Since the beginning of this year, the development momentum of new energy vehicles has been rapid. As of November, the total sales of new energy vehicles in China have exceeded 3 million units, an increase of 1.7 times year-on-year. Driven by the "double carbon" goal, new energy-related enterprises have seized the opportunity of industry development and embarked on a new stage of development.
Among them, Beiqi Blue Valley, which has witnessed and participated in China's new energy vehicles from scratch and then to a strong attack, has ushered in transformation and upgrading this year. First of all, in terms of organizational structure, the bold use of new talents has injected new vitality into the high-end brand and product intelligent transformation. In addition, the rapid development of its high-end electric intelligent car brand, Jihu, has brought the high-end and intelligence of Beiqi Blue Valley to a new height.
One of the most intuitive performances, in addition to a series of transformation and deployment, the financial data of Beiqi Blue Valley ushered in an important signal to return to the upward channel: the third quarter financial report released at the end of October showed that the company's revenue in the third quarter was 3.66 billion yuan, an increase of 352.19% year-on-year. The total revenue in the first three quarters was 6.098 billion yuan, an increase of 55.49% year-on-year; the net loss attributable to the shareholders of the listed company was 2.644 billion yuan, which was lowered compared with the same period last year or the previous two quarters, increasing the confidence of the company's operation.
Not long ago, securities institutions gave a high bid price to Beiqi Blue Valley, which was 50% higher than the current 12 yuan stock price to 18 yuan. For the reasons for this price, there are three reasons: the pioneer of new energy vehicles; Magna's world-leading high-end manufacturing capabilities; and the level of intelligence brought by Huawei's smart cockpit. Indeed, on the one hand, Beiqi Blue Valley has accumulated leading technical advantages in the field of "three electrics", on the other hand, under the idea of "strong and powerful alliance", it has attracted like-minded partners, which has become the basis for the rapid transformation of Beiqi Blue Valley in 2021.
"Technology Genre": Pioneer of new energy vehicles
Speaking of "China's new energy vehicle pioneers", BAIC BJEV, founded in 2009, has participated in and witnessed the rapid development of China's new energy vehicles in the past ten years, and has taken electrification as a breakthrough and taken scientific and technological innovation as the core to create a new development path. It not only promotes the development of China's new energy vehicle technology, but also explores the marketing model in the fields of charging and replacing operation, time-sharing leasing and so on.
From the perspective of market performance, from 2013 to 2019, BAIC BJEV maintained the first sales volume of pure electric vehicles in China for seven consecutive years with its EU and EX series, and its sales volume reached 103,200 in 2017, surpassing Tesla to become the global pure electric vehicle sales champion and becoming the first pure electric vehicle company in China with an annual production and sales of more than 100,000 vehicles. Especially in 2018, BAIC BJEV took the lead in realizing independent operation and joint-stock system transformation, and successfully listed in A-shares as Beiqi Blue Valley, becoming the first stock of new energy vehicles in China.
Behind the rapid development is Beiqi Blue Valley's adherence to technology-based principles. More than ten years of electric vehicle research and development accumulation, the solid foundation of the core technology of Sandian, has created the systematization ability of Beiqi Blue Valley to develop and build a vehicle platform. In 2020, the key technology and industrialization project of the electric vehicle three-electric platform of Beiqi Blue Valley won the first prize of the "China Automotive Industry Science and Technology Award".
Specifically, the key technology of high-efficiency electric drive assembly has improved motor efficiency, recovery efficiency and battery energy density; the key technology of high-safety battery electronic control has realized thermal runaway early warning, thermal runaway inhibition and the safety control of tens of thousands of millisecond-level electronic control functions; through high-efficiency fully automated tool electronic control testing, multi-dimensional vehicle environment coupling equivalent bench testing key technologies, greatly reducing development and material costs.
