There are always industries that are getting old, but the auto industry is always young, and every day there are new stories happening.
In the past one or two years, the new car-making movement has attracted many high-quality middle-aged men who have achieved financial freedom like "spiritual opium", including Baidu Li Yanhong, Xiaomi Lei Jun, 360 Zhou Hongyi, and then Maverick Li Yinan.
On December 15, three days before the 2021 Weilai Day, Li Yinan brought a new brand launch without a new car (the prototype car was not made public to the outside world).
At the scene, Niu Innovative Energy Technology Co., Ltd. released the youngest new car brand in China, "Ziyoujia", the English name "NIUTRON", and announced that the first product NV will be listed in the first half of 2022 and accept pre-order, and start delivery in September.
In April 2015, when he founded The Maverick Electric Vehicle, he threatened that the Maverick was his "last venture".
So, can Li Yinan, who reneged on his promise this time, lead the "self-traveler" to achieve "freedom" in high-end electric vehicles, which he is not familiar with and the competition is white-hot?
"Hasty" cross-border car building, "self-traveling" replication of the calf successfully difficult
In the past 5 years, the rapidly expanding electric vehicle track has attracted various capitals to flock to it, and new forces have mushroomed one after another, trying to take their share of the cake from traditional manufacturers and new forces that are transforming.
In this industry background, it is not surprising that a new power brand has suddenly "emerged", and it is not surprising that Youjia has been the first new car brand created in the past few years.
However, the identity of the founder Li Yinan still made the self-traveling family attract a certain degree of attention.
Most people are familiar with this jun. At the age of 15, he entered the junior class of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, became a vice president of Huawei at the age of 27, returned to Huawei after the failure to start the harbor network at the age of 30, turned to Baidu and GSR Ventures after the age of 38, founded The Maverick Electric Vehicle at the age of 45, was imprisoned for A-share insider trading in the same year, and served as a partner in Meihua Angel Ventures after the age of 48.
In Li Yinan's own words: "My ups and downs of life are like a roller coaster." ”
Perhaps, in an ordinary consumer industry with a business model as "simple" as a calf electric car, with such a legendary life experience alone, Li Yinan is enough to make a group of fans pay for their inspirational stories.
However, the matter of "paying for feelings" has an innate ceiling, and the cost of consumers to buy feelings is directly proportional to the difficulty of entrepreneurs peddling goods.
On the contrary, Li Yinan entered the high-end electric vehicle track with extremely high entry threshold, the longest and most complicated purchase decision, and the most testing consumers' minds.
At the self-touring media communication meeting, Li Yinan also admitted frankly, "(The calf has no experience (at all) with the self-touring family, and the two things are completely different." "The complexity of the auto industry and two-wheelers are not an order of magnitude, nor two orders of magnitude, but three orders of magnitude, so I also want to borrow (Mavericks successful experience), but I really can't borrow it." "For any ultra-high-value consumer durables like a car, the consumer's decision-making cycle is very long."
In a word, the calf electric vehicle with an average unit price of only a few thousand yuan can be "easily" successful, but the difficulty of hundreds of thousands of self-touring high-end electric vehicles is extremely high, and the successful experience of the former is almost of no help to the latter.
Another interesting detail is that some of the administrative approval processes, including qualifications, have not even been completed.
Here, it is inevitable that people will have some suspicions of "rushing to the battlefield before the Weilai Day" and "rubbing traffic". After all, Changzhou, where the Dasu Automobile (Zotye brand) factory acquired by Youjia is located, is only 100 kilometers away from Suzhou, where Weilai Day was held 3 days later, and almost a long-lasting version of the Calf electric car can be ridden.
There is no brand conference for new cars, and the "bottom line" of products and technologies is questionable
Judging from the other high-profile new car brand conferences, in addition to bringing the first or even multiple blockbuster products, it will also engage in some new technologies that are difficult to mass-produce in the short term to play gimmicks.
In addition, from the perspective of the format of holding, in order to attract the attention of users, this kind of conference will generally be a big deal, after all, giving the media a report "gimmick" can sometimes achieve the effect of half the work.
For example, when Weilai spent 100 million yuan to hold the first Weilai Day in 2017, in addition to ES8, it also invited a number of investment leaders to stand, and for a time the media reported a wave of media (there was no lack of criticism), and the NIO brand also became a hit.
