Genius teenager, fight again.
Text | Zuo Maoxuan
Li Yinan, a former "genius teenager", opened his third venture, this time the track shifted from a two-wheeled electric vehicle Maverick electric to a four-wheeled intelligent electric vehicle. On December 15, 51-year-old Li Yinan appeared as the founder of Niu Innovative Energy and revealed the latest progress of the car project.
Similar to the current founders of the new car-making force, such as Li Bin, He Xiaopeng, and Li Xiang, who have a personal aura, Li Yinan is also a legendary figure in the Internet jianghu.
Born in Changsha in 1970, Li Yinan enrolled in the junior class of Huazhong Institute of Technology (now Huazhong University of Science and Technology) at the age of 15, entered Huawei at the age of 23, was promoted to chief engineer at the age of 25, and became huawei's youngest executive vice president at the age of 27, and was once considered Ren Zhengfei's "successor".
In 2000, in the form of internal entrepreneurship, 30-year-old Li Yinan left Huawei and went north to establish the Harbor Network. However, the business conflict between Harbor and Huawei in the process of development is also expanding, and Huawei soon set up a "Hong Kong Office" to try to prevent Harbor from making money and going public. In 2006, Huawei finally acquired Harbor, and Li Yinan returned to Huawei again as vice president.
After the end of the two-year contract period, Li Yinan left Huawei and successively served as the CTO of Baidu, the CEO of 12580 under China Mobile, and joined GSR Ventures as a partner in 2011. But along the way, Li Yinan failed to achieve his achievements in the Huawei and Harbor periods. Until April 2015, Li Yinan announced the entrepreneurial project Niudian Technology. Stepping on the outlet of the Internet, the emergence of Maverick Electric has successfully set off a new wave in two-wheeled electric vehicles, subverting the stereotype of the electric motorcycle industry in the outside world.
However, Li Yinan's second venture was also not smooth. A few days after the release of The first new car of Maverick Electric, Li Yinan was arrested for using internal information to speculate in stocks, and was eventually sentenced to two and a half years in prison.
After his release from prison at the end of 2017, Li Yinan kept a low profile for a long time, and the outside world is also looking forward to his whereabouts. Until the end of 2021, as the founder of Niu Innovative Energy, Li Yinan "ALL in" intelligent electric vehicles, ready to write new possibilities.
"High probability of raising $3 billion"
On December 15, Niu Chuangxin Energy Technology Co., Ltd. released the English brand "NIUTRON" and the Chinese brand "Self-Traveling Home", and announced that the first product, Self-Traveling NV, will be listed and pre-ordered in the first half of 2022, and the delivery will start in September of the same year.
NIUTRON, taken from "niu" (maverick electric brand name) and "neutron" (neutron). This is closely related to Li Yinan's background, Maverick Electric is one of Li Yinan's successful entrepreneurial project experiences, and Li Yinan's major in college is physics.
However, it should be pointed out that Niu Innovative Energy and Niu Electric are two independent companies that have no connection with each other.
According to Li Yinan, the Niu Innovative Energy Project has been in place since November 2018.
However, at present, Maverick Electric has only made a model of the first car, and in the past three years, Niu Innovative Energy has not disclosed a lot of information to the outside world. From the perspective of rhythm, it is also much slower than other new car-making forces.
"We didn't spend a single day lazing or missing money in the whole process. People think we're doing it slowly, and I don't think it's fast enough, but good products are polished. The process of the car is very clear and must be done according to these processes, but there are many details, both large balances and countless details, involving a lot of design, engineering work and so on. I myself feel that our time is quite tight, but maybe others are much better than us. On December 15, Li Yinan said in an interview with the think tank Jun.
It is understood that Self-Touring Car currently has a core team of nearly 1,000 people. Among them, the company's brand headquarters is located in Beijing, Shanghai has set up a research and development center, and the R & D and intelligent manufacturing base is located in Changzhou. The overall design capacity of the Changzhou plant is 180,000 units per year, and the plant is currently undergoing pre-mass production transformation and calibration, and will be put into use in March 2022.
As we all know, it takes a lot of money to build a car. Li Yinan himself does have a good influence in the capital market.
