[Automotive Home? factory reveal]? The epidemic that raged at the beginning of the year had a huge impact on many industries, especially on the new start-up car companies that have just begun to bring great challenges. How is Wilma Auto doing today? We took a deep dive into its Wenzhou manufacturing base to see the current state of Weimar's production chain.
"Self-built factories, quality assurance" is one of the car-making concepts of Weimar when it was first established, and founder Shen Hui believes that only by grasping the manufacturing process in its own hands can it guarantee production capacity and quality. The factory has also begun to officially put into production.
Weimar's factory's startup team is mostly from SAIC-GM, with a mature staff structure and a mature production system, which allowed Weimar to land its products very quickly in the early stages, and Weimar has also become one of the earlier car companies in the startups that have brought their products to the market.
We are currently producing the Weimar EX5 and EX6 in our Wenzhou factory, two pure electric vehicles designated as compact SUVs and medium-sized SUVs, respectively, *** line customized production, with a high rate of component commonality.
We are also producing the Weimar EX5 and EX6 in our Wenzhou factory, a pure electric vehicle designated as compact SUVs and medium-sized SUVs, with a high rate of component commonality.
From the beginning, Wilma has established a complete four major production process workshops for stamping, welding, painting and general assembly, with the factory site located in Oujiangkou, Wenzhou, covering an area of 1,000 acres, with an initial planning of 100,000 vehicles/year production capacity, which can be expanded to 200,000 vehicles/year total production capacity with the growth of the users.
The stamping workshop is set up with 5 sequential automatic stamping lines, with stamping tonnages of 2400 tons, 1400 tons, 1000 tons, 1000 tons, 1000 tons, and the production beat is 8-10 pieces/minute, and the hardware equipment is at the first-tier level in China.
Welding workshop, the main welding line is equipped with automated welding robots from Japan's FANUC, which has a high automation rate and supports the flexible production of EX5 and EX6.
Based on the concept of customized production, Wilmar has made more designs and considerations for the welding, painting and final assembly workshops, and according to the order information, the production sequence and process will be adjusted online accordingly to achieve more efficient production.
Weimar's order-based production is direct-to-consumer, or C2M, where buyers are free to choose their own body color, interior configuration, wheel styles, range versions, and other technological features for their favorite models, which are arranged and combined in hundreds of combinations, requiring sufficiently intelligent production capacity for an automotive factory.
At some key processes in the factory, robots are networked to automatically match the configuration of the models to be produced based on back-end ordering data.
For example, the Weimar EX5 and EX6 have an optional battery-assisted heating configuration, which requires a welding robot to automatically match and grab a different sidewall based on the production data, because the sidewalls of this configuration are different from the other configurations.
In the assembly plant, you will find a bar code pasted on the longitudinal beam of the model, and there is also a configuration sheet in front of the hood, which is equivalent to the "ID card" of each vehicle, telling the robot and workers what kind of configurations it needs to be assembled.
With the EX6 going into production, the Weimar Wenzhou factory has been upgraded and remodeled accordingly. For example, the EX6 has a larger body size, a larger front and rear windshield, and a larger panoramic sunroof, so some of the tooling needs to be expanded or updated.
In addition, the EX6's trunk door is made of resin (the EX5 is made of traditional sheet steel), and a separate station has been added to the assembly line for the EX6's trunk door installation.
As time goes by, ADAS has become an increasingly popular feature on pure electric vehicles, and the higher-end models of both the WEMA EX5 and EX6 are now equipped with a full range of L2 driver-assistance features, such as full-speed domain ACC, active emergency braking, lane-departure warning, and lane-keeping, to name just a few.
Therefore, an additional testing station for the ADAS driver assistance system has been set up in the final assembly workshop at a later stage, where the ADAS hardware will be calibrated.
Compared with the EX5, the EX6 requires more workstations and processes for production, as the positioning is higher, the interior features are richer, and the electronic wiring harnesses in the car have undergone major changes.
Weimar's national sales are climbing as the epidemic improves, realizing eight consecutive months of growth. But judging from current production planning and actual fulfillment, the Weimar plant is productive enough to support current consumer orders.
Summary: "Creating a nationalized electric vehicle" was Wilma's initial slogan, and its corporate development strategy is more pragmatic than that of many startups. In the past two years, the Wenzhou factory has improved its production efficiency and lowered costs in the production chain, all of which are the basis for delivering new cars to consumers faster and more affordably. Whether Wilma can achieve higher sales and better user reputation in the future, this factory plays a crucial role. (Text/Photo? Automobile House? Xia Zhimeng)