Anthony Lo, Chief Design Officer and VP of Global Design, BAIC Group, Frank Wu, Chief Design Officer, JIDU Auto, Wang Fang, Fortune
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00:00As Tony said, China's auto industry is leading a global EV transformation. When
00:07they do that, they're increasingly hiring big-name designers from their Western
00:13competitors. We're very happy to have two of such designers with us today.
00:19Anthony, let me start with you. You've had this legendary career that
00:24stretches across continents, countries, brands, and now you recently joined BIC
00:31and Beijing Auto, a Chinese carmaker. So share with us a little bit of your
00:37journey. Tell us your story. Yeah, thank you very much for a short introduction.
00:43I'm Anthony Lo. I've been working in this industry for quite a while.
00:48Started off as a young boy falling in love with cars, and I
00:53knew how to draw, so I thought that would be the perfect job. I started
00:58working at Lotus in England many, many years ago. I worked for Audi for a while in
01:04Germany, and then followed by a stint with Mercedes-Benz, with General Motors
01:09in Europe, and also at that time General Motors used to have a
01:14company called Saab. It's no longer around, but I really enjoyed a period
01:19over there. And then in 2010, I got recruited to join Renault in France. It
01:26was my first, I would say, experience for working in France, and it was not a
01:32destination that I thought about ending up, and I really enjoyed my period
01:37over there. And because this was a time that the company was really in need
01:42of a refresh from a design perspective, we had a clean sheet. You know, we can do
01:49anything we want, but respecting the history, the heritage of the brand, and
01:54that was really, I stayed in the end 11 years. It's the longest stint in my
02:00career, and I ended up living in France for a longer time. And then just
02:05before joining Bike Group, I spent some time at Ford, also being the chief
02:12design officer for Global Design. This was something that I, again, my first
02:18time, apart from GM, I was based mostly in Europe. I spent more time in Detroit,
02:24in Irvine, and other global design centers that are also in Melbourne,
02:29Shanghai, Germany, in Cologne, and London. So it was a great experience to
02:34understand, kind of learn a little bit about the global, you know, different
02:40locations, different product lines that are, in fact, very different from, you
02:44know, stuff that you can find in Europe, and in America, and in China. They are
02:50all very, very different. So I think, and then if you can click to the next, I
02:56just joined Bike actually in October, so there's not a lot yet I can share, but
03:03things are happening really fast, and because the pace in development,
03:08paying a new car, it's a lot faster than what I'm used to. In fact, I've been, you
03:13know, doing this for a while. So in Bike, we have, I want to bring my, you know,
03:19global experience to the Bike Group, being, you know, learning how other
03:25companies do it, especially from a strategic level. I want to bring my
03:29experience to kind of make the brands that are under Bike Group, the Beijing
03:34brand, Arcfox, and the recently launched Stellato brand. They are all
03:39really, really amazing products, but I think we want these brands to
03:44kind of develop further, maybe, you know, going into other markets in the world. So
03:49it's really, really exciting time. I'm happy to be joining the group right now.
03:53So the key question I think everybody has in their mind is, what about Bike
03:58that has attracted you back to China? Yeah, I feel that, you know, the industry
04:04is going through big changes. I think the, we all heard about, you know, electric
04:09car, new energy vehicles being kind of also in China is leading, but in fact, I
04:16think it's, we, I'm really happy to be at the forefront of, you know, innovation.
04:22I think I found, I believe I found the right partner, and they found me as well.
04:27So I think this is really a good moment, and I really, so far, in my first two and
04:32a half months, everything has been going great. Right, you touched upon the very
04:37fast pace the Chinese auto industry is going through, the very quick cycles that
04:43we turn cars around, so, but we will come back to later on that. Frank, how about
04:50your story? Tell us a bit more about your story, your journey. So first of all, I'm
04:55really, really honored to be on the same stage with Anthony. So Anthony, he's a
04:59legendary designer, so it's a huge privilege to be able to share the story
05:04and our journey. For me, I grew up in the States most of my life, since I was six.
05:09So ever since, you know, studying automotive design in university, and then
05:15later on practicing as a professional car designer at General Motors, and also
05:20for a Cadillac brand, it was a very, very special and very important journey of my
05:25career milestone. And then later on, I actually moved to China, and then realized
05:33that it's a very, very new transitional period for the automotive industry. And
05:38I can see also, in this slide, there's a lot of new trends that are happening in
05:43the auto industry. For us, the way we look at it is there's a 1.0 era, where
05:49it's the ICE era of automobile design. And then today, we're looking at the 2.0
05:56era, which is the era of EV. As everybody can understand that EV is becoming a
06:02majority market that's taking over a lot of the ICE vehicles in the global market
06:08position. And at Jidoo, what we're focusing on is more of a 3.0 era, the era
06:14of AI vehicles. So how can AI vehicles be able to utilize artificial intelligence,
06:20AGI, and also autonomous driving, to be able to bring a better sort of a lifestyle
06:26and also driving journey experience to the future drivers and also passengers for the
06:33new era of vehicles.