Of course, Li Yinan also admitted that there is a high capital threshold for car building. In fact, when Preparing for the establishment of Xiaoniu Electric in 2014, The first batch of new Internet car-making forces in China, Such as Weilai Automobile, Xiaopeng Automobile, Weima Automobile, and Ideal Automobile, were also born in almost the same time period. At that time, Li Yinan had also seen car-making projects.
"In 2014, I judged that I couldn't raise $3 billion to do this thing, and now I think I have a high probability that I should be able to raise this money to do this thing." Li Yinan said.
According to reports, Youjia Auto has completed a round of financing, with a total financing of 500 million US dollars, and IDG Capital, COATUE and other institutions have participated in the investment.
"Straight male thinking" and car-building logic
Li Yinan is talented, young and famous, and has outstanding ability, but may not be a first-class manager with high emotional intelligence.
When he answers questions from the media, he doesn't have a lot of "fake big empty" words, and his answers are often very short and direct.
When asked what kind of new feelings he had about this venture and when he founded Mavericks in 2015, his answer was "really no, I'm sorry."
When asked what advantages the self-tourers have compared to other new car-making forces, his answer was, "To be honest, I really can't say it, anyway, we just have to do our own things well." ”
When asked how to view the competitive landscape of the new energy vehicle market and who can survive, the answer is also very frank.
"I don't have an opinion, my car hasn't come out yet, I haven't even come on stage yet, I'm not qualified to say if I can live or not, and I don't want to discuss this matter." Li Yinan said.
However, no matter what, Li Yinan must have his own car-building logic to prove to the outside world that ziyoujia has the rationality of existence and the possibility of success.
According to the official statement, NIUTRON symbolizes the spirit of exploring the world, the brand core advocates exploration, refinement, pleasure, Chinese named "self-travel home", hoping to provide users with a free driving, comfortable travel experience.
"The most important thing in our development strategy is to bring happiness to our customers and make our customers proud to have self-touring products, which is the starting point of everything we do." Li Yinan said.
Self-touring cars have determined the parallel direction of the two technical routes of pure electric and extended range electric.
The first product, youjia NV, is positioned as a medium-sized high-end SUV, providing pure electricity and range extenders.
From the perspective of product positioning, the self-touring NV is closer to the ideal ONE, and the exterior design style is a bit like land Rover Defender.
According to reports, since youjia NV has carried out 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 testing. 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.
In addition, like most new car-making forces, self-touring cars will also adopt a direct sales model.
The challenges are high
Xiaopeng focuses on intelligence, Weilai focuses on high-end services, and ideal cars are designed for families to build cars, and the new forces of car manufacturing at the head have basically formed their own obvious style.
What kind of market segment will self-travelers cut into?
From the currently known information, the product strategy and positioning of Ziyoujia are similar to the ideal car and Dongfeng Lantu.
Self-touring home and ideal car also chose the two routes of extended range + electric, and also positioned the high-end medium and large SUV market. Coincidentally, the production bases of both companies are located in Changzhou.
However, Li Yinan pointed out that the self-touring home is designed according to the electric vehicle NV, whether it is the platform architecture, or the appearance and interior.
"We joked internally that our range increase was actually an electric change to oil, not oil to electricity. We use the tram as a platform, and the design of the tram is all the main elements that we express. Li Yinan said.
As for the current fierce competition in the field of intelligent driving, the new forces of car manufacturing have not disclosed too much information to the outside world. Li Yinan said that the smart cockpit is developed by the self-tourer, and the automatic driving will rely on its own definition and develop with partners.
As for whether Youjia will cooperate with Huawei, which has flourished in the field of intelligent driving in the past two years, Li Yinan did not directly answer whether he would or would not. "We will explore working with leading suppliers." Li Yinan said.
Overall, China's new energy vehicle market, although full of great potential, is also full of fierce competition. Traditional car companies to increase the pace of transformation, the head of the new forces have gradually formed their own advantages, millet, Baidu and other technology giants are also eyeing the tiger, the living space of latecomers is actually quite limited, in the case of backward technology to catch up with the difficulty of gradually expanding.
For the fledgling self-travel car, it needs to face huge challenges in financing, production, research and development, sales and other aspects. Li Yinan's third entrepreneurship, facing the "jianghu" is more difficult than before.