After WEY and Guangguang Motors, Great Wall wants to create a new high-end electric vehicle brand.

Recently, Great Wall’s new high-end electric vehicle brand, code-named “SL” project, has surfaced. Various signs, including industrial and commercial registration information, point to the fact that Great Wall is actively planning around this new high-end electric vehicle project, and the brand launch is imminent.

Fu Xiaokang, Vice President of Great Wall Motors, known as the "Spokesperson of Great Wall Motors", said in response to the media and external concerns, "The tide is coming, and we should join in." This confirms the accuracy of the news to a great extent.

After sorting it out, Ledou Auto found that the Great Wall high-end SL project may be based on the newly established "Salon Zhixing" company, and the model brand name may be "soul". At present, Shanghai Salon Zhixing Industrial Co., Ltd. has been registered and established. Li Peng, founder of Xiandou Intelligence and digital executive of Great Wall Motors, is the legal representative of Salon Zhixing.

At the same time, Great Wall Motors has recently registered trademarks such as "Soul", "Great Wall Soul" and "Mobile Soul" with the National Trademark Office.

Further information shows that the business scope of Sharon Zhixing Company not only covers the sales of new energy vehicles, Internet of Things technology research and development, software development, etc., but also involves power swap facilities, waste power battery recycling, and charging pile sales. wait.

It can be seen that the core of Great Wall's "SL" project is to in-depth layout of intelligence and electrification, and its tentacles may be extended to related markets such as power battery recycling and energy storage.

As the legal representative of Salon Intelligence, Li Peng has worked in the automotive technology industry for many years from a foreign-invested Tier 1 to an artificial intelligence company. In 2019, he founded the travel technology company "Xiandou Intelligence".

In May this year, Li Peng was hired by Great Wall Motors as a digital executive and led the launch of Great Wall Motors' intelligent vehicle brand "Coffee Intelligence".

Li Peng, digital executive of Great Wall Motors, explains "Coffee Intelligence"

It is reported that the operating model of Salon Smart Travel will be different from the previous affiliated brands of car companies, and will operate as an independent company and brand. Brand and product positioning are aligned with leading new electric vehicle manufacturing forces such as Tesla, NIO, Ideal, and Xpeng.

Product forms may include SUVs and cars, and both pure electric and extended-range electric vehicles may be involved.

Although more information surrounding the "SL" project and Salon Zhixing Company has yet to be further released and observed, a very clear signal is:

A new round of " The battle between smart electric vehicles is about to break out. Following traditional OEMs such as Dongfeng, SAIC, and Changan, SUV leader Great Wall is also gearing up. It is only a matter of time before the official announcement is made.

On this occasion, a common doubt among the outside world is: In 2016, in order to impact high-endization, Great Wall Motors has created a separate "Chinese luxury brand" WEY in addition to the Haval brand. Why is it now Want to build a new brand with high-end positioning?

Another very important point is that since the WEY brand was released with great fanfare at the end of 2016, in just two or three years, Great Wall has successively released the exclusive brand of Euler electric vehicles, as well as the Great Wall "Pao" is a mid- to high-end pickup truck brand.

And in 2018, it also signed a joint venture partnership with German luxury brand BMW. The "Beam Car" project for mid-to-high-end electric vehicles has also started construction in Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu. .

The beam project is expected to be completed and put into production in 2022, including the electric domestic version of MINI and Great Wall-BMW joint venture electric vehicle brand models, which will be gradually introduced to the market.

Since Great Wall Motors has made many plans in terms of new energy electrification in recent years, and there are more than one or two new startups and brands, and its products cover mid-to-low-end transportation to mid-to-high-end travel, why is wey here? Is it time to brew and build a new brand?

An intriguing change is that starting from the middle of this year, Li Ruifeng, the former senior vice president of Great Wall Motors and general manager of Great Wall Motors Sales Company, has had a "quiet" change in his position and title:

The core title has changed to - Chief Marketing Officer of WEY brand.

Li Ruifeng, Senior Vice President of Great Wall Motors, General Manager of Sales Company, Chief Marketing Officer of WEY

Everyone who follows Great Wall Motors knows that Li Ruifeng is a rare "endogenous type" in Great Wall Motors "Handsome talent. Since graduating from university in 2003, he has been working in different positions in the sales line of Great Wall Motors. In 2014, he was officially promoted to the general manager of Great Wall Motors Sales Company, taking full charge of the marketing work of Great Wall Motors' brands.