The BAIC BJEV Test Center, which was opened in July 2019, invested more than 2 billion yuan and more than 80 laboratories, becoming the world's largest and most technologically advanced comprehensive R&D and test center for electric vehicles and core components. In July this year, the second phase of the project has also begun to be put into use, with NVH, EMC and environmental cabin vehicle test capabilities, including electromagnetic compatibility, vibration and noise and vehicle high and low temperature environmental testing and other large-scale equipment. It is worth mentioning that the battery pack test area is currently the world's largest, most complete and most advanced battery PACK laboratory, with a total investment of more than 120 million.
In addition to technology self-sufficiency, Beiqi Blue Valley also carried out two overseas technology authorizations for the BE21 platform at the beginning of this year, one was based on the ELECTRONIC AND ELECTRICAL E/E structure related intellectual property rights of the ARCFOX αT model developed by the BE21 pure electric vehicle product platform, and the second time was the platform architecture chassis technology and other related intellectual property rights of the BE21 pure electric vehicle product platform, which became one of the few successful cases of platform technology and intellectual property exported in developed countries in China.
Technological progress has provided a foundation for the high-end transformation of Beiqi Blue Valley. "There is a plane tree in the house, which attracts a golden phoenix." In the past two years, with the vigorous development of the private market for new energy vehicles, Beiqi Blue Valley has established a new partnership with Magna, Huawei and other enterprises, jointly promoting the development of its high-end intelligent electric vehicle brand Jihu. The vitality of the new brand in terms of organizational structure and products, as well as the high-end and intelligent positioning of the brand, have greatly promoted the transformation of Beiqi Blue Valley, and once again let the outside world see the advantages and competitiveness of Beiqi Blue Valley in the new round of new energy vehicle competition.
Hand in hand with Magna, high-end manufacturing blessing
"Polar Fox is the pre-layout of Beiqi Blue Valley for a new stage of new energy vehicle development." Industry insiders said that with the sharp tightening of policy subsidies in the new energy market and the sharp increase in the ownership of individual new energy vehicles, Beiqi Blue Valley, which has been laying out the B-end market, had a new plan a few years ago.
In order to ensure the high-end manufacturing genes of Jihu, in 2018, Beiqi Blue Valley decided to join hands with auto parts supplier giant Magna to build the Magna base of Beiqi Blue Valley. In January 2019, Magna Weilan New Energy Vehicle Technology (Zhenjiang) Co., Ltd. was officially unveiled, and in July of the same year, the agreement related to BAIC Magna's high-end automobile manufacturing base was officially signed. According to the cooperation agreement, the two parties will combine the resource advantages of BAIC Group and Magna in vehicle engineering manufacturing and service, develop a new electric vehicle platform, and create a "new joint venture" model of intellectual property rights, R&D systems, processes and technologies that are fully open and shared.
Speaking of the Beiqi Blue Valley Magna high-end intelligent manufacturing base, it is also the first vehicle manufacturing plant set up by Magna outside Europe in a hundred years, with the accumulation of Century-old Automobile Manufacturing Technology in Europe and the manufacturing experience of more than 3.7 million luxury models, bringing the tested global luxury quality to Jihu. For example, the first generation of The Mercedes-Benz G-Class G-wagen, the early BMW X3, MINI Countryman, MINI Paceman, etc. were all oem production by Magna, and later provided production capacity supplements for the BMW Dingolfing Factory OEM 5 Series sedans.
The Magna Factory Concept manufacturing system introduced by Beiqi Blue Valley has increased the overall car manufacturing strength. From the semi-annual report of Beiqi Blue Valley this year, it can be seen that Beiqi Blue Valley has built three vehicle research and development platforms of BE11, BE22 and BE21, of which the BE21 platform for manufacturing Jihu has four major characteristics of super expansion, intelligence, interaction and evolution.
Among them, the jointly built BE21 platform has become the industry's first fully redundant architecture electric platform, with a self-developed EE architecture, its IMC architecture can meet multi-model planning, various product definitions, a variety of key technologies and key systems, with highly intelligent electronic and electrical architecture and upgradable cloud services.
