When you think of a factory in China, the common stereotype for most people is that they think these factories are small, dark, full of people, and inefficient. However, from making copycats of cars to being those that push the limits of electric vehicles and self-driving technologies, the quality of things in China in general has increased exponentially over the past few years.
As part of our tour with Changan Auto Philippines, we visit the automaker’s home base in Chongqing, China, and take a tour of its newest flagship factory, the Changan Digital Intelligent Factory, located within the Yubei district in Chongqing, China.
This massive facility has an area of 770,000 sq-m, and is able to produce about 280,000 vehicles annually. Currently, only three vehicles are being assembled here: the Avatr 07, the Changan E07, and the Deepal S05.
This is the first factory in the world to have full 5G coverage and utilize artificial intelligence, allowing for the eventual expansion and full automation of the entire plant.
For now, it is home to 2,000 to 3,000 employees (depending on the season) as they work in tandem with the various robots around the factory used for quality control, logistics, and doing tasks that would often strain or slow down when humans are involved.
We were also told that this is a flexible workshop, meaning that this assembly line can change parts and cars much more easily than other factories with “rigid” assembly lines. Cars can easily swap between left-and right-hand drive configurations with various feature sets, and we were even told that this factory can produce cars for different automakers, though nobody has approached them about it at the moment.
They also utilize 260,000sq-m of solar panels and other measures to help reduce their carbon footprint, and, more impressively, they have their own battery assembly facility within the complex.
Within their Digital Intelligent Factory is the Digital Intelligent Battery Workshop that spans 39,000sq-m. Here, it takes 51 seconds to assemble one battery unit, and it’s capable of churning out at least 280,000 battery units in one year.
Most Chinese manufacturers will often source batteries from other companies (such as CATL or BYD), including Changan themselves for some of their other electric vehicles, but they’ve recently started work on their own battery (in a joint venture with CATL) called the Golden Shield Battery.
This tech has been in development since 2023, with a focus on energy density within the smallest possible package, longevity, and most importantly, safety.
They have a climate-and-dust-controlled area where they assemble the cells and packs, but we were only shown the safer parts of the factory where the completed cells were being packaged and ready for transport to the other parts of the factory.
We may have only gotten to see two of the many different zones in the complex, but the sheer scale and efficiency are evident as we walked through the final assembly line, with completed cars rolling over a “rough road test” to find out if there are any suspension defects before they go through other environmental and final checks.
In fact, they mentioned that every 60 seconds, one vehicle rolls off the line, which is an impressive feat considering the scale of this operation.
While one may say it is a way for Changan (and China) to flex its production and assembly chops to the rest of the world, one thing is for certain: the Chinese are out there, and they’re out for blood in every industry. Competition spurs innovation, which is a good thing for other manufacturers around the world who may have been caught sitting on their laurels.
