former bmw designer joins gac group
2024-09-14
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on september 13, gac group announced that former bmw car designer benoit jacob (ye binghuan) officially joined gac research institute. according to the plan, benoit will be responsible for design work, with the goal of improving the competitiveness of gac's own brand products.
public information shows that benoit is one of the leading figures in the field of global automotive design and has worked for many domestic and foreign automotive companies such as renault, volkswagen, and bmw. in 2009, benoit served as the design director of the bmw i series sub-brand and led the design of the bmw i3 and i8.
it is worth mentioning that zhang fan, deputy director of gac research institute, also worked as a designer at german brand mercedes-benz before joining gac research institute in 2011 to participate in the design of independent brands, catching up with the golden period of independent brand development. zhang fan once led the design of best-selling car products such as gs8 at gac, but in recent years, the outside world generally believes that gac group has few products with stunning designs, which has also caused gac's independent passenger car business to stagnate in the past few years.
in recent years, traditional car companies have increased their investment in their own brands. as a result, there have been frequent incidents of self-owned brands poaching designers and technical r&d talents from luxury brands. in 2011, car designer peter horbury joined geely and became the senior design vice president of geely group; in december 2016, byd poached former audi design director wolfgang joseph egger to transform the design of the qin, tang, song and other series of models; in 2018, former rolls-royce design director giles taylor joined faw group as global design vice president and chief creative officer, responsible for the styling creativity and design of the hongqi brand and china faw's brands.
the rapid development of china's automobile industry has become an important factor in attracting foreign designers to come to china for development. benoit said that chinese automobile brands are rising at a rapid pace and have won wide recognition worldwide. according to data from the china association of automobile manufacturers, from january to july 2024, 3.262 million vehicles were exported, a year-on-year increase of 28.8%. among them, 708,000 new energy vehicles were exported, a year-on-year increase of 11.4%.
it is worth noting that zhang fan said in a previous media interview that there are differences between the culture and consumption habits of foreign major auto brands and domestic auto culture and consumption habits, and the rules applied by the west to influential brands are not applicable to domestic independent brands at this stage. chinese and western consumers are very different. chinese consumers have a relatively shallow accumulation of auto culture, but they pay more attention to and are more interested in new technologies and new designs, so they are more receptive to new designs and more likely to produce aesthetic fatigue, which requires designers to constantly stimulate and satisfy users with new designs. after foreign designers join traditional auto companies, how to cater to the new demands of the domestic auto market will become a new challenge.
(this article comes from china business network)
