Genius Teenager, Huawei, Baidu, Entrepreneurship... Coupled with the maverick electric that has been successfully listed, the various labels on Li Yinan's body simply have all the qualities that the "soul figure" of today's car-making enterprises should have.
According to the latest news on December 15, Li Yinan's new startup Jiangsu Niu Innovation Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Niu Chuangxin Energy") announced the completion of a $500 million A round of financing, led by IDG and COATUE.
At the same time, Niu Chuangxin Energy released the English brand "NIUTRON", Chinese brand "Self-Traveling Home", Self-Tourism is aimed at high-end new energy vehicles, involving two technical paths of range extender and pure electric, has developed the Gemini twin platform, the first product self-Touring Home NV will provide two power options, planned to be listed in the first half of 2022 and accept reservations, and start delivery in September next year.
Gemini twin platform
At the same time, Niu Chuangxin Energy also announced that since Youjia NV has carried out three rounds of engineering trial production, the R & D test mileage has exceeded one million kilometers, the first round of winter and summer tests has been completed, and the second round of winter tests is currently being carried out. With the completion of the transformation of the manufacturing base, The NV is expected to be produced in small batches in March 2022 and will be delivered to the first users in September.
It is understood that Niu Chuangxin Energy currently has nearly 1,000 core R & D personnel, the brand headquarters is located in Beijing, Shanghai set up a research and development center, and has a modern intelligent manufacturing base covering an area of 770,000 square meters in Changzhou, the overall design capacity of 180,000 units / year, the factory is currently undergoing pre-mass production transformation and calibration, will be put into use in March 2022.
Its factory in Changzhou actually acquired the Mahayana Automobile Plant and obtained its qualification.
Li Yinan also revealed some car-making information in a media interview:
Cow creation and calf are completely independent.
Niuchuang will develop its own autonomous driving, intelligent cockpit and partner development.
The first model NV will not be equipped with lidar.
Regarding brand advantages, store opening goals, whether it will cooperate with Huawei and other details, Li Yinan did not answer positively.
Li Yinan
For the new car brand that has been in preparation for three years, Li Yinan said, "In the past three years, not a day has been lazy, and not a single day has been short of money." ”
Even if the Mavericks quickly spelled out the market in two-wheeled electric vehicles, Li Yinan did not write a big book on the success of this venture on Niu's innovative energy, and he said that the complexity of car manufacturing is much higher than that of two-wheeled electric vehicles, and it is not comparable. It can be seen that Li Yinan is still very down-to-earth in the new car manufacturing entrepreneurship.
At present, the next round of financing of Niu Chuangxin Energy has not yet started, compared with xiaomi's announcement of investing 10 billion US dollars to build a car, the 20 billion US dollars mentioned by Weilai before is not enough, for Niu Chuangxin Energy, future money may still be a problem.
Although Li Yinan has added topicality to the new car brand, but nowadays, it seems that whoever builds the car is not surprising, but it is difficult to say who can succeed.
Recent new car brands, including Binli Automobile, founded by former Volkswagen China executive Su Weiming, and LIGHT Orange Automobile, which are founded by BAIC Yinxiang, do not make much splash on these new brands.
In November, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in China exceeded 20%, and the sales of new energy vehicles in China this year are expected to exceed 3.5 million. Market data shows that the private consumer market for electric vehicles is starting, and it seems that it is not too late to enter the market at this time.
This year, from the home appliance brand to the next car, the real estate developers to build cars have bubbled up one after another, to the Internet players Baidu, Millet entry, the car-making track has ushered in a round of "new forces".
For these new brands, how thick the family foundation is, whether the differentiated advantages are competitive, and whether they can mobilize the emotions of capital and the market will only become bigger and bigger.
As another "product genius" and a good friend of Li Xiang, CEO of Ideal Car, Li Yinan said that since building cars, he has never communicated with Li Xiang to build cars. For Niu Chuangxin Energy, to avoid becoming the shadow of the predecessors, it is necessary to have more independent thinking ability.
Even if a new brand pops up all at once, it is rare for anyone to ask, "Does the market need a new brand?" ”
Because there seem to be fewer and fewer people who care.