The millennium-old movable type printing technology meets modern automotive industry in Great Wall Motors’ technical system, and a cross-temporal technical dialogue is reshaping our understanding of car manufacturing.
When Wei Jianjun, Chairman of Great Wall Motors, stood in a wooden movable type printing workshop in Rui’an, Zhejiang, gazing at those Song-style character molds that have spanned thousands of years, he saw not only the crystallization of Chinese civilization’s wisdom but also the key to unlocking the puzzle of the modern automotive industry.
On January 16, 2026, Great Wall Motors officially launched the world’s first native AI full-power automotive platform — “Guiyuan”.
Behind the naming of this platform lies Great Wall Motors’ profound thinking on “returning to the essence and reconstructing logic”, as well as its innovative practice of drawing systematic methodology from the depths of Chinese civilization and returning to the industry’s essence through the “First Principles”.
01 Modern Interpretation of the Philosophy of Movable Type Printing
The design inspiration of the Guiyuan Platform directly comes from movable type printing, one of China’s Four Great Inventions. The essence of movable type printing lies not only in “printing” but more importantly in “flexibility”.
It relies on standardized character blocks to freely combine within a unified system, achieving “one foundation generating all phenomena”. Drawing on this wisdom of “simplifying complexity”, the Guiyuan Platform transforms automotive manufacturing from the traditional fixed “woodblock carving” mindset into a modular and flexible “movable type” system.
Most traditional automotive platforms are designed for a single power form. Switching the power system often requires reconstructing the chassis architecture, resulting in long R&D cycles and high costs. The core breakthrough of the Guiyuan Platform is to decompose the entire vehicle into 49 core modules and 329 shared components, forming a standardized “technical movable type library”.
This “movable type” car-making logic, through unified interface design, allows modules to be flexibly matched across power types and vehicle models, enabling power system switching without modifying the chassis. This directly breaks the path dependence of traditional car-making and brings automotive manufacturing into a new era of flexible combination.
02 Technological Breakthrough in Full-Power Compatibility
The core advantage of the Guiyuan Platform is its compatibility with five power forms: PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle), HEV (Hybrid Electric Vehicle), BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle), FCEV (Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle), and ICE (Efficient Internal Combustion Engine), breaking the past model where one power form corresponds to an exclusive platform.
This capability of “one architecture, full-domain compatibility” is not a simple accumulation of multiple powers but precise coverage of different user scenarios.
For long-distance travel users, PHEV models are equipped with the super Hi4-PHEV system, featuring a 4-speed hybrid-specific transmission, a 2.0T hybrid engine, an 800V high-voltage architecture, and a 270kW silicon carbide motor, balancing power performance and cruising range. Taking a D-class SUV as an example, its pure electric cruising range reaches 363 kilometers, and the 0-100km/h acceleration only takes 4 seconds.
For users mainly commuting in urban areas, HEV models pioneered a large-capacity design, with comprehensive acceleration improved by 12% and fuel consumption reduced by up to 14.4% in the same scenario; while pure electric enthusiasts can choose BEV models, which are equipped with a full-domain 900V high-voltage architecture and self-developed 6C battery cells, with a peak charging power exceeding 600kW and 10%-80% SOC charging taking only 10.5 minutes, completely solving the charging anxiety of pure electric models.
03 Innovation of Native AI Intelligent System
With the technical path of “hardware function atomization, software experience labeling, and AI scheduling nativization”, the Guiyuan Platform upgrades automotive intelligence from “vehicle-machine intelligence” to a new height of “whole-vehicle intelligence”.
At the hardware level, the Guiyuan Platform adopts a structure tree decomposition model, decomposing the entire vehicle into 49 core modules and 329 shared components to achieve interface standardization and functional modularization.
At the software level, based on SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture), the platform has built a shared resource pool containing more than 2,000 standardized atomic capability labels. These “atomic services”, such as welcome light language and large-model intelligent driving decision-making services, turn scattered hardware capabilities into a “library” that AI can understand and call.
The real breakthrough lies in “AI native”. The Coffee EEA 4.0 electronic and electrical architecture equipped with the platform adopts a “central computing + regional control” mode, breaking the data barriers between traditional functional domains.
The integration of the world’s first dual VLA large models (Intelligent Driving VLA + Cockpit VLA) and AI OS endows the vehicle with stronger environmental perception, scenario understanding, and autonomous decision-making capabilities.
