China's Luxury Cars Rise to Third Road: Red Flag Cars Reconstructs Market with "Technological Confidence

China's auto market in 2023 started the year with a war, and against the backdrop of price wars launched by a number of joint-venture brands, the market share of Chinese brands has reached record highs. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), the market share of independent brand passenger cars was 52.8% in February, up 10.1 percentage points year-on-year. Even in the luxury car market, the past ABB domination is being broken, and Chinese brands are reconstructing the luxury car market with new energy, intelligence and technology.

In the luxury car market, Chinese brands have clearly formed three paths. These include new forces, new high-end brands of traditional car companies, and Red Flag. Unlike the previous two, Red Flag has always been the most unique presence in the Chinese auto market. With one of the longest and most illustrious histories of Chinese automobiles, Red Flag's brand story is the deepest accumulation of what it takes to become a luxury brand.

These three forces ****together have driven the transformation of China's luxury car market and the rise of new luxuryism. Unlike the other two models, which have risen flat on their faces, Red Flag is the carmaker with the most brand equity of them all, completing a self-transformation and bringing about a new luxuryism, which in turn has fueled the development of the previous two.

In the past five years, Red Flag has experienced rapid growth and brand renewal. This year, Red Flag once again opened the curtain of transformation, and comprehensively advanced to new energy. In fact, in the new energy Red Flag is already a small test, showing a very strong competition. Statistics show that in the luxury large SUV market, the monthly sales of Red Flag E-HS9 have performed well.

E-HS9 represents the new competitive strength of Red Flag, and the new high-end combination of Red Flag H9/E-HS9 also obtains positive feedbacks from the mass market with its Chinese-style stylish design, innovative technology and the sense of quality presented in details. Breaking, rebuilding and refreshing, this is exactly the spirit that Red Flag has presented in the past few years. This is also the key to the legendary brand's ability to keep up with the times and gain new life through innovation. When Red Flag's new-energy layout unfolds quickly, it will make big waves in China's luxury car market in no time.

Red Flag is not only the spiritual leader of China's luxury car market, but also the pioneer of change.

Red Flag's five-year leap forward

In its 65-year history, Red Flag has always kept moving forward, striving to advance on the road to building China's own luxury car dream. Time goes back to five years ago, when China's auto industry had already made a number of impacts on high-endization, but none of them achieved a major breakthrough. A **** knowledge of the Chinese auto industry is: China's own will be born luxury brand, but the question is what kind of a luxury brand?

At that time, although there were new brands released in the industry, the whole was in a state of exploration. And Red Flag's sweeping reforms sparked heated debate. "Traditional luxury brands often represent a long history, exquisite skills, superior quality and a sense of luxury, while China's younger generation of luxury brand consumers, for digital and intelligent aspects of the innovation requirements are higher, compared with the BBA, Red Flag, as China's homegrown premium brand, on the one hand, has a deep brand precipitation and heritage, but also be able to based on consumer demand to make faster adjustments to adapt to the market." An industry insider believes.

Accelerating the definition of "technological new luxury" and strengthening the connection with users is Red Flag's thinking, which is also the key for these new brands to win the market. It can be seen that in 2018, when the new strategy of the Red Flag brand was released, one of the core changes of Red Flag was actually a change in the underlying logic. Red flag established the "all user-centered" concept, followed by a series of innovative marketing initiatives, as well as with the launch of a more youthful, pro-people product matrix, red flag in the solemnity of the above, the new increase in vitality, flew into the people's homes.

To support all this, it also needs to make corresponding adjustments in the system, which is based on research and development. FAW, as China's most important car company, is strong in R&D. Especially after the reform, Red Flag reconstructed its R&D system and opened the door for more excellent talents. An open, inclusive and innovative R&D system has gradually taken shape, which has become the source of the subsequent explosion of Red Flag.

Now, Red Flag has built a 1+12+X global R&D layout, absorbing top technological talents from all over the world and establishing a globalized R&D team of more than 5,000 people; comprehensively learning from the experience of the world's top brands in quality assurance and establishing cooperative relationships; and establishing new world-class quality standards and extremely strict process quality control standards.