The blessing of Magna's high-end manufacturing ability makes the Polar Fox not lose the driving pleasure of fuel vehicles in terms of handling performance. Taking the Alpha T as an example, under the tuning of Magna, the front McPherson rear multi-link independent suspension and the industry's best 50:50 front and rear axle load ratio give it a BMW-level sense of control. In order to let consumers feel the hardcore performance of the Alpha T and Alpha S models, in July this year, the "Polar Fox Action", the country's first immersive driving experience camp, including plot, mission, art and food, covering Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Wuhan, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other 7 cities.
Advancing with Huawei, ICT industry experience is "for my use"
When it comes to Magna, we have to say that another important partner of Beiqi Blue Valley is huawei, a star enterprise in the ICT industry. At the guangzhou auto show just now, Beiqi Blue Valley cooperated with Huawei to launch the new HI mass production version of the Jihu Alpha S, which is the third model of the Jihu and the world's first model equipped with Huawei's smart cockpit - Hongmeng Car Machine OS, which can provide a more secure software environment and achieve rapid start-up.
In fact, in the early promotion of the Jihu brand, Huawei, as a core partner, has never been absent. Before The Polar Fox, Beiqi Blue Valley had carried out in-depth cooperation with Huawei. As early as January 2019, BEIQI Blue Valley and Huawei signed a comprehensive business cooperation agreement in Beijing, jointly established the "1873 Davidson Innovation Lab" and held an unveiling ceremony. The significance of the establishment of this laboratory is to let Beiqi Blue Valley and Huawei play their respective strengths in the field of intelligent vehicles, learn from each other's strengths, carry out research in the field of intelligent interconnection and intelligent driving, and then put the research results from the laboratory into practical applications.
To take a simple example, Huawei's leading technology in the ICT field is indisputable, but how can these technologies be validated in automotive products to ensure the reliability of the technology in the car cockpit environment? Seemingly simple problems, it is necessary for Beiqi Blue Valley, which has rich experience in the field of vehicles, to discuss and promote with the Huawei team.
Open to the perspective of the industry, the Huawei HI (HuaweiInside) full-stack cooperation model deeply bundled by Polar Fox and Huawei has also become an innovative model for cooperation between car companies and Internet giants in the industry, the essence of this model is to start joint design and joint development from the time of vehicle definition, and there is also a Polar Fox Alpha S Huawei HI version equipped with Huawei ADS high-end automatic driving full-stack solution and Huawei Hongmeng OS cockpit. Pole Fox adopts Huawei's HI full-stack intelligent driving solution, which includes both core intelligent hardware such as lidar and Huawei ADS intelligent driving technology.
In addition to products, the cooperation between Beiqi Blue Valley and Huawei has also been extended to marketing channels. On September 26, BAIC Blue Valley issued an announcement that BAIC BJEV and Huawei will jointly build "ARCFOX" and "HI" co-brands based on the jointly developed HBT project products, and formulate a detailed plan and implement it on marketing channel sharing, and sell all co-brand cooperation products on Huawei's online and offline channels.
It can be seen that from the laboratory to the technology to the channel, the cooperation between Huawei and Beiqi Blue Valley is deepening day by day. As Fan Jingtao, who was recently transferred to the executive deputy general manager of BAIC BJEV, said, BAIC Blue Valley and Huawei are no longer traditional OEMs and suppliers, but partners.
Conclusion: Not only Magna and Huawei, Beiqi Blue Valley also has many high-quality partners such as Ningde Times, Beijing Electronic Control, Baidu Apollo and so on. Taking Jihu as an example, more than 70 of the world's 100 top suppliers choose to cooperate with them, which reveals that the global new energy automobile industry recognizes the identity of Beiqi Blue Valley as a "new energy vehicle leader". It can be seen that whether it is the joint construction of a laboratory of cutting-edge technology, the joint construction of a smart factory with global production standards, or the deep binding of the capital level, the active integration of Beiqi Blue Valley's high-quality resources in the industry is also feeding its ongoing high-end and intelligent transformation.