06:34Just briefly about Jidoo, Jidoo is a joint venture between Baidu, which is sort of
06:40China's Google, and Geely, which is perhaps China's Ford. So let's come back to
06:47you and more about AI and how cars are becoming more intelligent. So Anthony, I
06:55want to come back to you. You've worked for so many car brands, you've designed so
06:59many models, you've seen so much changes in auto design. I know you've prepared a
07:04few slides about the latest trends of car design. So just can you go through with us
07:13all these beautiful slides and tell us what are the trends?
07:16Yeah, actually, I've just made a very quick personal selection of, you know, 2024 car
07:23trend. I focus on styling, not so much on technology and so on. But I think what I
07:29find, you know, interesting is that how cars have become really simple, a lot simpler in
07:35terms of styling. You know, things are really modern, flushed, you know, things that every
07:42designer was dreaming of doing is, you know, trying to make all things, all the details
07:47more integrated. Something quite difficult to do in the kind of the earlier era of
07:53manufacturing. For example, making things high quality, you know, 100,000 times, you
08:01know, in the manufacturing process is not so easy. But I think I'm glad to see that really
08:07is coming online now with all the new products. But at the same time, I think I also see
08:13that some, I don't want to call them, I would say something kind of design style in the
08:19past. But I think there's a period that when design, every manufacturer was trying to
08:28create more attention by exaggerating certain details by making things a bit, I would say,
08:35unusual in terms of proportions to able to, you know, generate more attention from
08:39customers and hopefully that will create more sales. But I think this period, I can see
08:45that this is really changing and fading out. If you go and go to the next slide very
08:50quickly, there's also, I think what I find extremely interesting is in China, there's
08:59really emerging car culture. I call this just simply China car culture. In fact, for
09:04example, the car interior or the car itself is a technology carrier, it's always
09:11connected. And it's also a place that you can work, you can play, and cars are being sold
09:18in mobile phone, laptop showrooms, very different in shopping malls. And also the fact
09:24that three generations are often traveling together in China and cars become big, it's
09:30like your extended room, like your first space, and you can relax, you have zero gravity
09:37seats, you can even do yogas. And one of the reasons that you can do all of that is
09:43because the EV architecture is a much more, I would say, simpler, flatter platform that
09:50you can actually create an unexpected layout and you can cater for the needs of
09:55customers. But I see that this kind of trend is very dynamic because, you know, in
10:02China, there are lots of new needs popping up here and there as designers, we always
10:07have to follow closely the market but also keep doing research to really understand where
10:12we are heading next. And that's something that I think we are going to see coming in a
10:19few years. And another trend, I would call it homogeneous styling. Is this something
10:25we noticed in recent trips to China? There are so many new cars everywhere, but I
10:33kind of couldn't figure out which brands they belong to. And one reason, this is my
10:38personal assumption, but I think many car designers would agree with me, is that
10:44because the development time of a new product is really, really fast. I'm talking about
10:49less than half the time of traditional OEMs in other parts of the world. And because of
10:55that, you don't really have a lot of time to actually come up with all new ideas. So you
11:00always tend to kind of like, okay, let's go fast and let's choose something that is a
11:05little bit more, I would say, safer. Follow the trend. Yeah, maybe not so much follow the
11:11trend, but something you are in your comfort zone. And when you notice that maybe another
11:17brand has a car that is selling well, or maybe we can do something similar to that,
11:21because there's no time. And I think every designer that I know, all wanting to create
11:26something much more unique, something that actually help create a stronger identity, so
11:33that you can be more successful over time. So I think that that's something that is
11:39happening. But if you go to the next slide, I think you can see that even more so on
11:43interior. I think these are all six cars in the car interior of six different brands. And I
11:50think it's very hard to tell which one they are. And until you zoom into the center of the
11:55steering wheel, then you will see the logo and then you get okay, that's, I think, again, this
11:59is a similar situation with exterior, because with user interface, with the screen size,
12:08these are all kind of becoming a standard right now. So I think there's future to be
12:13successful. Like all well developed, I would say, mature markets, I think we need to create
12:20more unique identities, and both on interior exterior and the overall user experience.
12:25Great, great point about how fast paced sometimes compromise the unique characteristics
12:32and identity of the car brand. You touched upon something that's really interesting.
12:37China's auto design has only recently been sort of quite well known to the world. And it
12:44almost coincides with the emerging EV industry. So these things happen almost at the same
12:51time simultaneously. As you mentioned, that's because without the combustion engine, with only
12:57the batteries, the car structure becomes simpler, so allows designers to put more function and
13:05form into it. So Frank, you work with technology more, a little bit more, you make cars more
13:12intelligent. So tell us what Jidoo is doing, what you do at Jidoo. So shall we have a look?
13:19Sure, yeah, sure. So quickly put together a very quick clip. So to follow up with what Anthony
13:27said, absolutely agree. The way I look at it is I think cars are now going towards what the
13:33mobile used to be the iPhone era. So we used to look at the Nokia 8800 and the Motorola V70
13:41used to be super cool. I remember I, you know, used to look at all these very cool stylized phones.
