Starting from the bottom of the future car: "money shortage" crisis

Text/Leju Finance Jin Wenyu

"Long time no see, I'm back again", "I'm young and energetic", "Give yourself a flag, I want to work hard to release more, beautiful presentation, gorgeous turn"...

Recently, the long-dormant future car has a new movement.

The official public account of The Future Automobile, which has not been updated for a long time, has continued to push corporate news since December 2, while the update date of the previous tweet is still stuck on July 30, 2020.

On December 2, Qiantu Automobile released a road running video about Qiantu K50, and at the end of the video, it also specially lit up the logo logo of Qiantu Automobile's factory in Suzhou; on December 7, Qiantu Automobile issued a document saying that it would sign a strategic cooperation agreement for the Meta-Universe Event with Goldenport Holdings and Blue Ocean Creative, and the three parties would enter the Meta-Universe together, and the role of Qiantu Automobile in this is to provide vehicle modification programs and modified parts.

At the moment when the new forces of car-making are surging up, the future car is like a meteor that passes by in a flash, once made a stunning appearance and left the scene in a hurry. Recently, this sudden voice has triggered people's speculation that the future car is about to restart the car-making business?

Annual sales are only 131 units

As one of the earliest car manufacturers, Qiantu Automobile was established in 2015, and its parent company is Great Wall Huaguan, which is a passenger car manufacturer with new energy vehicles as the core. According to the data, Great Wall Huaguan was established in 2003, and its main business includes the design of traditional cars, new energy vehicles and military vehicles, as well as the research and development, production and sales of electric vehicles.

Shortly after the establishment of Qiantu Automobile, Great Wall Huaguan landed on the New Third Board, raising a total of 2.12 billion yuan five times. Although this little money is not much in the vehicle manufacturing industry, it provides the most important upfront capital reserve for the future car.

Unlike most new car manufacturers who are "miscellaneous brands", the future car can be described as a root and a red, and it has long obtained the official identity of manufacturing new energy vehicles. In 2016, Qiantu Automobile took the lead in obtaining the new energy vehicle production qualification approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, and in 2018, Qiantu Automobile entered the list of new vehicle manufacturers released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, officially becoming the sixth enterprise in China to obtain the "double qualification" of new pure electric passenger cars.

Thanks to its advantages in technology, design, pre-capital reserves and production qualifications, Qiantu Automobile has directly benchmarked Tesla, a leading enterprise in the field of new energy vehicles, since the beginning. Its first model, the K50, did not use the SUV model that new car manufacturers generally choose as the entry point, but positioned itself as a pure electric sports car. In August 2018, the future K50 was officially listed, and the price after subsidy was 686,800 yuan, which can be said to be the most expensive car in the domestic car manufacturers at that time.

Although this sports car retains the appearance of the concept car at that time to the greatest extent, and the design of the supercar makes it look very stylish, the future car has a serious deviation in positioning from the beginning.

Perhaps because the model was too niche, perhaps because the price was too expensive, or the acceptance of pure electric vehicles by consumers at that time was not high, and finally the future of K50 ended in dismal ends, with only 131 cars sold a year. By October 2020, it was revealed that Qiantu Automobile's first direct-operated store in Beijing had withdrawn, and its models had stopped production.

Burn out 2 billion a year

Although sales are very poor, the future car burns money quickly. New car manufacturers need to continuously introduce investors and rely on the assistance of the capital market to maintain their own operations and development, but from the perspective of the future of the car, it has always been the parent company Great Wall Huaguan who is transfusing blood for it.

According to incomplete statistics, since the listing of the New Third Board, Great Wall Huaguan has raised more than 2 billion yuan through private placement. But the money raised was burned up by the future car in about a year.

Dragged down by the future car manufacturing business, Great Wall Huaguan has also fallen into a serious operational crisis. From 2015 to the first three quarters of 2018, the net profit attributable to the shareholders of the listed company was -21.747 million yuan, -98.4428 million yuan, -226 million yuan and -370 million yuan, respectively.

In February 2019, Great Wall Huaguan, which has been facing losses and liabilities, applied for termination of listing on the New Third Board, and the follow-up development funds of Future Automobile have become more and more unsettled.

Since then, negative news about the lack of funds for Future Auto has followed, first in February 2019, it was exposed that employees were in arrears of wages, as well as suppliers' payments, and the production base in Suzhou's Huqiu District was also abandoned. What is more exaggerated is that some employees revealed that Future Auto requires some employees to use personal information to apply for credit loans to the company, and then rely on these loans to pay employees.

The future of the car is swirling around in the whirlpool of wage arrears, and the company's operation and management are even more chaotic, and they are already on the verge of elimination. In November 2020, Qiantu Automobile was exposed to a broken capital chain, its first store in Sanlitun in the country has been withdrawn, and the delivery center in Jingang Automobile Park has also been emptied.

According to the data of enterprise investigation, so far, Qiantu Automobile has been involved in a total of 676 judicial cases, with 26 records of execution, involving more than 300 million yuan, 545 records of historical executors, and the total amount of historical executions is as high as 856 million yuan. Lu Qun, chairman of Qiantu Automobile, was limited to 400 times. It can be seen that there are many problems in the future of automobiles.

The "resurrection" omen

The sudden "resurrection" of the future car is not without warning. In 2021, when new energy vehicles are growing against the market, we can still see signs of future cars returning to the light.

It is reported that at the end of May this year, Great Wall Huaguan held the second shareholders' meeting of 2021 in Suzhou Qiantu Automobile Base, which elected a new board of directors and a board of supervisors, and resolved to approve the relevant company financing and equity incentive plans.

Du Mingchong, deputy general manager of the investment banking department of CICC, Shen Jihong, director of the management committee of Nanjing Economic and Technological Development Zone, Dong Min, general manager of Suzhou High-tech Venture Capital Group Co., Ltd., GuoKejia and qiu Lianyong, managing director, and Li Yaoyuan, natural person shareholder, attended the meeting.

In early June, there were also media reports that Great Wall Huaguan, which had been delisted from the New Third Board for two years, said it was studying plans to re-list. Now, after half a year, The Future Automobile has officially announced its comeback, and it is likely that the Future Automobile has a new "money path".

In addition, in the recently released Douyin account, Qiantu Automobile exposed the test video of the new car Qiantu K70 on the five major tracks in China. The promising car, which has been lying flat for a year, seems to have the intention of re-entering the market development. However, under the background of high debt, no one can say whether the future car can have a "future".