Name: Brainstorm Design 2024: Shocked!
Uploaded: 2024-12-05
Duration: 20 min 30 s
Description: Anthony Lo, Chief Design Officer and VP of Global Design, BAIC Group, Frank Wu, Chief Design Officer, JIDU Auto, Wang Fang, Fortune

Anthony Lo, Chief Design Officer and VP of Global Design, BAIC Group, Frank Wu, Chief Design Officer, JIDU Auto, Wang Fang, Fortune

Brainstorm Design 2024: Shocked!

Conferences

As Tony said, uh China's auto industry is leading a global ev transformation. When they do that, they're increasingly um hiring big name designers from their Western competitors. And we're very happy to have two of such designers with us today. Um Friends, uh sorry, Anthony, let me start with you. You've had this uh legendary career that stretches across continents, countries, brands. And now you recently joined the IC in Beijing Auto, um a Chinese car maker. So share with us a little bit of your journey. Tell us your story. Yeah. Uh Thank you very much for a short introduction, introduction. I'm Anthony Low. I've been working in this industry for quite a while. Started, started off as a young boy falling in love in love with cars and I knew how to draw. So I thought that would be the perfect job. And I started working at Lotus in England many, many years ago, I worked for Audi for a while in Germany and then followed by a stint with Mercedes Benz with General Motors in Europe and also with uh you know, at that time, General Motors used to have a company called S A uh it is not no longer around, but it's, I really enjoyed the period over there. And then in 2010, um I got recruited to John in France. It was my first uh I would say experience for working in France and it was not a destination that I thought about go ending up. And I really enjoyed my, my period over there. And uh because this was a time that when the company was really in need of a refresh uh from a design perspective, we um we had a clean sheet, you know, we can do anything we want but respecting the uh the history, the heritage of the brand and, and that, that was really, I, I stayed in the end 11 years. It's the longest stint in my career and I ended up living in France for, for a long, longer time. And then just before uh joining bike group, I spent some time in uh at Ford uh also being their chief design officer uh for Global Design. Uh This was something that I, again, my first time apart from GMGM, I was based mostly in Europe. I spent more time in Detroit, in Irvine and other global design centers that are also in Melbourne, Shanghai, Germany uh in Cologne and London. So it was great experience to understand, kind of learn a little bit about the uh the global uh uh you know, the different locations, different product lines that are in fact, very different from, you know, stuff that you, you, you can find in Europe and in America and in China, they are all, all very, very different. Uh So I think uh and then in uh if you can click to the next, uh I, I just joined by uh actually in October. So there's not a lot yet I can share, but things are happening really fast. And uh because the, the pace in uh in uh develop a new car is a lot faster than what I'm used to. In fact, I've been, you know, doing this for a while. So in bike, uh we have um I want to bring my, you know, global experience to the bike group uh being um you know, learning how other companies do it, especially from a strategic level. I want to bring my experience to kind of make the brands that are on the bike group, the Beijing brand up Fox and the, and the recently launched the Lotto brand. Uh they are, they are all really, really amazing products. Uh But I think we want this, these brands to develop further, maybe, you know, going into other markets in the world. So it's really, really exciting time. I'm I'm happy to be joining the group right now. So the key question I think everybody has in their mind is what about bike that has attracted you back to China? Yeah, I, I feel that, you know, the industry is going through big changes. Uh I think the uh we all heard about, you know, electric car, new energy vehicles being kind of also in China is leading. But in fact, I, I think it's um we, I I'm really happy to be at the, at the forefront of uh you know, innovation. I, I think I found, I believe I found the right partner and they found me as well. So I, this is really a good moment and I really uh so far uh in my 1st 2.5 months, uh everything has been going great, right? You touched upon the very fast pace that Chinese auto industry is going through uh the the very quick cycles that we turn cars around. So, um but we will come back to later on that Frank, how about your story? Tell us a bit more about your story, your journey. Um So, first of all, I'm really, really honored to be on the same, same stage with Anthony. So Anthony, he's a legendary designer. So it's a huge privilege to be able to share the, the story in our journey. Um For me, II, I grew up in the States most of my life since I was six. Um So ever since, you know, studying automotive design uh in university and then later on uh practicing as a professional car designer at General Motors and also for a Cadillac brand. Um it was a very, very special and very important journey of my career uh milestone. Um And then later on, I actually moved to China and then realized that it's a very, very new transitional period for the automotive industry. Um And I can see also in this slide, there's a lot of new trends that are happening in the auto industry for us. Um the way we look at it is there is a 1.0 era where it's the IC era of automobile design. And then today we're looking at the 2.0 era, which is the era of EV. And as everybody can understand that EV is becoming a majority market that's taking over a lot of the ice vehicles in the global market position. Um And at J do what we're focusing on is more of a 3.0 era, the era of A I vehicles. So how can A I vehicles be able to utilize artificial intelligence, A G I and also autonomous driving to be able to bring a better sort of a lifestyle and also driving journey experience to the future drivers and also passengers. Uh for