GYON adds name to long list of Chinese EV startups

LOS ANGELES — Can you believe it? Another EV startup — that will produce “affordable luxury” electric vehicles — has popped up. It is called GYON — name is an acronym for “Grow Your Own Niche.”  I attended an event here on August 8 to announce GYON’s partnership with the Gaffoglio Family Metalcrafters, a firm in Fountain Valley, CA.

GYON’s mission is to “create the next generation of electric, intelligent, connected, and socialized transportation products and services.” Sounds really familiar, I know. And yes, we are all rolling our eyes. I asked Joe Chao, the co-founder and president of GYON, what made his EV company special. “We are not just a car company,” he told me. “We are a system provider.”

Although details of the actual car, battery, and charger were scare, GYON showed a photo of a “Smart City Ecosystem” circle — car operation-AI Smart-Charging Network-Finance-Connectivity — which make up the system, I guess.  Not exactly new but a hot topic in China. GYON is headquartered in the southwest China city of Chengdu, and has a lot of support from the local government, Joe told me.

It is true that the local governments in China all want their own EV champion. And Chengdu has a pretty solid automotive base — Volkswagen, Toyota, and Volvo have plants there. I guess the Chengdu government feels like it needs its own EV startup.

GYON aims to build two production plants in Chengdu with a total capacity of 480,000 units. The plan calls for one plant to be finished in 2021, the second in 2024. But, Chao admitted, that depends on negotiations with the Chengdu government going well. Control seems to be a sticking point — GYON wants full control to ensure quality, etc.

Most — actually all except for me — of the journalists there were Chinese, most flown over from China, it seems. The first press release was in Chinese. So the audience was clearly in China.  Los Angeles was chosen as the location for the event because Gaffoglio Family Metalcrafters are based nearby in Orange County.

GFM will produce a prototype for GYON. No sketch was available — the whole thing is pretty nascent, was my feeling. But GFM does have a stellar list of clients and accomplishments so I expect the prototype — which may be rolled out at CES in 2020 — will look great.

GYON is super ambitious — it says it will turn out nine vehicles in eight years. They will be in the sedan, MPV, SUV, and even station wagon segments. The first models look to be small EVs, however, A and B segment or sub-compact and compact.  GYON says it will turn out “affordable luxury” cars and the price point for the first models — 100,000 to 200,000 RMB, or US $14,668 to $29,337 at current exchange rates — is pretty darned affordable. It will be interesting to see how much luxury GYON can pack into the vehicles at that price.

Joe pointed out that the quality of an EV maker’s team is very important in landing funding, and he has assembled a pretty stellar group. Joe Chao is, of course, the former head of DaimlerChrysler’s China operations. He oversaw the production of the Beijing-Benz plant whose opening I attended. He also was an SVP at Chrysler, worked at GM, and after leaving DaimlerChrysler worked for Fisker and Karma in China, among others.  He’s been around.

Also at the event were Jacky Xian, a GYON investor and CEO of Sitech; Sunho Park, head of GYON quality center and also quality manager at Sitech; Sebastien Yang, manager of GYON marketing and product planning; and Thomas Zhang, chief engineer. All have impressive automotive CVs.

Another common trait is that many have connections to Sitech, another EV maker, which is backed by FAW.  Sitech launched it own little EV, the Dev1, earlier this year. Joe says GYON and the Dev1 won’t share technology. Sitech is an investor in GYON, however, which means FAW is an investor, in a way.  As with so many companies in China, the ownership structure of GYON is a tangled web.

Joe said that GYON might use FAW’s manufacturing capacity if GYON had a production-ready vehicle and its plants weren’t ready.  Loose FAW ties aside, GYON doesn’t have a close relationship with an established automaker.  Its execs, who do have a lot of automotive experience among them, touted this as a risk and an advantage (they would, of course…).

“We don’t have a big uncle behind us,” said Chao. “It is up to us. This is about risk..” But, he said, they were not going to use that as an excuse not to found GYON.

Jackie Xian added: “In China, people have an open mind to welcome a new brand.”

Not sure how true that is.