During the economic work meeting of the central government, it was pointed out that China will improve the position, status and competence of traditional manufacturing in its global industrial division.

As a key national auto-making base, Chongqing is leading the intelligent switch of the traditional automobile industry.

At the SERES smart factory based in Liangjiang New Area, Southwest China's Chongqing municipality, it only takes five seconds to produce a set of automotive spare parts, and robots, mechanical arms and laser welding machines are taken full advantage of.

As a leading local private automaker, SERES took the initiative in 2016 to develop new energy vehicles (NEVs), and upgrade its automotive products relying on technology innovation. Benefiting from the intelligent transformation of production lines, as well as the application of artificial intelligence, internet of things and cloud computing, all the key production procedures are now fully automated.

SERES invests 10 percent of its sales revenues annually in R&D, and over the past six years, its cumulative R&D investment exceeded 10 billion yuan ($1.48 billion). It now has more than 3,000 researchers and over 3,000 authorized intelligent NEV technology patents.

Changan – another auto-making giant in Chongqing, is a similar story. It now owns some 600 low-carbon key technologies, and last year, it submitted 4,745 patent applications.

In 2022, Chongqing's NEV sales are estimated to reach 369,000, a year-on-year increase of 142.5 percent, and its proportion of the overall automobile sales in the municipality is expected to increase to 17.7 percent.