the new era of the about JJ is a joint venture between uh Baidu, which is sort of China's Google and Ji Li, which is perhaps China's board. So uh let's come back to you and uh more about A I and how cars are becoming more uh um intelligent. So, Anthony, I want to come back to you you've worked for so many car brands. You've designed so many models. You've seen so much change in auto design. I know you've prepared a few slides about the latest trends of car design. So just can you go through with us all these beautiful slides and tell us what are the trends? Yeah, I actually, I just made a very quick personal selection of, uh, you know, 2024 car trend. I focus on styling, not so much on technology and so on. Uh But I think what, what I find um you know, interesting is that how cars have become really sim a lot simpler in terms of styling. Uh you know, things are really modern flushed, you know, things that every designer was dreaming of doing is uh you know, trying to make all things, all the details, more integrated, something quite difficult to do uh in the kind of the earlier era of manufacturing. Uh for example, making things uh high quality, you know, 100,000 times. Uh uh uh you know, in the in the manufacturing process is not so easy, but I think I'm glad to see that really is coming online now with all the new products. But at the same time, I think I also see that some um uh I don't want to call them. Uh I would say something kind of design style in the past, but I think there's a period that when design uh the every manufacturer was tried trying to create more attention by exaggerating certain details, by, by making things a bit. Uh I would say unusual in terms of proportions to able to, you know, generate more attention from customers and hopefully that will create more sales. But I think this, this period, I can see that this is really changing and fading out. Uh If you go ahead and go to the next slide very quickly. Um uh There's also I think what, what I find uh extremely um uh interesting is in China, there's really emerging car culture, I call this just simply China car culture. In fact, for example, the uh car interior or the car itself, it is a technology carrier, it's always connected and, and it's also a place that we you can work, you can play and cars are being sold in mobile phone, uh laptop showrooms very different in, in shopping malls. And also the fact that three generations are often traveling together in China and cars become big. It's like your like an extended room, uh like your 1st 1st space and you can relax, you have zero gravity seats, you can even do yoga. And one of the reasons that you can do all of that is because the EV architecture is a much more uh I would say simpler flatter platform that you can actually create an unexpected layouts and you can cater for the needs of customers. But I see that this is this is this kind of trend is very dynamic because uh uh you know, in, in, in China, there are lots of new, new needs popping up here and there as designers, we always have to follow closely the market, but also keep doing research to really understand where we are heading next. And that's something that um I think we we all going to see um um coming in a few years. And another, another trend I would call it homogeneous styling. Is this something we um I noticed in recent trips to China, there are so many new cars everywhere. Um And, but I kind of couldn't figure out which brands they belong to. And one of the reason this is my personal uh assumption, but uh I think many car designers would agree with me is that because of the development time of a new product, it's really, really fast. I'm talking about less than half the time of traditional O Ems in other parts of the world. And because of that, you don't really have a lot of time to actually come up with all new ideas. So you always tend to kind of like, OK, let's let's go fast and let's choose something that is a little bit more uh I would say safer, something that yeah follow maybe not so much the trend but something you are in your comfort zone. And when you notice that maybe another brand has a car that is selling well or maybe we can do something similar to that because there's no time. And I think every designer that I know all wanting to create something much more unique, something that actually help, help create a stronger identity so that you can be more successful in, in over time. So I think that that's something that is happening. But if you go to the next slide, I think you can see that even more so on the interior. Uh I, I think these are all six car entire interior of six different brands. And uh I think it's very hard to tell which one they are. Until you zoom into the center of the steering wheel, then you will see the logo and then you go OK. That's, I think again, this is a uh a similar uh situation with exterior because uh with, with us interface with the, with the screen size, these are all kind of becoming a standard right now. So I think the future to be successful, like all well well developed, I would say mature markets. I think we need to create more unique identities and both on the interior exterior and the overall user experience. Great great point about uh how fast paced sometimes compromise the unique characteristics and identity of the car brand. Uh You touched upon something that's really interesting. Um China's auto uh design um has only recently been sort of quite well known to the world and it almost coincides with the emerging eb industry. So these things happen um almost at the same time time simultaneously. Uh As you mentioned, that's because um without the combustion engine with only the batteries that the car structure becomes simpler. So allows designers to put more um function and form into it. So um Frank, you work with technology more a little bit more, you make cars more intelligent. So tell us what you do is doing what you do at G do. So shall we have a look at your? Yeah, sure. Um So quickly put together a very quick um clip. Um So to follow up with what Anthony said, absolutely agree. The way I look at it is, I think cars