Shaping the future of automotive design

1st July 2019

Segula

Alex Lynn

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SEGULA Technologies is supporting its worldwide customers by opening a new design studio in the city which is becoming the Chinese capital of the automotive design: Shanghai. Under the Technicon design brand, this studio will shape the interior and exterior of tomorrow's cars and trucks, taking into account their new characteristics at a time when the car scene is shaken by the arrival of electric and autonomous vehicles.

Technicon Design, owned by SEGULA since 2017, is a key player in automotive design with recognised expertise in Europe, America and Asia. The new design studio will also benefit from the Fioravanti family's touch, another well-known name in automotive design, since they will oversee its operations.

Thanks to an international team of about thirty people (designers, digital modelers, visualisation designers, project managers and studio engineers), this new centre at the forefront of automotive design covers all the design skills, from scratch to final surfacing for industrialisation: trend and market analysis, sketches and renderings, colours and materials, HMI (human-machine interface), creative digital modelling, virtual reality, clay mock-up, prototype and concept car, studio engineering and A-class surfacing.

As the world's largest car market with 28 million matriculations in 2018, China is at the heart of innovation in electric and hybrid vehicles. The opening of this design studio allows SEGULA to strengthen its presence in this key country.

"The automotive world is facing a major structural change: the biggest Chinese car makers are now opening studios abroad while Western car makers are settling in China. Opening our new design studio in Shanghai will allow us to provide the main Chinese and Western car makers with local support and to follow them when they are moving abroad thanks to our global presence in the major areas of automotive worldwide,” said Luca Fioravanti, Technicon Design General Manager.

SEGULA has been active in China since 2005. SEGULA China now has 500 employees in four sites in Wuhan, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Chongqing, and plans to recruit 250 people in 2019.

SEGULA Technologies, present in more than 30 countries, enjoys a strong international growth, particularly in Asia with the recent opening of an office in Japan.

Pierre Authier, Style Director at SEGULA Technologies, said: “SEGULA's ambition is to become the global leader in automotive engineering by 2023. By combining our expertise in design, our project culture, our proximity to our clients and a deep market and brand knowledge, our new design studio has substantial assets to support the global car players with the highest quality.

“Moreover, together with the other services offered by SEGULA Technologies, we can provide the full chain of services from scratch up to industrialisation.”