Following Baidu, Foxconn and Xiaomi, Li Yinan, the founder of Maverick Electric Vehicle, also announced his entry into the automotive industry.
On December 15, Niu Chuangxin Energy released its new car brand "NIUTRON" and announced its Chinese name as "Self-Traveling Home". According to the official description, NIUTRON symbolizes the spirit of exploring the world, the brand core advocates exploration, refinement and pleasure, Chinese named "self-traveling home", hoping to provide users with a free driving and easy travel experience.
Previously, the outside world has been using Niu Innovative Energy as an automotive project of Niu Electric Technology (the parent company of Maverick Electric). But at the press conference on the 15th, Li Yinan said on this issue, "The two companies are completely separate, the brands are not the same, and they are not the same in this category."
Headquartered in Beijing, R&D center in Shanghai, in the official introduction, Ziyoujia Automobile's modern intelligent manufacturing base in Changzhou covers an area of 770,000 square meters, the overall design capacity is 180,000 units / year, the factory is currently undergoing pre-mass production transformation and calibration, will be put into use in March 2022. At present, Youjia Automobile has a core R & D team of nearly 1,000 people, all from mainstream first-line automobile companies at home and abroad, with an average working experience of more than 10 years.
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.
Extended range chassis (left) and pure electric chassis (right)
According to the plan, the self-touring product layout adopts pure electric and extended range parallel, and the Gemini twin platform has been developed. Based on the platform, the first product self-touring NV is positioned in a medium-sized high-end SUV, using the Urban Exploring design concept to create an urban-off-road fusion wind, taking into account the needs of consumers' daily commuting and holiday long and short trips.
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. It is expected to be available in the first half of 2022 and will be available for pre-order. In terms of brand positioning, Li Yinan said that "it must be high-end". However, for the target group of the first product, the senior management team of Ziyoujia has not yet given a clear definition, but it is clear that "it will not benchmark a certain model of the existing brand in the market" to meet the market demand.