04 Fundamental Reshaping of Safety Concepts
The Guiyuan Platform has achieved a conceptual innovation in the field of safety, proposing the “T-Safety comprehensive safety concept” that emphasizes the deep integration of active safety and passive safety.
Leveraging AI perception and decision-making capabilities, the platform aims to achieve a full-process safety closed loop from risk prediction and active intervention to collision protection. As the only global automaker that independently researches and develops and builds a real-scenario verification environment, Great Wall Motors is developing the world’s first active-passive integrated dummy that supports continuous working condition verification.
This dummy can synchronously simulate human forward leaning during active braking and force bearing in subsequent collisions in the laboratory, realizing the full-process physical verification closed loop from early warning to collision protection for the first time.
In terms of passive safety, based on AI simulation of multi-angle collisions, the platform creates a longitudinal beam force transmission path. Combined with high-strength and high-density mesh protection, it takes the lead in equipping 5 industry-first technologies globally, including inner and outer double door rings and 2200MPa body frame reinforcement plates.
05 Technical Comparison with Traditional Platforms
Compared with traditional automotive platforms, the Guiyuan Platform represents a completely different car-making concept. Traditional platforms such as Volkswagen’s MQB can only be compatible with fuel and plug-in hybrid models, and Toyota’s TNGA has not achieved full power coverage. These platforms mostly refer to the mechanical level, including body form and chassis structure, and are usually matched with specific models of engines and transmission powertrains.
The fundamental difference of the Guiyuan Platform is that it no longer defines the platform by mechanical structure and size, but by the powertrain. The physical object displayed on the platform is not a complete chassis frame, but a combination of front and rear drive modules + middle battery or fuel tank.
Regarding the long-standing industry argument of “pure electric exclusive platforms”, Great Wall Motors clearly states: “Pure electric platforms are a false proposition”. The upper limit of the experience of pure electric models is not determined by the platform label, but by the integration capability of the underlying technology.
Different from some automakers’ strategy of All in pure electric, Great Wall Motors believes that no single power form can cover all markets and scenarios. The “one vehicle, multiple powers” solution of the Guiyuan Platform is precisely to respect the energy structures, infrastructure, and user preferences of different global markets.
06 Globalization Strategy and Cost Advantages
A core goal of the Guiyuan Platform is to “be born global”. Different markets have different preferences for power, regulatory requirements, and usage scenarios. The fuel vehicle market accounts for a large proportion in the Middle East, hybrid models have a certain market share in Southeast Asia, while Nordic countries have high requirements for vehicle cold resistance.
As a global enterprise, Great Wall Motors must reduce the costs of R&D, manufacturing, components, logistics and other entire links through large-scale production for global sales. Through modular design and a high-commonality component system, the Guiyuan Platform can reduce R&D costs by 30%, manufacturing costs by 15%, and maintenance costs by 28%, ultimately passing on to the terminal and significantly reducing users’ car ownership costs.
In 2025, Great Wall Motors’ overseas market sales exceeded 500,000 units, covering more than 170 countries and regions around the world. Supported by the Guiyuan Platform, Great Wall Motors has set a target of 600,000 overseas sales in 2026, accounting for one-third of the total sales.
According to the official plan, the Guiyuan Platform will launch more than 50 global models covering 5 major power types in the future, including sedans, urban SUVs, pan-off-road SUVs, high-performance off-road SUVs, pickups, MPVs, sports cars and other 7 categories, further improving the overseas product matrix.
The birth of the Guiyuan Platform is not only a technological breakthrough but also a fundamental change in car-making concepts. With the successive launch of more than 50 models based on the Guiyuan Platform in the future, Great Wall Motors is gradually realizing its vision of “crafting Chinese cars for global users with ingenuity”.
The core of competition in the automotive industry is shifting from the competition of individual models to the contest of underlying platform technologies. The emergence of the Guiyuan Platform marks that Chinese automakers have begun to grasp the right to speak in underlying technical architectures, transforming from “followers” to “leaders”.
When the millennium-old movable type wisdom is perfectly integrated with modern automotive craftsmanship in the Guiyuan Platform, what we see is not only the launch of a new product but also a vivid interpretation of innovation, inheritance, and the future.