are now going towards what the mobile used to be the um the iphone era. So we used to look at the Nokia 8800 and the Motor Love V Seven used to be super cool. I remember I, you know, um used to look at all these very cool stylized phones but then the the smartphone era really was when the iphone uh introduced sort of this intelligent experience through the apps and all that sort of hm I functions uh to connect all the life sort of lifestyle experiences into your pocket and then that kind of changed everything. And then the way I see it is Virginia, we're aiming to try to deliver almost like the iphone era of the automobile in terms of intelligent experience. And um to what Anthony mentioned about is a lot of the design now has becoming more uh simple. And I absolutely agree because um I just want to kind of clarify as for, for car design or for many other design to, to be simple is actually much harder. So it's not the word simple as in you're actually deleting all the context and all the contents. But how do you create something is so pure? Um That is less, is more but be able to deliver more with less. So the way we want to deliver is um before we design our products, we first think about what is our mission. One of the most valuable thing in any human's life is time. So time is something that we can never get back. Um And then how do we spend our time with our families? Our time commuting from work to home, from home to anywhere else is that we want to introduce the best user experience with the best autonomous driving technology utilizing, for instance, by this Apollo's L four Robotaxis technology into our vehicle, getting rid of all the hardware, but having the most pure design even getting rid of the traditional door handles or as you guys can see for the interior, we got rid of almost all the plastic buttons. And then we want to utilize the most natural interaction which is voice, you know, we talk to each other every day by having a natural conversation. So, using the A G I intelligent sort of, hm, I, you can just have any sort of command with the vehicle, like a robot and then the vehicle can open a door, close the door, come and pick you up from your house and then take you straight to work without you worrying about driving or the anxiety of driving. So you can actually spend more time talking to your friends, your family or just do whatever you want to do during that hour or two hour commute on a daily basis. And over the course of one day, one month, a year, five years, you get to accumulate so much time, that's so valuable in terms of that concept. So we're very, very proud to be able to uh aim to deliver that vision to the to the audience, right? I can see Chinese car makers are really at the frontier um of not only using clean energy but making cars not only just more stylish, more comfortable, but more intelligent. So I want to come back to, to you Antony. Now you're leading you the chief designer at B I AC bike, uh this huge state owned conglomerate uh which has like multi brands, multi series of models. What what is your uh your plan, your uh for this um gigantic car makers to um be able to compete, for example, with nimble um more, I mean, nimbler newcomers start up. Uh Like J Yeah, I think there, there are lots of uh I would say processes that are already kind of quite, quite working well and within by a group. Uh I think what, what I can bring in is, you know, things that uh maybe because of the speed um you, we cannot just always just be spontaneous and try to create something on sport. I think you need to be well prepared, you need to create a stronger design strategy. I think this strategy needs to kind of be also more extensive and not just looking at the identity or the the silhouette of a car or the shape of a car. I think this is maybe more of a more old school strategy that you design certain elements that you just keep replicating but um replicate them and but the I think strategy is is more about um you know how you can make with our three brands that cover, you know, Beijing is a four by four off road, has a strong four by four off road. Heritage Fox is relatively young. I think it's about seven years old uh EV or new energy brand. And then you we have also Stella which is we are aiming to compete in the luxury world, uh like Mercedes and, and, and BMW. So, so I think that they are very distinct brands. I think I would like to make sure that they have distinct character distinct offers, distinct user experiences and then create also a vision that can also help us, you know, into the next uh 56 years. Um You know, it's something different from how I used to work. I always used to think about 10 years and beyond. But I think now you have 18 months, 18 months, but you need the, the product will stay on the market for at least six years, 56 years. So you need to think of this kind of time span slightly differently. And I think that that's something I would like to do. And what do you think would be your biggest challenge? I mean, at this um cutting throat like competition. Yeah. Yeah, I, I think we, there's danger of being kind of mimic each other's success when you see a product or brand doing well, you try to do the same, but you are always two years behind. And so I think we have to have enough confidence as, as a, as a, you know, buy a group is, as you said, it's huge. It's been around for a long, long time since 1958. So I think we should have enough confidence to kind of do our own, uh have our own vision of products and experiences. And I think that will be a big challenge to kind of align maybe everyone in the company to, to want to go that way and sometimes perhaps dare to slow down a little bit. I fully agree. I think we, we don't need to introduce too products, maybe to do the right products for the right brand. I think that's something I believe strongly. Thank you very much for, I mean, the two gentlemen pushing the boundaries of auto design, not only just the style form and function and intelligence. Uh You have shown us how in the future of transportation looks like. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.