Even if it is low-key, it will also have a big conference of hundreds of people.
However, since the tour home this conference is a maverick, neither public release of prototypes, nor technical dry goods, but also no other heavy information release, the whole process is difficult to find highlights.
Even, a peer present ridiculed that there were even more on-site staff than the media present.
A brief review of the brand conference that has not even been made public by Youjia this time, and comb through a few valuable information for everyone.
Since the first round of financing of 500 million US dollars, Youjia will build its own sales channels and start to build a user operation system. The first model NV is positioned in the medium and large high-end SUV, delivered in September next year, the new car adopts the urban-off-road fusion design style (according to the on-site friendly media revealed that the shape resembles Land Rover's models), there are two kinds of power of extended range / pure electricity, and lidar technology is not provided.
Seeing this, perhaps everyone will issue the doubts of EXEME: "It is 2021, there is no 'product', no 'technology', and dare to open a car conference, or an electric vehicle brand positioning the high-end market." ”
According to normal logic, this situation generally has three possibilities, one is to think that their own products, technology "moderate" (the release of Weilai ET5 in a few days may be amazing), the other is not yet to the right release time, and there is a big move.
However, judging from the communication situation in the whole field, the first possibility seems to be greater. After all, Li Yinan has made it clear that "the first model NV is not equipped with hardware such as lidar" and "the self-touring NV cannot meet the needs of consumers with such high-end assisted driving hardware".
Hardware this thing, there is no harm without comparison.
Last month, when the independent brand leader Great Wall released the first model of the Salon brand, the Mecha Dragon, it caused heated discussions with the industry's first model equipped with 4 laser radars, a unique retro modern combined style, and even "less than 4 please don't talk" for a while became the industry's talking point.
When Changan Automobile, another "bad" marketing leader, released Avita, it also announced a series of hardcore parameters such as the first model Avita 1100 acceleration of less than 4 seconds, 700km + endurance, 400tops top computing power to achieve high-end intelligent driving, not to mention that Avita also has the second largest shareholder Ningde Era, the original shareholder Weilai Automobile, and Huawei's "smart family barrel package" endorsement behind Avita.
As strong as the Great Wall, Changan Automobile still has to be so desperate to get out of place. Here, it is even more difficult to understand the "confusing" behavior at the brand launch of The Tourer.
The high-end electric track has long been crowded, and the prospects of self-travelers are difficult to say optimistic
Looking back at the high-end electric vehicle market that you want to enter.
Unlike the serious shortage of high-quality products and the extremely low penetration rate of new energy when Weilai officially entered the market in 2017, today's high-end electric vehicle track has long become crowded, and the market competition pattern has a solidified trend.
At present, Tesla, Weilai, and Ideal almost monopolize the 30W+ high-end electric vehicle market, and the position of the three brands in the high-end electric vehicle market is comparable to that of Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi in the luxury fuel vehicle market, with a market share of about 70%.
At the same time, the new forces that began to explore products sold a brother Xiaopeng, byd high-end brands with strong system competitiveness, Geely Krypton, Great Wall Salon, Xiaomi, which is not bad money, and the national team's Changan Avita, Dongfeng Lantu, SAIC Zhiji, GAC Aean high-end series (in preparation) have also sharpened their knives.
As strong as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi three major luxury brands can only watch Tesla, Weilai, ideal eat the market that should belong to them. Coupled with the high-end brands incubated by several other independent leaders, this almost blocks the path for other newcomers to succeed in the high-end electric vehicle market.
From this point of view, in addition to the founder Li Yinan's personal aura can tell a good story, more important "time and place" factors (such as the competition pattern of the high-end electric vehicle industry is gradually solidified, homogenization competition is serious, enterprises need strong technology, products and a large amount of funds, reserves, but since the tour home has just completed the A round of financing), the self-tourer seems to be the same.
Of course, perhaps the future is not only self-traveler, any other brand that wants to enter the high-end electric vehicle market has almost permanently lost the possibility of replicating the success of "Weilai-style" and "ideal" again, after all, the original market soil no longer exists.
For Li Yinan, perhaps only the goddess of luck can be expected to take care of herself once again like when she took care of the calf electric car.
Otherwise, the self-traveler may really not be able to achieve the "freedom" of building a car!