Klaus Zyciora, vice president of global design for Chinese automaker Changan, took a few moments out of his busy schedule at the 2024 Beijing Auto Show to speak with Car Design News about the brand’s growing portfolio of EREV and EV brands. According to Zyciora, the increasing pace of automotive development in China has led to major shifts in the way designers and engineers must work together.

Car Design News: Changan uses both EREV and EV powertrains in many of its vehicles; how do you create a design language that can be adapted to both?

Klaus Zyciora: Yeah, we are also here in the midst of tearing this apart a little bit or combining it in a way that the customer can read from the design what drivetrain technology is incorporated. There are multiple technologies that we do apply. In China, people are used to driving long distances, so range-extended EVs are very popular, or becoming very popular, but also pure EVs are playing a major role and we see big growth rates here, and the range that you can get from Changan EVs is ever growing.

We develop our own battery technologies and we have pretty innovative platforms at hand. So, products per se are getting much more interesting, much more innovative, and also at the same time more affordable.