In addition, the new Red Flag has established a new supplier system, insisting on the use of the world's best suppliers and the most technologically advanced partners; and invested in the construction of a manufacturing plant of the world's top standard. After the completion of the new Red Flag prosperous factory, it will become the most advanced "intelligent factory" and "green factory" in China. Intelligent workstations account for more than 80% of all workstations, and the carbon emission of single-vehicle manufacturing reaches the international advanced level.

Benefiting from the above efforts, Red Flag's sales volume will exceed 300,000 units in 2021, and then increase by 3% year-on-year to reach 310,000 units in 2022, which will help Red Flag continue to make an impact on the first-tier luxury brands. Compared with traditional luxury brands, the Red Flag brand took five years to complete the development path of traditional luxury brands for nearly 10 years.

Market miracle of product strength

The development of Red Flag is spelled out by FAW people, and also by products. In the highly competitive Chinese auto market, it is not easy to survive, and it is even more difficult to find its own place in the luxury car market. So how does Red Flag do it? It's in the Red Flag H9 and the first MPV model HQ9, products that clearly show the brand new changes in Red Flag's products over the years.

For example, the body of Red Flag H9 adopts a number of original technologies, including a 3D printed lightweight aluminum chassis structure, a six-in-one collision avoidance active safety system, and 3D laser scanning and measurement technology for the entire vehicle, and it also comes with a full-scene intelligent ecosystem with 60+ functions, which is capable of realizing a variety of functions such as smart home interconnectivity, remote vehicle control, and remote medical diagnosis. Red Flag HQ9 also has 23 health patents, the interior of the car is made of natural plant materials, the first nano ionized leather technology, equipped with a triple air quality protection system, and the negative oxygen ion content in the air inside the car is equivalent to 60 times that of a forest park.

In terms of safety, Red Flag series models have also achieved the ultimate, such as Red Flag H9 body adopts the unique "9H" cage body design in the same class, and the proportion of high-strength steel is as high as 67.7%, with the highest strength of 2000MPa, while the proportion of high-strength steel of first-tier luxury brands is only about 60%. In the quality ranking of Chinese automobile brands, Red Flag brand surpassed more than 60 Chinese automobile brands and ranked sixth in the quality ranking of Chinese automobile brands in 2022, and the first one of independent brands.

In terms of intelligence, Red Flag H9 is also equipped with the most 12 ultrasonic radars, 3 millimeter wave radars and 5 cameras in its class, and has the most abundant 19 active safety functions in its class, which can prejudge the dangers of dozens of scenarios, such as blind zones, lane changing, opening doors, overtaking, etc., and maximize the protection of travel safety. It can be said that from the hardware and software, to the design and brand, a Chinese luxury brand has been in a magnificent turnaround.

The two cars, both in appearance and interior design, have a strong oriental mood of elegance and atmosphere, carrying the Chinese elite business people in the luxury aspect of the double enjoyment of the senses and spirit.

As the first flagship C+ class luxury sedan since the release of the new Red Flag strategy, Red Flag H9 has a two-tone body, a straight waterfall center mesh, the "Wings of Dreams" headlight group, and the "red shining" through the tail lights, all of which show a dynamic visual experience of flow and soaring. The dynamic visual experience of flowing and soaring is very ceremonial. Inside, the cabin is surrounded by the central axis layout, floating center control, hidden landscape texture and 256 colors of ambient lighting, elegant and atmospheric.

And the design of Red Flag HQ9 is directly to "and" for the road, the appearance of calm and full of atmosphere, the interior adopts a 2+2+3 7-seat layout, the second row is equipped with two independent airline seats, with 173 ° class largest lying angle, but also through the controller on the air-conditioning, audio-visual and so on; the third row of seats is a 4/6 type of seats, and the third row of seats is a 4/6 type of seats, and the third row of seats is a 4/6 type of seats, with a 4/6 type of seats. The third row of seats is a 4/6 structure, which can be put down and moved forward and backward. Compared with ordinary MPV, it has more comfortable ride enjoyment and more honorable car experience.

