SAIC Volkswagen's production line in Anting town, Jiading district, Shanghai. [Photo/jiading.gov.cn]
Shanghai's Jiading district, also known as "the first automobile town in China", is ramping up efforts to integrate cutting-edge technologies into its traditional industries.
Jiading has gathered more than 600 companies involved in the "new four modernizations" — electrification, intelligent networking, sharing and internationalization" strategy of China's auto industry, as well as top hardware design and manufacturers such as Horizon Robotics and Hesai Technology, software companies such as SAIC subsidiary Z-One and autonomous driving solution and operators including Baidu Apollo and Pony.ai. There are also more than 200 research and development platforms in Jiading.
"The global automobile industry is undergoing profound changes. Promoting the high-quality development of the automobile industry is a major issue for us," said Lu Fangzhou, Party secretary of Jiading.
By the end of May, 20 companies including AutoX, Baidu and Pony.ai had conducted testing on 519 vehicles. The district's cumulative testing mileage and duration account for 77 percent and 86 percent of Shanghai's total respectively.
Localization
The Shanghai Automotive Chip Valley in Jiading district. [Photo/jiading.gov.cn]
Established in Anting, Jiading, in March 1985, SAIC Volkswagen is the first Sino-foreign joint venture car company in China. The company sold 10,000 units of the Santana car within just two years of its inception.
In April 1990, SAIC Volkswagen had an annual production capacity of 60,000 Santana cars and 100,000 engines, and a localization rate of over 60 percent. By 1993, this rate had exceeded 80 percent.
"Initially, the first batch of old Santana models assembled in Jiading had imported parts such as doors, front and rear beams and engines. Later, all of these parts were made locally," said Wang Zhuxing, an employee of SAIC Volkswagen.
Wang added that many local villagers have set up their own factories to provide supporting services for the automobile industry. Anting currently has over 1,000 component enterprises that have a combined annual industrial output value of more than 300 billion yuan.
New task
An autonomous car drives on the expressway in Jiading district. [Photo/jiading.gov.cn]
The global automotive industry is currently in the midst of the pivot from fuel to new energy and Anting is no stranger to this.
In 2011, Anting became a demonstration zone for electric vehicles in China. In 2013, the district launched EVCard, the world's largest new energy vehicle time-sharing rental service provider.
In October 2018, SAIC Volkswagen's MEB plant, a new energy vehicle manufacturing facility in Jiading, completed land transfer and obtained construction permits, becoming a NEV factory that started construction around the same time as Tesla.