On 27 November, Xu Junhai, Chief Technology Officer of GAC AION, shared how GAC AION sticks to warm-hearted car manufacturing at the Technology Innovation and Smart City Forum of the Asia Youth Leaders Forum 2021.

The full speech is as below.

Under the definition of "new", GAC AION is indeed a new force. Many people think that GAC is a traditional car manufacturer. However, GAC AION was set up in 2017. At that time, we were sure that electric Intelligent Connected Vehicle (ICV) would be the future. Upholding the philosophy of specialism, we separated  AION from GAC, including the entire AION company and brand, last year. The AION brand used to be a part of Trumpchi, but now AION is an independent brand. Maybe our AION logo that includes GAC will also be changed. Of course, GAC Group gives us the full support. Have we deviated from the GAC tagline "smarter companionship"? I don't think so, because this is our original aspiration. Why do we call it "smarter companionship" instead of another slogan? First, "smarter" means "more intelligent". Companionship is a word inspiring warmth. It's not a simple and cold technology; it is warm. So, this is our philosophy of car manufacturing. Our car is no longer a simple means of transportation. It is an intelligent terminal, a third space that can provide better experience and more room for imagination. 

Let me give you a brief introduction to GAC AION. Since it was set up in 2017, we've launched four models of cars consecutively, including AION S, LX, V, and Y. Currently, we receive about 30,000 orders every month. However, we can manufacture only 100,000 cars per year due to limited production capacity. So, now we are speeding up the expansion of our capacity. By the beginning of next year, our production capacity will be expanded to 200,000 cars every year. GAC AION has also made great efforts in smart transportation, including cooperation with Pony.ai. We've created AION LX as a model. It is equipped with drive-by-wire technology and intelligence, and is very suitable for startups like Pony.ai. In terms of intelligent driving, Pony.ai will equip our cars with their system and then test the cars on the road. GAC AION is also doing our own research and development. Be it L4 autonomous driving or driver-assistance systems like L Plus, we are doing independent research and development. Now we have started a demonstration. Next year, there will be a car fleet which will be on the ON TIME ride-hailing platform in the Greater Bay Area on a demonstration basis. Pony.ai's cars may also run on the platform if they are AION cars. Other ride-hailing companies, including WeRide, will use our cars too. As for Vehicle to Everything (V2X), last year, we launched the world's first car with 5G and V2X, AION V, which is equipped with Huawei's 5G chip for the first time. I can say we are the first to make the connection to V2X and intelligent transportation. We can realize communication between our cars and smart transportation system including traffic lights on the roads. We are sparing no efforts to promote smart transportation.

Well, I'd like to talk about a very interesting topic, What’s smart city? I think smart city means smart service. Smart city is a bit like a smart cockpit system we are working on. How are we working on this smart cockpit system? Several days ago, we released EA 3.0 on a car exhibition. For this framework, we disintegrate the underlying services to individual services, and then, at the upper level, the application level, we make free combinations of them. Now, in our smart city, you can see that each area is independent and relatively closed. If we truly want to build a smart city, I think we should set up an underlying platform, break the services down to single units, and package them into small modules. Then, we should have corresponding standard interfaces. This lays a foundation to realize the connection of large service modules and intelligent applications in the future. If we plan to do the work like this, our smart city, I think, will be more and more intelligent in the future. If we don't do this, you will find that each of us will go our own way in separate fields. For example, we do something in smart transportation system; someone else does something in smart medical system or smart education system. When they are joined together, they cannot be connected. This is not a real smart city. So that is what I think.

About laws and regulations, for example, we talk about L3 autonomous driving, but the definition has not been determined. Can we advertise it? Actually, regulators don't allow us to advertise our L3 technology. So, in the future, laws and regulations should precede. As for this, we are now working with the assessment group of the smart center as a deputy team leader to develop some assessment methods. And we are also assisting them to formulate L3 laws and regulations. So, we are promoting the drafting and implementation of laws and regulations. This is one of the pain points. The second pain point is 5G. We achieved the 5G deployment last year, but the current network of 5G, including the one for mobile phones, is actually not very advanced. I heard that some 5G base stations are powered off at night due to high power consumption. I think 5G is very necessary to the realization of Internet of Everything in smart city and V2X in smart transportation in the future. I also think we should do more on the construction of 5G infrastructure. There's no problem in realizing the standard configuration of 5G. However, there are relatively few application scenarios. Maybe we need to discuss together.