Red Flag HQ9

This is the real "Chinese luxury", which has reached a new peak in Red Flag. There are many more such designs. Unlike German luxury and American luxury, the flavor of Chinese luxury cars is like a landscape painting, with a long and lingering aftertaste.

All in new energy to scale new heights

The temperature of the brand, the competitiveness of the products, and the degree of commitment to fight against the market competition are the backbone of the Red Flag brand to win the market. With the acceleration of intelligentization and electrification trend, Red Flag brand is also increasing its investment in this field, hoping to take the lead in the new round of market competition.

On January 8 this year, the new energy strategy of Red Flag brand was officially released. According to the plan, the future investment in technological innovation and new production capacity of FAW Red Flag will be fully used in new energy vehicles, of which the sales volume of new energy vehicles will be more than 500,000; by 2030, the overall sales volume will be more than 1.5 million, of which the new energy vehicles will be the main body of the sales. At the same time, the brand influence, innovation ability and overall strength will also enter the first camp of the world's high-end brands together with the sales index, truly reaching "China's first, the world famous", and truly realizing the new red flag new energy strong rise.

China's automobile has experienced 70 years of development, with the rise of independent brands, but also gave birth to a number of annual sales scale in the 2 million large automobile groups, but the above people believe that China's brand "big but not strong" situation still exists, which is determined by the history of China's brand of the latecomer, and new Intelligent electrification era, a strong supply chain capabilities, accurate insight into consumers and rapid market response capabilities, has allowed Chinese brands to have the opportunity to "change lanes to overtake".

In order to realize the breakthrough of new energy core technology, Red Flag has created a high-end electric intelligent super architecture - FMEs, which brings together 8 major technology fields of R.Flag's technology development strategy, 115 key core technologies, and HME, an integrated platform for electrification and intelligentization of QiYi, which includes high-energy It has HME, an integrated platform for electrification and intelligentization, which mainly includes four systems: high-energy battery, high-efficiency electric drive, high-efficiency intelligent energy supplementation and intelligent driving safety chassis. In addition, Red Flag has also built the "Mustache" intelligent and experience integration platform HIS, which includes three major systems of advanced electronics and electrics, automatic driving, and comfort cabin, and **** is committed to the creation of new models in the future.

The "Flag" Super Architecture fully utilizes Red Flag's global R&D resources, and will fully complete all development work in the first half of 2023, by which time it will have nearly 10,000 patents, software copyrights and other intellectual property rights, which will meet the development, manufacturing and usage needs of the majority of models under the Red Flag brand. Three new models will be rapidly launched within two years. The first product, code-named E001, is expected to be launched in the second half of this year; the second product, code-named E202, is expected to debut at the end of this year; and the third product, code-named E702, is expected to meet consumers in the first half of 2024. In the next three years, 15 new energy smart products will be launched, covering all segments of A, B, C and D class sedans, SUVs and MPVs respectively.

In the two core areas of "soul" including chip and operating system, Red Flag has also joined hands with domestically superior enterprises*** to develop a globally leading five-in-one (vehicle control, intelligent driving, cockpit, communication and security) intelligent chip for cabin and driving integration - "Flag Intelligence", which is the most advanced intelligent chip in the world, and the most powerful one in the world. OS", a vehicle-level operating system with strong real-time, high compatibility and wide openness, which will be gradually introduced to the market in the second half of 2023 and 2024. These two core technologies will be gradually introduced to the market in the second half of 2023 and 2024, putting the core technology of intelligent electric vehicles firmly in our hands.

By 2025, Red Flag will have built more than 700 Red Flag experience spaces, over 1,000 service networks, and 600,000 complementary energy terminals overseas; realized that overseas sales accounted for more than 10 percent of total sales, and that year's overseas sales increased 20 times compared with that of 2022; and realized that by 2030, overseas sales accounted for 25 percent of total sales.

From design language to brand marketing, Red Flag has y implanted "cultural self-confidence" into its brand gene. In the next five years, Red Flag will also make its "technical confidence" bloom in the global market through All?in new energy and intelligence, changing the competition pattern of the luxury car market.

This article comes from Spiegel Pro, author of EasyCar, and is copyrighted by the author, so please contact the author for any reproduction.