeting of Great Wall Company at the beginning of 20 19.
The Great Wall is famous for its endless scenery. At that time, the positions of these marketing giants were generally special vice presidents and marketing general managers of specific brands, and their direct superior leaders and reporting targets were Li Ruifeng, the chief helmsman of the marketing line of Great Wall Motor.
Needless to say, after Wei Jianjun, the chairman of Great Wall Motor, personally took charge of WEY brand for a period of time, Great Wall decided to entrust the marketing responsibility of WEY brand to Li Ruifeng, which shows Wei's determination to continue to vigorously develop WEY brand and his trust and attention to Li Ruifeng, the handsome talent trained by Great Wall himself.
Don't forget, what brand is WEY? WEY is a brand-new high-end sub-brand created by Wei Jianjun, Chairman of Great Wall Motor, in the name of his surname, imitating the landmark building of Baoding, the birthplace of Great Wall Motor-the big flagpole of Baoding Governor's Office.
Wei Jianjun, Chairman of Great Wall Motor
Regardless of the year and month, as long as Wei Jianjun is still in office, the significance of WEY brand is unparalleled on the map of Great Wall Motor. Any brand, old or new, is irreplaceable.
After the above combing and analysis, the relationship has been very clear, but the doubts remain to be answered.
Why should Great Wall rebuild a brand-new mid-to high-end sub-brand other than WEY brand at this time?
In the eyes of Ledou Automobile, it is nothing more than the following:
1, as Fu Xiaokang said, "The tide is coming, and our generation should bend down and play games."
Fu Xiaokang, Vice President of Great Wall Motor
In recent years, great changes have taken place in the automobile "new four modernizations" industry with electrification and intelligence as the core. BLACKPINK, a new force in making cars in all walks of life, has emerged, and new brands and enterprises of various new energy intelligent electric vehicles have been born.
In fact, Dongfeng Lan Tu, SAIC Smart Machine and Changan CHN mentioned above are all new brands released/exploded this year, and they are all products of traditional OEMs' efforts to develop high-end new energy electric vehicles.
Dongfeng SAIC Changan can, but why not the Great Wall?
2.WEY brand development encountered bottlenecks, and the joint venture project Beam Car with BMW was not smooth.
It stands to reason that WEY brand was originally built for high-end, and it is a new brand under the name of Wei Jianjun, which is of great significance.
Once WEY develops well, it can fully undertake the heavy responsibility of the Great Wall to continue to make breakthroughs in high-end new energy.
However, several years of practice have proved that the platform and products were born out of WEY in Haval SUV from the beginning, and the bottleneck of high opening and low walking has become more and more obvious.
Next, I plan to use a luxury hard-core off-road vehicle like Tank 300 to seek opportunities from the "niche" market.
WEY is very important, but the banner of high-end new energy electric vehicles is irresistible at present.
Needless to say, the joint venture project between Great Wall and BMW-Beam Car.
From the beginning, it was the situation that made us want what we wanted. Since the signing of the contract in Germany on 20 18, it is not uncommon for the two sides to run in and even bump into each other in the past two years. During this period, there was once a "gossip" about the abortion of "beam".
In short, even if the joint venture project between Great Wall and BMW is successfully completed and put into production in 2022, there are still too many "uncertainties" about the specific landing products, especially the new models under the brand-new electric vehicle platform jointly developed by both parties.
Spring tides surge, self-improvement, domestic self-improvement
Even if there are all kinds of difficulties and hardships, even if the road is uncertain, no one is willing to make progress and sit still. The leader of SUV in the field of fuel vehicles, the Great Wall, which prides itself on "hanging by a thread", has to change its plan and enter the game.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.