If you ask what kind of weight Li Ruifeng occupies among the core executive talents of Great Wall Motors, it can be seen in a small detail:

As we all know, around 2018, Great Wall Motors When automobiles began to expand aggressively, focusing on creating new brands and expanding business in various sectors, they once recruited Liu Zhifeng, Liu Yan, Ning Shuyong, Wen Fei, etc., who were already well-known in the industry at that time. Recruiting *** to support the grand event and create a historical precedent for Great Wall's multi-brand operation.

Ning Shuyong, Liu Yan, and Liu Zhifeng respectively delivered reports at the Great Wall Company Summary and Commendation Conference in early 2019

Great Wall was instantly famous and prosperous. The positions of these marketing gurus at that time were generally special vice presidents and marketing general managers of specific brands. Their direct superiors and reporting targets were Li Ruifeng, the chief marketing officer of Great Wall Motors.

Needless to say, after Great Wall Motor Chairman Wei Jianjun personally took charge of the WEY brand for a period of time, Great Wall decided to entrust the marketing responsibility of the WEY brand to Li Ruifeng, which shows that Boss Wei is determined to continue to vigorously develop the WEY brand. As well as trust and respect for the handsome talent Li Ruifeng trained by Great Wall itself.

Don’t forget, what brand is WEY? WEY is a new mid-to-high-end sub-brand created by Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, after his own "surname" and in the shape of the flagpole of the Baoding Governor's Mansion, a landmark building in Baoding, the birthplace of Great Wall Motors.

Wei Jianjun, Chairman of Great Wall Motors

No matter what year or month, as long as Wei Jianjun is still in office, no one can match the significance of the WEY brand in the territory of Great Wall Motors. . No old or new brand can be replaced.

After the above sorting and analysis, the relationship is very clear, but the doubts still need to be answered.

Why does Great Wall want to create a new mid-to-high-end sub-brand in addition to the WEY brand at this time?

From the perspective of Le Dou Automobile, there are nothing more than the following points:

1. As Fu Xiaokang said, "The tide is coming, and we should join in."

Fu Xiaokang, Vice President of Great Wall Motors

The "new four modernizations" of the automobile industry with electrification and intelligence as the core have undergone tremendous changes in the past few years, and new car-making forces have made their debut. , various new brands and new companies born for new energy smart electric vehicles are constantly growing.

In fact, the Dongfeng Lantu, SAIC Zhiji, Changan CHN, etc. mentioned above are all new brands that have been released/exploded one after another this year, and they are all traditional OEMs focusing on high-end new energy. Products for electric vehicles.

Dongfeng SAIC Changan can do it, but what can’t Great Wall do?

2. The development of the WEY brand has encountered bottlenecks, and the joint venture project with BMW, Beam Auto, is not going smoothly either.

It stands to reason that the creation of the WEY brand was originally born for high-end, and it is a new brand established after Wei Jianjun’s surname, which is of great significance.

Once WEY develops well, it can fully shoulder the important task of Great Wall continuing to make breakthroughs in high-end new energy.

However, the practice of several years has proved that the platform and products were "born out" of the Haval SUV WEY from the beginning, and the bottleneck of driving high and driving low has become increasingly obvious.

The next step is to use luxury hardcore off-road vehicles like the Tank 300 to seek opportunities in the "niche" market.

WEY is very important, but WEY is currently unable to resist the banner of high-end new energy electric vehicles.

There is no need to say more about the joint venture project between Great Wall and BMW - Beam Auto.

From the beginning, it was a matter of teamwork and each getting what they needed. From the signing of the contract in Germany in 2018 to now, it is not uncommon for the two parties to have various run-ins and even bumps into each other in the past two years. At one time, there were "rumors" that "Beam" was aborted.

In a nutshell, even if Great Wall and BMW’s joint venture project Guangwang Automobile is successfully completed and put into production in 2022, the specific models and products, especially the new models based on the new electric vehicle platform jointly developed by both parties, will still exist. Too much "uncertainty".

The tide is coming in a mighty way. Our generation and the country must strengthen ourselves.

Even if there are all kinds of hardships and difficulties, even if the road is long and difficult and there are uncertainties, no one is willing to not make progress and sit back and wait for death. Great Wall, the SUV leader in the field of fuel vehicles and self-proclaimed "life hanging by a thread", is about to make innovations and join the game.

This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.