Why Visteon brings X-Wave to China?

I. To make profits and drive the revolutionary trend

Gasgoo.com: Visteon's innovative technologies are well represented through the human-interfaces (HMI), integrated center panel etc via the X-Wave. What kind of new mega-trend in car exterior and interior designs do you see?

Yang: There are two major driving forces behind the innovation in the automotive market: laws and regulation, market orientation. And an in-depth study of the overall market trend should precede innovation. So we fix our developing strategy of new products based on a strong understanding of the overall market, culture as well as consumers' needs and preferences. Basically, we are concerned with six trends which we also take as the leading design trends: comfort, connectivity, convenience, health, flexibility (individualism) and sensory. You can categorize those features on the X-Wave by the six mega-trends.

Gasgoo.com: The X-Wave demonstrated more than 50 technical innovations, some of which are rather revolutionary while some are to be commercialized. How will you market this car and get well-received by customers and OEMs, and finally translate the R&D efforts into profit?

Yang: We combine both strengths of Visteon and 3M-we two companies are highly complementary with unique expertise in the field of system/material development. On a global basis, we analyze people's driving experience in different markets; it's a world-wide cooperation, people involved in this project come from all regions, providing information about the local market and consumers so that these solutions are diverse and most leading-edge. Lots of highly innovative and user-friendly ideas were generated by our teams, most of which were demonstrated on the X-Wave in the form of about 50 technologies. We're even leading the consumer to a higher level in some aspects.

These new technologies differ in platforms. About 20% of these applications on the car have been commercialized, while 60% will be put into commercial practice by 2010 and the remainder 20% are pre-commercialized solutions included for customer feedback. Along with the world tour of X-Wave, we displayed the car to the media and the OEMs. We spent much time communicating with the local automakers about the feasibility and client preference of the technological features.

We make a track list of the feedback from the customers in different markets, which help us follow up with their interest and intention to use a certain technology. So far, various opinions are voiced about the demonstration car, and in this China leg of the tour, we should also listen to the general public who would ask, among other questions-"is this car practical?" "Should we improve some of the functions?" Wherever the car goes, the feedback is largely positive and there's always some technology that attracts the customers. To sum it up, the diversified interior design, user-friendly human-machine interface (HMI) and the related cost-effective technology are the most popular.

II. To be proactive for win-win collaboration

Gasgoo.com: Through X-Wave we can see that suppliers like Visteon and 3M begin to play a more proactive role in developing new technologies instead of only following the steps of OEMs.Then will the ever-dominating OEM's role change in the future?

Yang: First of all, you must admit that OEMs are playing (and will continue to play) a major role in such fields as whole-car design and allocation of targeted consumers. However, during the development of a certain product, it is not the OEM that has the final say; rather, both the OEMs and suppliers contribute to the features of the products, and finally the end-users decide to buy or not. The OEM controls most of the manufacturing processes as well as the sales network, but in many cases, new technologies are initiated by the suppliers, particularly many electronic component suppliers only sell their products in the aftermarket, and when there's huge demand the OEM would apply it to the new vehicle. The auto alarm system was rarely used by OEMs in the 1990s in China, but when it's getting popular in the aftermarket, they started to install it in the new cars.

In Visteon, sometimes we provide new electronic products in cars to the aftermarket customers first. And then the OEM would consider putting it into mass production. We do some proactive research in the related market and offer tailored modifications for the global automakers that introduce their new car models to the local Chinese market. The OEMs come to look for our advice, and we'll give them the most-needed help.

So for the "division of labor", every player of the market has his role; with a cooperative and proactive attitude, there could be a win-win deal.

III. How does the X-Wave come into form?

Gasgoo.com: we'd like to know more of the cooperation between Visteon and 3M. How did you carry out the cooperation across the board?

Yang: The relationships we have with 3M can be traced back to five years ago; at first there's cooperation between only two offices. As we continued our joint efforts, we felt it's time to take on some big challenge like this. What we bear in mind is the innovation which is made not by companies but by people.

At the very beginning, we had round-table discussions, where we analyzed our automotive interest and each other's expertise. It's in April 2007, in the Visteon Village in Michigan, that all the interested staff gathered--engineers, designers and engineering scientists. Fortunately, we both have the global presence that we were able to cooperate around the world. Also fortunately we have such good personnel connection between us --employees in both companies are willing to visit each other's technical center and work together. We were pleased to meet another group of people equally committed to the quality control as we are.

Gasgoo.com: There're two X-Waves, the one showed in China is the European version and there's the American version; also it's one of the cooperation expanding regions, so how did you distribute the  task? 

Yang: Yes, there's lots of work. we had to decide what it's going to be and how we can maximize each other's influence. We look through the respective technology of 3M and Visteon and we selected the most appropriate and most interested one to work on, and those who felt happy to work together.

We have telephone conference to discuss our respective points. In the end, individuals from both sides work shoulder by shoulder, and each other's technological centers working through every detail bring the whole concept together.