By LIU Jiaxin
Changan Automobile has often been in the headlines recently. It has emerged as Nio's first battery-swapping partner and signed up with Huawei's new automotive business. During the Guangzhou Auto Show, Changan unveiled its own battery brand.
As early as 2017, the company began investing in EVs, with 100 billion yuan spent so far. At that time, Changan benefited from the joint venture era, with its two major partners Ford and Mazda, bringing in over 10 billion yuan in profits within a year.
In 2019, Changan recorded its first loss since going public, and annual sales dropped from a peak of 2.5 million vehicles to 1.3 million.
The turning point came in 2021 when the EV transformation began to show results. In the following year, the sales of Changan's own marques - Changan, Shenlan, Avatr, Oshan, and Kaicheng - increased to 79.8 percent. From January to October this year, sales increased to 2.1 million vehicles with independent brands comprising 1.8 million of them, increasing the share to 82.8 percent.
Avatr is a high-end EV brand created in collaboration with Huawei and CATL. In the first ten months of this year, Avatr delivered only 17,600 vehicles, less than a fifth of the annual sales target.
Shenlan targets the mass market and currently has two models priced at around 150,000 yuan. Both have monthly sales of over 15,000.
EV sales for the first ten months of this year were approximately 364,000, an 88.8-percent year-on-year increase.
Expanding overseas, a launch event in Thailand, introduced EVs from three brands – Shenlan, Avatr, and Qiyuan – to the market. A factory in Thailand is under construction.
