How can “Made in Chongqing” cars stand firm in the cross-border market?

Chongqing,

A city known as "a city on wheels",

The importance of the automobile industry to Chongqing is self-evident.

The opening ceremony of the 35th Annual Conference of Chongqing Automobile Industry. Photo by Wu Wangyang

This grand event for the automobile industry collided with three major directions for the sustained and high-quality development of Chongqing's automobile industry.

The automobile industry chain is long, involves a wide range of areas, is highly motivating, and has a high degree of internationalization. The long interlocking chain has virtually increased potential risks and will pose greater challenges to the safety and stability of the industry chain.

"Today, changes such as electrification, intelligence, and connectivity have brought profound changes to the development of the automotive supply chain. Accelerating the rapid iterative upgrading of the industry, the automotive industry chain and supply chain new ecology with competition and cooperation as the core are being rapidly reconstructed ." The relevant person in charge of the Chongqing Society of Automotive Engineers said that it is urgent to build a new industrial chain and supply chain ecology with green development, safety and resilience as the core, and to crack the supply chain stuck points, breakpoints and blockages, and requires the joint efforts of all parties.

In this regard, the "Smart Electric Vehicle Industry Full Chain Innovation Cooperation Alliance" was launched at the annual automobile meeting. The first batch of initiators included 17 car companies, including Changan, Thalys, SAIC Hongyan and other car companies, as well as China Automotive Research and Investment Vehicle Co., Ltd. Research institutions and universities such as Western China Intelligent Network, Chongqing University, and Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

▲At the opening ceremony, 17 units jointly initiated the establishment of the "Smart Electric Vehicle Industry Full Chain Innovation Cooperation Alliance". Photo courtesy of Chongqing Automotive Engineering Society

In the future, the alliance will focus on the trend of smart electrification in the global automotive industry, integrate industry chain and supply chain resources, and build a cross-industry, cross-regional, mutually beneficial, cross-border and diversified high-end innovation cooperation platform for the new era of smart electric vehicles. At the same time, the platform will be used to continuously promote the industrialization of forward-looking technologies and research results; docking activities such as whole-part docking and supply-demand docking will be held every year to promote substantive cooperation among all parties in the industry chain...

At this annual automobile conference, experts and scholars attending the conference generally believed that to promote high-quality development of the automobile industry, the new breakthrough is to accelerate cross-border integration. Including the "two-industry integration" of advanced manufacturing and modern service industries, transforming into "manufacturing + service"; and promoting the "two-chain aggregation" of the industrial chain and talent chain, and radiating to the supply chain and innovation chain to realize industrial value chain lift.

The producer service industry runs through the entire industrial chain of the automobile industry, providing strong support for the industry's production process optimization, technological innovation and development mode transformation. In order to promote the development of intelligent networked new energy vehicle industry clusters, Chongqing has continuously improved its R&D, testing, logistics and other productive service systems in recent years, and has also introduced a number of measures to release "new momentum" for the development of the automotive industry from the policy level.

Picture: 2023 Smart Expo promotional video

For example, the "Special Action Plan for Improving the Chongqing Intelligent Networked New Energy Auto Parts Industry Cluster (2023-2027)" issued by Chongqing at the end of last year mentioned the need to develop producer service industries and support third-party institutions to establish and improve chips, Inspection and testing capabilities in emerging fields such as software, information and communications, advanced materials, charging and swapping, hydrogen energy; support enterprises to connect upstream and downstream logistics needs, integrate development with vehicle, logistics, warehousing and other related enterprises, and continue to improve transportation efficiency. By 2027, there will be 10 comprehensive and professional alliances in the city's intelligent network-connected new energy vehicle industry, and 15 listed companies.

In the production workshop of Sichuan Jian'an Industrial Co., Ltd. in Ya'an, machines roared, and more than 100 production lines were at full power.

"We did not stop work during the Spring Festival this year. We were fully motivated and went all out to produce chassis suspensions for Chongqing's new energy vehicles." Huang Chaoyong, general manager of the company, said, "480 chassis suspensions came off the production line and were loaded overnight. They were ready the next day. Can be delivered to Chongqing.”

Recently, in the second stamping workshop of Changan Automobile's Liangjiang plant, five high-speed fully automatic stamping machines are running non-stop at a rhythm of 15 times per minute. The sheets are trimmed, shaped, and punched in the stamping die to become a body part. "Currently, Changan Automobile's mainstream models are equipped with parts and components provided by 50 supply companies in Sichuan, driving the development of 683 partners in Sichuan and Chongqing and 120,000 jobs." The relevant person in charge of Changan Automobile said that a car "Made in Chongqing", You can’t live without Sichuan supporting products.

The bustling production scene is a reflection of the efficient collaboration between the automobile industries in Sichuan and Chongqing provinces.In 2023, Sichuan and Chongqing will produce a total of 3.293 million vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 3.9%, accounting for 10.9% of the country's total vehicle output.。

Not only that, at this year’s National Two Sessions, members of the Sichuan and Chongqing National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference submitted a joint proposal calling for support in including the Chengdu-Chongqing hydrogen corridor area into the national fuel cell vehicle demonstration application city cluster.

As the automotive industry chains in Sichuan and Chongqing continue to deepen their mutual support, in the future, the "1+1>2" effect will be achieved in building the core competitiveness of Chengdu and Chongqing's automotive manufacturing and accelerating the high-quality development of the automotive industry in both places.

2024 China Smart Electric Vehicle Technology and Supply Chain Exhibition will be held simultaneously

From March 13th to 15th, the 2024 China Smart Electric Vehicle Technology and Supply Chain Exhibition was held simultaneously in Hall S2 of Chongqing International Expo Center.

The 2024 China Smart Electric Vehicle Technology and Supply Chain Exhibition was held at the same time in Hall S2 of Chongqing International Expo Center. Changan Automobile participated in the exhibition with a variety of products. Photo by Wu Wangyang

This exhibition brings together 155 leading car companies and industrial chain supply chain companies in the industry to participate in the exhibition, with an exhibition area of ​​15,000 square meters. It systematically displays smart electric vehicles from new materials, electrification key components, intelligent key technologies, digital intelligent manufacturing to vehicle integration and Complete industrial chain of applications.

Changan made a concentrated appearance with its Qiyuan q05, Qiyuan a07, Avita 11, Avita 12, Deep Blue s7, and Changan Hunter; Cyrus's AITO series products include the intelligent luxury electric drive SUV M5 and the luxury smart large electric SUV M7, panoramic smart flagship SUV M9 made a stunning debut; in the SAIC Hongyan exhibition area, Hongyan Jieshi C6-PLUS, Hongyan Jieshi H6, and Hongyan Jiehu H6 smart electric versions were all on display...

SAIC Hongyan displayed a variety of smart electric tractors on site. Photo by Wu Wangyang

In addition to vehicle companies, China Merchants Automobile Research Institute exhibited smart supervision platform models, intersection fusion sensing EMC, fault injection test systems and other exhibits; Panzhihua Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. exhibited body-in-white, one-piece thermoformed laser tailor-welded linear double door ring, wheel hub, B Pillars and other auto parts.