There are many labels on Li Yinan's body, such as genius teenagers, technology maniacs, Huawei successors, Baidu CTO, and Li Yinan; when these labels appear together with inhumanity, no one in sight, and prison disasters, the understanding of Li Yinan also becomes more complicated.
Now, Li Yinan has another label on his body: building cars.
Leaving the property three years ago, Li Yinan, who had been dormant for a long time, appeared again. On December 15, Li Yinan announced the establishment of Self-Touring Car. At the same time as the magnesium lamp gathered, Li Yinan and his self-traveler also ushered in the first "torture".
mediocre
Self-built factory, 180,000 years of production capacity, trial production in March next year, delivery in September, Li Yinan's reappearance, the amount of information is very large, but mediocre.
On December 15, a factory undergoing renovation, a makeshift conference room, a founder known as a genius, appeared impatient and anxious when answering the questions that many car company founders had to answer.
Since the youjia factory is the acquisition of the original Zotye's Mahayana brand Changzhou Jintan factory, the Mahayana brand was originally the main SUV market below 100,000 yuan, so now to produce 200,000 yuan, or even more than 300,000 yuan of pure electricity and extended range models, the factory must be completely rebuilt.
Renovations are currently underway. In the stamping workshop, the abrasives and ABB's large stamping lathes are being trial-produced, and in the welding workshop, on the one hand, KUKA's robots are in a state of installation, and on the other hand, the old production line is being dismantled. Due to the dust-free requirements, there is no access to the painting workshop and the assembly workshop.
The entire plant is in a critical phase of renovation, and the transformation of this stage will also directly determine the quality of the product.
From the perspective of the first product, since the Youjia NV positioning of the large five-seat model, the wheelbase is close to 2 meters 9, and there will be no 6-seat and 7-seat versions, the power will be divided into pure electricity and extended range two, the current parameters are not disclosed.
Its most obvious feature is that there will be a power indicator at the end of the C-pillar; in terms of the interior, it adopts a straight screen design similar to Xiaopeng, but there are physical buttons under the screen, and the LCD dashboard is also standard, and there is no mistake in the whole, and there is no amazing feature.
In terms of automatic driving, Li Yinan said that it will be calibrated by the self-tourer, and the key technology is still provided by the supplier, similar to the intelligent self-driving mode, that is, the full-stack self-developed route is rejected. From the point of view of not being equipped with lidar, the self-driving hardware strength of the self-propelled family has not prevailed.
There is no official model map, the same day is also forbidden to shoot, since the tour home NV from the current point of view does not have the same revolutionary advantage as the Mavericks into the two-wheeled electric vehicle, but only a car company born under China's strong supply chain system.
Now, whether it is Weilai, Xiaopeng or Ideal, they all focus on the full-stack self-development of automatic driving, from chips, computing power platforms to automatic driving algorithms, while Li Yinan's self-travel home has chosen to rely on suppliers.
Li Yinan said that "without China's strong "supply chain", there will be no self-traveler. It can be seen that for self-touring cars, it is more about the integration of suppliers, and there are few "top-secret weapons" that belong to them. As an important asset of Li Yinan, there is no "dream linkage" between the maverick electric and the self-traveler.
When it comes to financing, Li Yinan said that he has received $500 million in A round financing, but he has no clear statement about the financing and R&D investment in the later stage.
What is even more strange is that although the self-tourer's external publicity should try to clear up the relationship between the calf and the calf electric car, Li Yinan said when introducing the English name of the self-touring car, he specially changed the first three of NEOTRON to NIUTRON, which brought the relationship between the calf and the calf closer. 、
To sum up, Li Yinan is indeed building cars, and mass production is coming, but there are not too many surprises since the debut of Youjia NV, the whole team is only a thousand people, and the product has no special advantages and design.
This Li Yinan doesn't look like he used to be. There is no subversive thinking of two-wheeled electric vehicles in China when doing two-wheeled electric vehicles, but conservatives who do not want to make mistakes.
turn over?
People always like to see stories of falling into the bottom and then successfully rebounding, such as Chu Shijian, such as Sun Hongbin, for Li Yinan, there are more such expectations.
Li Yinan has a glorious past and an unbearable experience.
He has worked on the Internet, in automobiles, and in real estate. In April 2015, he founded The Maverick Electric Vehicle became a disruptor of electric vehicles in China, but just a few days after the release of The first new car of Xiaoniu Electric, Li Yinan was arrested for using internal news to speculate in stocks, and was eventually sentenced to two and a half years in prison and fined 7.5 million yuan.
After being released from prison at the end of 2017, Li Yinan kept a low profile for a long time, until the end of 2021, when he reappeared as the founder of Niu Chuangxin Energy and announced the "ALL in" intelligent electric vehicle.
But his first appearance is not outstanding in the field of new energy vehicles, and it can even be said to be mediocre.
Li Yinan, can you turn around with new energy vehicles?
The answer is that it is difficult.
First of all, the funds, He Xiaopeng once said that to be a new energy vehicle brand at least 20 billion yuan, and after the first phase, an additional 30 billion yuan is needed. Li Bin, the founder of Weilai, also believes that Weilai may not be able to get out of the "ICU" after 3 years of its establishment.
Li Yinan said in an interview with the media that he felt that he could raise $3 billion and come to start a business, but such a scale of funds was not sufficient for a new car-making force.
Especially when the first model was first introduced, mediocrity became the biggest feature, and it was difficult to stir up the consumer market and the "waves" of the capital market.
At present, there is no shortage of mediocre products in the new energy market. Tesla under the leadership of Musk, has become the global leader in new energy vehicles, in China, Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng, and even Nezha, zero run have led the industry forward with products, services and intelligence. These brands are still working sales of about 10,000 vehicles.
In the field of joint venture new energy, which is not so high in intelligence, Volkswagen's MEB has only reached the market share of 10,000 vehicles with a strong dealer system, not to mention the luxury brands with higher prices, sales are not as good as expected, and the new energy market has not given them more opportunities.
Three electric technology, automatic driving, intelligent cockpit, different driving control feelings have become the biggest feature of the new car forces chasing, but also considered by the market to be the direction of development, the hot spot chased by the capital market, and from the first exposure, from the self-travel home did not see a place that makes people happy. Not to mention the positioning of self-travelers, but Li Yinan's so-called desire to make consumers happy is not what self-travelers think, but need consumer recognition.
So what are the chances of giving "mediocre" self-travelers? No one can give a positive answer.
2021 is a key node in the development of new energy vehicles, eliminating a number of new car-making forces similar to Byton falling under mass production, and also welcoming independent new car-making forces and new brands launched from the transformation of traditional car companies.
In 2022, Li Yinan's self-traveler will not only face the competition of Wei Xiaoli, but also the clamping of Jidu and Xiaomi, and will also face the transformation of Toyota, Volkswagen and luxury brands, with fierce competition, while Self-traveling home has not shown its competitive strength.
Although Li Yinan said that it is not a road that can reach the end, it is now necessary to let the self-traveler show more advantages and strength, so that the outside world can give it more recognition and support. Otherwise, this jianghu will not give the loser more tolerance and understanding.
"What if the business fails?"
"If I fail, I can't help it, can't you let me kill myself?" At least pay the supplier's money back. ”
In the face of doubts, Li Yinan is also very sincere: there is a possibility of failure, and the self-traveler will not be recognized by the consumer market because it is Li Yinan's founding, and in the end, there will be more innovation in products, brands, and marketing to be successful.
The self-touring car did not make a splash. Judging from the information that has been disclosed so far, the two words of difficulty seem to be more suitable for Li Yinan now than the word turning over.