A LITTLE-KNOWN automaker in southern China has dominated the world’s largest electric car market, outselling bigger players and even Tesla Inc. almost every month since July with a tiny, bare-bones electric vehicle (EV) that starts at just US$4,500.

The Hongguang Mini is the brainchild of SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co., a joint venture between SAIC Motor Corp. and Guangxi Automobile Group Co., two State automakers, and U.S. giant General Motors Co.

Based in the city of Liuzhou in Guangxi, the company — which has sold some 270,000 of the cars within nine months, making it the best-selling EV in China — has even bigger ambitions for the future. It’s aiming for annual sales of 1.2 million vehicles next year, almost equal to the number of EVs churned out by China’s carmakers in 2020 combined.

It’s an eyebrow-raising target, but even before the Hongguang Mini, Wuling had a track record for producing winners in a market that’s defining the new era of driving. Set up in 2002, the JV built its business selling microvans: dependable sliding-door workhorses that earned the nickname “the bread box car” in Mandarin, and were China’s top-selling passenger vehicle in 2017. Millions of them ply the country’s roads, used by contractors and delivery drivers alike.

The buyers of those gas-guzzling gray vans are almost exclusively male, which makes Wuling’s pivot to the Hongguang Mini — which has a top speed of 100 kilometers an hour and 12-inch wheels — all the more extraordinary. Shortly after its debut last July, the automaker realized the vehicle was gaining a following among young women, a phenomenon it leaned into with an approach that bends conventional wisdom about how cars are sold.

“Our company’s mentality is to produce whatever people need,” Wuling’s head of branding and marketing, Zhang Yiqin, said in an interview. “We keep close tabs on our users. The hurdles to electric car adoption can only be cleared when consumers find using them a comfortable thing.”

To that end, Zhang has staffed his team with employees who understand the Hongguang Mini’s customer base, which is now around two-thirds female. At 35, he joked he’s the elder statesman of the group whose age averages around 27. Slogans like "Young and Eager" are splashed across the walls of Wuling’s headquarters in Liuzhou, a city that’s embraced EVs alongside the company with 30 percent of all car sales electric last year, the highest rate in China, according to WAYS Information Technology.

Wuling’s success with the Hongguang Mini was driven by a targeted marketing campaign conducted almost entirely online, according to Zhang.

His team often communicate with consumers directly via various social media platforms, and it was a customer’s request for more hues that saw the company come up with Hongguang Mini’s latest iteration — the Macaron. It comes in avocado green, lemon yellow and white peach pink, with an optional solid-color roof for contrast, to mimic the vanilla butter cream that sandwiches the French meringue confections of the same name.

It’s also how they landed on one of the car’s key selling points — besides its rock-bottom price point: Hongguang Mini drivers are able to customize their vehicles in a way that’s not possible elsewhere.

Using “stickers,” the car’s panels and body can be transformed. Some sport the Nike swoosh, some have galaxy-like outer space scenes and others cartoon characters from Hello Kitty and Doraemon. The original Hongguang Mini comes in around 20 different base colors, which can be switched up, and buyers can customize the interior as well.

Outside of Liuzhou, EV penetration in China is around 6 percent and competition is fierce. Tesla may be the name that resonates loudest, but a host of newer, local entrants from Nio Inc. to Xpeng Inc., Li Auto Inc. and WM Motor are crowding in.(SD-Agencies)