On December 15, Li Yinan, founder of Xiaoniu Electric, officially announced his entry into the new energy car industry. This is another corporate tycoon announcing his entry into the car-making field since Lei Jun announced the construction of cars in March this year and Zhou Hongyi announced his investment in Nezha Automobile in October.
Li Yinan became a vice president of Huawei at the age of 26, and has since founded Harbor Network, served as a partner of Baidu CTO and GSR Ventures, and founded Maverick Electric in 2015.
In fact, Li Yinan entered the car manufacturing field earlier than Lei Jun and Zhou Hongyi, because he began to prepare for this project in 2018.
Li Yinan also stressed today that the new car company has nothing to do with the previous Maverick Electric, they are two independent companies.
The new energy vehicle brand he founded is called "Ziyoujia", and there are a number of related car-making companies behind it, namely Changzhou Niuchuang Technology Co., Ltd., which was established in October 2020, and Jiangsu Niuchuang Energy Technology Co., Ltd., which was established on December 3, 2020, and in 2021, they also established Shanghai Branch, Beijing Branch and Beijing Niuchuang Technology Co., Ltd.
Also announced today is the $500 million A round of investment led by IDG and COATUE.
It is reported that in 2015, when the Niu Electric Technology A round of financing behind Xiaoniu Electric, IDG also invested.
Judging from the existing reports, Li Yinan has rented the Industrial 4.0 standard automobile industry park previously established by Mahayana Automobile in Jintan, Changzhou, and has a certain basic strength in production capacity. The plant is still being renovated and is expected to be put into production in March 2022.
And at present, the core research and development team of Li Yinan's car has approached 1,000 people, so they have done their homework before the official announcement of the Youjia brand.
To interject, Wu Xiao, chairman of Mahayana Motors, is the son of Wu Jianzhong, the former chairman of Zotye Automobile, but unfortunately Mahayana Automobile has not done it, and in 2021, it has been applied for bankruptcy reorganization by other enterprises at least 3 times, and the production park rented by Li Yinan is also an asset after auction.
If Li Yinan's car construction goes well, then they will deliver the new car in September 2022. From the preparation in 2018 to the delivery in 2022, this period took 4 years, which is much faster than the speed of Jia Yueting's car. Faraday Future Motors, founded by Jia Yueting, was established in 2014 and is expected to be mass-produced and delivered in July 2022, which will take up to seven years.
Jia Yueting
At present, the competition in the new energy vehicle market is becoming more and more fierce, and in November this year, there have been 4 Chinese car-making new power companies with a single monthly delivery volume of more than 10,000 vehicles, which are Xiaopeng Automobile, Ideal Automobile, Weilai Automobile and Nezha Automobile.
In 2022, Li Yinan's self-traveling home will launch two cars at the same time, one is a range extender electric vehicle, and the other is a pure electric car, which has a direct PK with the range extender car of the ideal car, and will also compete with Weilai Automobile in the high-end SUV market.
Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan, once said that the same direction is a competition, and the opposite direction is a struggle. At this stage, all players of new energy vehicles are still competing to jointly seize the market for oil vehicles, and many people in the car industry have judged that after 2023, the new energy vehicle market will enter the knockout stage.