GAC Group, Huawei to co-develop smart BEV model

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- The first vehicle model co-developed by GAC Aion and Huawei is set to go into volume production at the end of 2023, GAC Group announced on July 9.

According to GAC Group, the significant model will be a full-sized smart all-electric SUV featuring Level 4 autonomous driving functions. Both parties will pour nearly 800 million yuan ($123.556 million) into this project.

GAC Group, Huawei signing agreement in September 2020; photo credit: GAC Group

Under the agreement GAC Group and Huawei previously signed , they will jointly build the next-generation intelligent vehicle digital platform based on GAC's GEP3.0 chassis platform and Huawei’s CCA (computing + communications architecture), and develop vehicle models carrying Huawei’s full-stack smart vehicle solution.

Since the strategic partnership formed in 2017, both parties have made several ICV (intelligent-connected vehicles) systems installed in production models. In September 2020, GAC Group and Huawei cemented their partnership to jointly develop an upgradeable digital platform, so as to continuously improve experience for users.

GAC Aion started independent operation last year, when it sold 60,033 new vehicles in total. It aims to hit the 100,000 units of annual sales volume in 2021. For the first half of this year, GAC Aion saw its sales surge 110% year on year to more than 40,000 units.

To shore up the rising sales, GAC Aion will enlarge its annual capacity to 200,000 vehicles by the first quarter of 2022. The existing capacity of 100,000 vehicles per year has been fully utilized.   

GAC Aion announced on May 17 the strategic cooperation with DiDi Autonomous Driving for the joint development of a fire new driverless new energy vehicle (NEV) model for “large-scale commercial applications to accelerate mass production”.