
GAC’s Fan Zhang: “Form language lasts for one generation in China”
Design moves fast in China, says GAC’s Fan Zhang, which means creating distinct identities for multiple brands is a serious challenge, especially when there is so much competition. CDN got the lowdown at the recent Car Design Dialogues Asia virtual event
GAC’s VP of design Fan Zhang has spoken about the challenges posed in differentiating petrol and electric cars in terms of design. Zhang, who oversees multiple brands under the GAC umbrella, including GAC Motors and Aion, was the keynote speaker on day 2 of CDN’s virtual event, Car Design Dialogues Asia.
“With the new arrival of EVs, which we only started doing four years ago, at the beginning we inevitably incorporated some of the design cues or design aesthetics from petrol cars into the EV design,” Zhang said. ”In parallel we try to think how to give the so-called EV character, like close up the grille and make it faceless. And also try to make the headlamp more linear to give us a high-tech impression. Now all those tricks apparently are not enough because everybody’s doing something similar. So the challenge for us is to try to define brands within our own family. But at the same time all the competitors.”
With EVs, there are actually less elements you can play with on the car, especially on the front end, which actually gives much fewer opportunities to make the identity or the strong image of the car.”

So, within our product line, we want to give the petrol costs a certain character, but when you try to defer the petrol to EVs, you cannot say okay the petrol car is more dynamic while the EV is not. Or the EV car is more high-tech, but the petrol car is not because at the end of the day, we are facing more or less a similar group of customers.”
Zhang also highlighted the speed of design development in China and how that was changing the approach to design – a key theme of the Car Design Dialogues event and one that was also highlighted on the first day during the Fireside Chat with GM Advanced Design China. “One form language lasts for one generation and then you have to start to think about what will come next,” said Zhang. “For example, in the Western world one kind of form language or design DNA sometimes could last many decades. Definitely more than one generation, but it looks like it’s not going to be the case in China.”
Zhang also revealed that GAC was preparing to launch two show cars at Guangzhou Auto Show in November 2021 and Beijing in April 2022.
“Everybody is trying to come up with something new. We have to keep thinking so therefore I think what you could be seeing for the Guangzhou Auto Show show car could be happening for our next generation EV cars.”