"The Baoding Car God" is going to produce luxury cars worth one million

Author | Zhou Zhiyu

A few days ago, Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, drove a Rolls-Royce to the airport, attracting attention. This automotive mogul, known as the "God of Cars in Baoding," made headlines by traveling in such a high-profile luxury vehicle.

Now the mystery has been unveiled. On January 9th, Wall Street News learned from informed sources that at the beginning of this year, Great Wall Motors announced an internal personnel appointment, establishing a new "Great Wall Brand Ultra-Luxury Car BG," with Wei Jianjun as chairman and Song Dongxian as CEO.

Establishing a new brand, creating the chairman position for the first time within the internal organization, and having Wei Jianjun at the helm is a rare occurrence at Great Wall Motors. This also reflects Wei Jianjun's emphasis on this new brand.

The aforementioned informed sources revealed that the main task of the new organization is to manufacture "ceiling products in the automotive industry." As an enthusiast, Wei Jianjun will personally participate in the development and testing of ultra-luxury models.

Wall Street News has learned that the ultra-luxury models are planned to be equipped with Great Wall Motors' self-developed 4.0T V8 engine technology. In addition to the engine, there will be more unique technologies incorporated.

Currently, the models sold in China equipped with the 4.0T V8 engine mainly include Porsche Panamera, Audi SQ7, Bentley Bentayga, etc., all of which are ultra-luxury models priced at over one million yuan.

With Great Wall Motors entering the market, the million-level ultra-luxury segment will welcome a highly competitive player.

Wall Street News understands that the new brand has not yet been finally named. However, in the past period, Great Wall Motors has intensively registered a series of trademarks such as Great Wall Jiayu, Great Wall Shanhai, and Great Wall Yanmen, which may be used for the new brand or specific models.

In terms of brand positioning, the new brand is also positioned higher than the existing five brands of Great Wall Group: Haval, Wey, Tank, Ora, and Great Wall Pickup.

In addition, the specific models of Great Wall's ultra-luxury brand are still in the planning stage. Besides a 5.5-meter D+ class luxury sedan, there are also considerations for hybrid supercars, covering various technological routes. It can be confirmed that there will be at least one model equipped with a high-power internal combustion engine, supplemented by an electric motor.

As the automotive industry enters the era of intelligent electrification, domestic brands have successively launched million-level ultra-luxury brands and specific models. For example, BYD has launched the Yangwang brand, Huawei has collaborated with JAC to create the ZunJie, and ZEEKR has also introduced models like 001FR and 009 Guanghui, aiming for this niche market. They mainly compete with traditional brands by leveraging motor technology and intelligent capabilities.

The ultra-luxury market is still dominated by foreign brands such as Land Rover, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi. Among the top 20 models in terms of sales, only the Yangwang U8 comes from a domestic brand. This also indicates that the penetration rate of new energy in the ultra-luxury market still needs to be further improved.

The internal judgment at Great Wall Motors is that the development direction of the Chinese automotive industry should be more diversified. Currently, internal combustion engines still possess value retention, scarcity, and emotional value. With years of accumulation in internal combustion engine technology, Great Wall Motors can enhance brand awareness and provide more possibilities for the competitive landscape of ultra-luxury brands by creating a product with extreme technological innovation In October last year, Wei Jianjun revealed that Great Wall would launch its self-developed 4.0T V8 engine in April or May 2025, aimed at serving the special use scenarios of off-road and high-displacement vehicles. Great Wall's ultra-luxury car brand BG has also introduced several engine design and tuning technicians from European luxury brands.

Song Dongxian, who has taken on the role of CEO of Great Wall's ultra-luxury car BG, is a post-80s individual who has been working in the power research direction since joining Great Wall in 2012, leading the development of the Lemon Hybrid DHT platform. Based on this technology platform, Great Wall Motors has also developed Hi4, which is widely used in multiple models.

Appointing such a young executive focused on technology as the CEO of the new organization also demonstrates Great Wall Motors' high expectations for the new project's power technology.

However, breaking into the ultra-luxury market dominated by foreign brands cannot be achieved solely through technology; efforts are also needed in areas such as user emotional value and brand recognition. This is the main direction that domestic brands are currently striving for as they rush into the ultra-luxury market.

Great Wall Motors is prepared for a protracted battle. The new ultra-luxury brand will operate under the concept of "high quality, small batch," with the main task still being to create "the ceiling model of the automotive industry," shouldering the mission of hardcore technological breakthroughs.

This will be a key battle for Great Wall Motors' brand elevation.

In the past two years, unlike other domestic car brands that pursued rapid scale growth, Great Wall Motors has sought quality growth. Under this philosophy, the Tank brand has taken on the heavy responsibility of brand elevation, driving Great Wall Motors' net profit to continue warming up in the first three quarters of 2024. Last year, the Tank brand's total annual sales exceeded 230,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 42%.

The fierce price war has plunged most car companies in the industry into a dilemma of bleeding sales, but Great Wall Motors has offered some different solutions.

As Great Wall's ultra-luxury cars gradually unveil their mystery, they will not only drive Great Wall Motors further up the brand ladder but also create long-term profit growth points.

The history of traditional luxury brands shows that they all emerged during industrial transformation periods after establishing technological strength. For Chinese domestic brands like Great Wall Motors, the new node of China leading the global electric vehicle development has arrived. Whoever can seize the opportunity of the times will be able to become a leader in the industry in the next era. In the face of opportunities presented by the times, no one is willing to miss out