With the release of Carvin Automobile, Foton Motor's new energy transformation has taken a step forward.
A few days ago, the new energy commercial vehicle brand - Carvin Automobile was officially released. The brand was jointly established by Foton Motor, a commercial vehicle subsidiary of BAIC Group, Bosch Venture Capital, a subsidiary of Bosch, Boyuan Capital, SinoHytec and BAIC Industrial Investment. According to the official introduction, Carvin Automobile will lay out pure electric, hydrogen fuel cell and other technical routes; In the next three years, a series of models such as vans (vans), light trucks, and heavy trucks will be launched in the domestic and overseas markets.
Tianyancha shows that the full name of Kavin Automobile is "Beijing Kavin New Energy Vehicle", which was established in October 2022. Among them, Foton Motor holds 65% of the shares, Bosch Venture Capital, Boyuan Capital and Yihuatong each hold 10% of the shares, and Shenzhen Fuyuan Smart Investment, a subsidiary of BAIC Industrial Investment, holds 5% of the shares.
In addition, the company's legal person is Chang Rui, chairman of Foton Motor, and Qin Zhidong, vice president of Foton Motor's business, is the general manager.
According to Qin Zhidong, Carvin Automobile will lay out two major technical routes of pure electric and hydrogen fuel cells to create an exclusive platform for new energy. The product series focuses on heavy trucks, light trucks, and vans, and has the product characteristics of light weight, low energy consumption, long battery life, intelligence, and high comfort, and is used in high-frequency and efficient logistics scenarios such as medium and long-distance trunk lines, urban distribution, and terminal distribution.
In terms of product planning, Carvin Automobile will launch its first product in 2024, and in the next three years, it will successively launch a series of models such as vans, light trucks, and heavy trucks on three major platforms in the domestic and overseas markets.
In addition, in order to achieve the leading position of vehicle platform technology and new energy technology, Kavin has independently built the master architecture technology, developed a cross-platform, scalable, and highly heterogeneous computing power centralized electronic and electrical architecture for commercial vehicles, developed a high-power hydrogen fuel cell engine and a liquid hydrogen storage system focusing on trunk transportation, and self-developed new energy and intelligent technologies such as high-performance electric drive axles.
It is understood that the launch of Carvin Automobile is an important step in the new energy transformation of Foton Motor and even the entire BAIC Group. At present, BAIC Group is accelerating the pace of implementation of the comprehensive new energy strategy, based on the new energy technology innovation of "pure electric + hybrid", promoting the implementation of the new energy strategy in the whole value chain such as technology, products, and chains, and the family tree of new energy products is gradually clear in the rapid adjustment of product architecture.
Among them, in the field of passenger cars, with the support of the two major brands of ARCFOX and Beijing, it constitutes a new energy product system of BAIC's own brand passenger cars based on pure electric vehicles and supplemented by hybrid power; In the field of commercial vehicles, Foton Motor has formed a product matrix of all commercial vehicles covering pure electric, hybrid and hydrogen fuel technology routes and covering all scenarios.
In this context, Foton Motor has clarified that the new energy strategy is the first strategy for the company's development. In 2022, Foton Motor, together with Bosch, Sinohuatong, BAIC Industrial Investment and other enterprises, jointly invested in the establishment of Carvin Automobile; In April 2023, the "New Energy Strategy 20", open the "second entrepreneurship".
According to the "New Energy Strategy 20", to establish the 30ยท50 business strategy of Foton New Energy, that is, the proportion of new energy will exceed 50% in 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality in 2050. This is also a major strategic upgrade after Foton Motor took new energy vehicles as the focus of future strategic development in 2022 and proposed the goal of selling 150,000 new energy vehicles in 2025.
In fact, in the field of domestic commercial vehicles, Foton Motor is one of the first enterprises to start the layout of new energy R&D and manufacturing. It is understood that as early as 2003, Foton Motor launched the research and development of new energy technology; In 2008, Foton New Energy Vehicle Design and Manufacturing Industrial Base and Zhilan New Energy Division were established; In 2022, new energy vehicles will be the focus of Foton's future strategic development; New Energy 2 was launched in April last year0 strategy.
With the upgrading of Foton's new energy strategy, the market sales of its new energy products have been greatly improved. According to the data, Foton's annual sales in 2023 will be 6310,000 units, which is the only company in the commercial vehicle market with cumulative sales of more than 600,000 units in 2023; Among them, the sales of new energy vehicles exceeded 40,000, a year-on-year increase of 84%.
It should be noted that Foton Motor previously proposed a target of selling 150,000 new energy vehicles in 2025, which is nearly a quadruple of its sales of new energy products in 2023, which is quite difficult.
In addition, in the 2024 strategic plans released by a number of commercial vehicle companies, new energy and globalization are the main driving points. According to incomplete statistics, up to now, Dongfeng Company, China National Heavy Duty Truck, FAW Jiefang and many other commercial vehicle companies have mentioned that they will accelerate the transformation of new energy in 2024, which means that Kavin Automobile will face greater competitive challenges.
However, with the maturity of technology, data from the market level will begin to become a signal that the new energy commercial vehicle market is about to explode from 2023. At present, new energy intelligent commercial vehicles based on natural gas and power batteries have brought the feasibility of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" to the logistics and transportation industry.
In particular, new energy intelligent heavy trucks, due to their sensitivity to fuel costs and high-speed logistics operation scenarios, are considered to be the most suitable for the landing application of new energy intelligent driving. Some analysts believe that by 2030, the market size of autonomous driving in trunk logistics will reach 716.5 billion yuan.
In this way, the launch of Carvin Automobile will boost the development of Foton Motor's new energy to a new level.