Former GM engineer shares knowledge

Former General Motors auto engineer Youssef Ahmed Ghoneim is sharing his knowledge and experience with Chinese colleagues at Great Wall Motors to help them develop a chassis-control system.

The 65-year-old joined Great Wall Motors in 2016, three months after retiring from more than 30 years with GM in the United States.

“When I was ready to retire from General Motors, I read an article about Great Wall’s founder’s vision of transforming his company from a manufacturing company into an innovation-driven one,” Ghoneim said.

“I really appreciated his idea and I decided to join the company’s revamp.”

Great Wall Motors, founded in 1984 and headquartered in Baoding, Hebei province, is China’s largest producer of sport utility vehicles.

It emphasizes research and development work and has channeled investment to the area with the aim of transforming itself into an innovation-driven powerhouse.

“It’s a challenging transformation,” Ghoneim said. “When I came to work here two years ago, the engineers at the company didn’t use any mathemati- cal or modeling tools. I told them that if we want to develop autos by ourselves, it’s necessary to establish these tools.”

He has delivered a series of lectures on automobile dynamics and helped build simulation software and models for auto development at Great Wall Motors.

“My Chinese teammates are passionate for knowledge and friendly to me; they are smart and hardworking,” Ghoneim said. “But it’s about changing the mindset of my teammates.

“My philosophy working with them is to show them how to solve the problem rather than solving the problem for them. Of course, I can give the answer directly to them but I want them to know the basic principles behind these problems.”

The senior engineer is also paying close attention to the auto market and new energy development in China.

“I’ve seen a great change in China’s experience in areas of energy development and industrial structure adjustment in these two years,” he said.

“When I came to Baoding in 2016 for the first time, the air quality was so bad, but it has gotten better. It must be due to some efforts to ease industrial pollution.

“China is at the center of a global energy transformation, which is being driven by technological change and the lower cost of renewable energy. As far as I know, the money China has invested in renewable energy usage and development is more than the total of Europe and the United States.”

Ghoneim said electric vehicles are a good example of the changes in China’s auto market.

“China has emerged as a leader both in supply and demand for electric vehicles,” he said.

“In 2017, China was the largest market for electric cars, accounting for more than 40 percent of the electric vehicles sold across the globe — double the number sold in the United States.”

But Ghoneim also sees challenges ahead for China in automobile production and development.

There are too many manufacturers in the market, he said, which makes quality and efficiency uneven.

“Sometimes we got pieces from different suppliers that varied in quality; when you put these pieces together, the product will not be that good,” he said.

“It’s necessary to make sure the quality of these pieces meets certain standards, and even international standard if you want to be competitive in the global market.”

Youssef Ahmed Ghoneim, former General Motors auto engineer