Li Yinan announced that he built a car: "I have a high probability of raising 3 billion US dollars"

Economic Observation Network reporter Wang Shuaiguo On December 15, Jiangsu Niu Innovative Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Niu Innovative Energy") released the English brand "NIUTRON", Chinese brand "Self-Traveling Home", and announced that the first product, Self-Traveling NV, will be listed and accepted for booking in the first half of 2022, and will be delivered in September of the same year.

At the end of 2020, Niu Innovative Energy was registered and established in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, becoming the first step for Li Yinan, the founder of Niu Electric Vehicle, to officially enter the manufacturing of electric vehicles. The official announcement and commercialization of the "Self-Youjia" brand means that Li Yinan has entered the army of new cars.

Headquartered in Beijing, the R&D center is located in Shanghai, and has a modern intelligent manufacturing base covering an area of 770,000 square meters in Changzhou, with an overall design capacity of 180,000 vehicles per year, and the factory is currently undergoing pre-mass production transformation and calibration, which will be put into use in March 2022. In terms of personnel, Self-Travel Car currently has nearly 1,000 core R & D personnel.

It is understood that Youjia Automobile has completed a total of 500 million US dollars in A round financing, and investment institutions include IDG Capital, COATUE and so on. However, according to the cost of new car-making forces such as Weilai and Xiaopeng in recent years, 500 million US dollars is obviously not enough.

In this regard, Li Yinan said: "Automobile manufacturing is undoubtedly an industry with a high capital threshold. Others have also asked me why I didn't make cars before, but now I think about making cars. In 2014, I judged that I would not be able to raise more than $3 billion to do this thing, and now I should most likely be able to raise this money to do this thing. ”

Why does Li Yinan now have the confidence to raise a huge amount of $3 billion? This may be related to his dazzling and rich experience in the industry. At the age of 15, Li Yinan was admitted to the junior class of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (now Huazhong University of Science and Technology) to study physics, and became the executive vice president of Huawei at the age of 26. In 2000, he left Huawei to found Harbor Network, which was acquired by Huawei.

Since then, Li Yinan has served as the chief technology officer of Baidu and the CEO of China Mobile's 12580 business. In 2011, he joined GSR Ventures as a partner. In April 2015, Li Yinan started a business again and founded the Maverick two-wheeled electric vehicle brand. In March 2018, Li Yinan joined Meihua Angel Ventures and held the position of partner.

In February this year, the outside world began to spread the news that Li Yinan would build a car. In April, Niu Chuangxin Energy added new road motor vehicle production business. At the same time, on some recruitment platforms, Niu Chuangxin Energy began to recruit a large number of personnel for automobile manufacturing related positions.

At that time, the outside world thought that this was the pre-race preparation for The Maverick Electric Vehicle to enter the four-wheel automotive industry, but it was denied by Li Yan, CEO of the Maverick Electric Vehicle. Li Yan said at the time that Maverick Electric has no car-making plans for the time being, "we focus on traveling in the city."

Now Niu Innovative Energy is also trying to separate from the Maverick electric vehicle. "Our two companies are completely separate, the brands are not the same, and the categories are also different." Li Yinan said in an interview with reporters including reporters from the Economic Observer Network.

According to Li Yinan, the Niu Innovative Energy Car Project was launched in November 2018. In the past three years, Ziyoujia Auto has determined the parallel direction of the two technical routes of pure electric BEV and extended-range electric EREV, and developed the Gemini twin platform. Based on the platform, the first product launched from the youjia NV is positioned in the medium and large high-end SUVs, providing users with pure electricity and extended range two powertrains.

Self-traveling NV adopts the design concept of Urban Exploring to create an urban-off-road fusion style, taking into account the needs of consumers for daily commuting and holiday long-distance travel.

The economic observer network reporter saw a sample car of the self-touring NV at the Changzhou factory of Ziyoujia Automobile. The first impression of the car is that the recognition is quite good, and the unique shape of the double circular daytime running lights is connected by a dynamic LED headlight in the middle, which is different from most of the smart electric vehicle designs on the market.

In addition, the C-pillar part of the vehicle is embedded with a dynamic charging indicator, which combines the digital sense of consumer electronics with the practical functional design; the rear of the vehicle is also a penetrating LED headlight, and the upper part of the rear rear adopts an integrated crater shape, which is composed of a rear spoiler and two side wind wings, while the rear wiper is embedded in the rear spoiler, ensuring the integrity of the design and reducing the wind resistance.

In terms of interior, the Self-Touring Home NV adopts a large area of high-grade leather wrapping, the center console is equipped with a 15.6-inch touch screen, and the central area is equipped with a wireless charging station that can place the mobile phone. On the side of the main driver, the self-touring NV has set up a special storage space for female users.

According to reports, since the tour home NV has accumulated three rounds of engineering trial production, R & D test mileage of more than one million kilometers, the first round of winter and summer tests has been completed, is currently undergoing the second round of winter tests. With the completion of the transformation of the manufacturing base, Ziyoujia NV is expected to carry out small batch production in March 2022.