13:47But then the smartphone era really was when the iPhone introduced sort of this intelligent
13:54experience through the apps and all that sort of HMI functions to connect all the lifestyle
14:01experiences into your pocket. And then that kind of changed everything. And then the way I see it
14:06is for Jidoo, we're aiming to try to deliver almost like the iPhone era of the automobile in terms of
14:12intelligent experience. And to what Anthony mentioned about is a lot of the design now has
14:19becoming more simple. And I absolutely agree, because I just want to kind of clarify is for for
14:28car design, or for many other design, to be simple is actually much harder. So it's not the
14:35word simple as in you're actually deleting all the context and all the contents. But how do you
14:39create something is so pure, that is less is more, but be able to deliver more with less. So the way
14:48we wanted to deliver is, before we design our products, we first think about what is our
14:53mission, one of the most valuable thing in any human's life is time. So time is something that we
15:00can never get back. And then how do we spend our time with our families, our time commuting from
15:07work to home from home to anywhere else, is that we want to introduce the best user experience with
15:13the best autonomous driving technology, utilizing, for instance, Baidu's Apollo's L4 Robotaxis
15:21technology into our vehicle, getting rid of all the hardwares, but having the most pure design, even
15:27getting rid of the traditional door handles, or as you guys can see, for the interior, we got rid of
15:32almost all the plastic buttons. And then we want to utilize the most natural interaction, which is
15:39voice. You know, we talk to each other every day by having a natural conversation. So using the AGI
15:45intelligent sort of HMI, you can just have any sort of command with the vehicle like a robot, and then
15:52the vehicle can open the door, close the door, come and pick you up from your house, and then take you
15:57straight to work without you worrying about driving or the anxiety of driving. So you can actually spend
16:03more time talking to your friends, your family, or just do whatever you want to do during that hour or
16:09two hour commute on a daily base. And over the course of one day, one month, a year, five years, you get to
16:16accumulate so much time that's so valuable in terms of that concept. So we're very, very proud to be able to aim
16:24to deliver that vision to the audience.
16:27Right. I can see Chinese car makers are really at the frontier of not only using clean energy, but making cars
16:35not only just more stylish, more comfortable, but more intelligent. So I want to come back to you, Anthony.
16:42Now you're leading, you're the chief designer at BIAC Bike, this huge state-owned conglomerate, which has like
16:51multi brands, multi series of models. What is your plan, your vision for this gigantic car makers to be able to
17:02compete, for example, with nimble, more nimble, I mean, nimbler newcomers, startups like Jiddu?
17:10Yeah, I think there are lots of, I would say, processes that are already kind of quite, quite working well within
17:18BIAC group. I think what I can bring in is, you know, things that maybe because of the speed, we cannot just always
17:28just be spontaneous and try to create something on the spot. I think you need to be well prepared, you need to create a
17:35stronger design strategy. I think this strategy needs to kind of be also more extensive and not just looking at the
17:43identity or the silhouette of a car or the shape of a car. I think this is maybe more of a more old school strategy
17:50that you design certain elements that you just keep replicating, but replicate them. But I think strategy is more
18:00about, you know, how you can make with our three brands that cover, you know, Beijing is a 4x4 off-road, has a strong 4x4
18:11off-road heritage. Fox is relatively young, I think it's about seven years old, EV or new energy brand. And then you have also
18:21Stellato, which is, we aim to compete in the luxury world, like Mercedes and BMW. So, I think they're very distinct brands. I
18:31think I would like to make sure that they have distinct character, distinct offers, distinct user experiences, and then create
18:39also a vision that can also help us, you know, into the next five, six years. You know, it's something different from how I
18:47used to work. I always used to think about 10 years and beyond, but I think I'm... Now you have 18 months. Yeah, 18 months, but
18:54you need the mark, the product will stay on the market for at least six years, five, six years. So, you need to think of this
19:00kind of time span slightly differently. And I think that that's something I would like to do and introduce. What do you
19:06think would be your biggest challenge? I mean, at this cutting-throat competition? Yeah, I think there's danger of being kind of
19:20mimicking each other's success. When you see a product or brand doing well, you try to do the same, but you're always two years
19:27behind. And so, I think we have to have enough confidence as a buyer group is, as you said, is huge. It's been around for a long,
19:36long time, since 1958. So, I think we should have enough confidence to kind of do our own, have our own vision of products and
19:45experiences. And I think that will be a big challenge to kind of align maybe everyone in the company to want to go that way.
19:53And sometimes perhaps dare to slow down a little bit. I fully agree. I think we don't need to introduce too many products, maybe to do
20:02the right products for the right brands. I think that's something I believe strongly. Thank you very much for, I mean, the two gentlemen
20:10pushing the boundaries of auto design, not only just the style, form and function and intelligence. You have showed us how the
20:19future of transportation looks like. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.