It is said that 2021 is the first year of new energy vehicles, and just near the end of the year, another company is about to knock on the door of the new energy vehicle industry.
On December 15, Niu Chuang Energy Co., Ltd. ("Niu Chuang") released a new brand named "Ziyoujia" ("NIUTRON"), the first product will be named "Ziyoujia NV", planned to be listed in the first half of 2022 and accepted the booking, and delivered in September.
Image source: Network
Meanwhile, Niuchuang announced the completion of a $500 million Series A round of financing, including IDG Capital and Coastage Management.
This year, there have been many celebrity factories officially announced cross-border car manufacturing, where does the unknown Niuchuang break into the new energy vehicle track come from?
1
"Huawei Prince" has started a business three times
Before getting a glimpse of the true face of Niuchuang, you may wish to first understand its founder - Li Yinan.
Li Yinan, Image source: Network
At the age of 15, Li Yinan was admitted to the former Huazhong University of Science and Technology (now Huazhong University of Science and Technology) junior class to study physics, and after graduating from graduate school, he was turned from an intern to a regular and officially entered Huawei.
Since then, Li Yinan can be said to be a smooth step, half a month to become the chief engineer, half a year to be promoted to the deputy general manager of the Central Research Department, two years to be promoted to the company's chief engineer / president of the Central Research Department, 27 years old to sit on the vice president of Huawei, once identified as Huawei's successor.
In 2000, Li Yinan resigned from Huawei and established the "Harbor Network" on his own, which was acquired by Huawei for 1.7 billion yuan six years later and returned to Huawei as Vice President and Chief Telecom Scientist of Huawei.
Subsequently, Li Yinan successively jumped to Baidu as CTO, Beijing Infinite Xunqi Information Technology Company as CEO of 12580, and joined GSR Venture Capital as a partner.
From his illustrious resume, it can be seen that Li Yinan is an indomitable and toss-tos person.
In 2014, Li Yinan started a business for the second time, established Niudian Technology (that is, Maverick Electric), became a dark horse in the market under the pressure of Emma, Yadi and other best-selling electric vehicles, and landed on nasdaq four years later, with a current market value of 1.17 billion US dollars.
Compared with traditional electric vehicles, Maverick Electric provides ultra-long endurance while significantly reducing body weight, and meets the user's fashion needs through design, data show that Maverick Electric has been deeply integrated into the urban travel ecology of about 50 countries, with more than 2 million global users, and the global cumulative riding mileage has exceeded 10 billion kilometers so far.
According to its third quarter report in 2021, The sales of Maverick electric two-wheeled electric vehicles exceeded 390,000 units, an increase of 58.3% year-on-year, and the third quarter achieved revenue of 1.226 billion yuan, an increase of 37.1% year-on-year.
Sales increased by nearly 60%, but the revenue growth rate in the same period was only half of the sales growth rate, probably in order to cope with the shrinking market demand, The Maverick had to use price reduction sales and the launch of low-price models to promote market sales, but this marketing strategy or the company's sustainable development is unfavorable, but also shows that the strategy of maverick electric high-end is almost unsuccessful.
Affected by the performance, the secondary market also reacted strongly, and the share price of Maverick Electric has fallen sharply, and since February this year, it has fallen by more than 68%.
Maverick electric weekly market, figure source: Gelonghui APP
In this case, opening up a new road is particularly important for Li Yinan, from two-wheeled electric to four-wheeled electric, many technologies are in the same vein, just in time for the new energy vehicles to enter the game, so to some extent, Li Yinan's choice to build cars is also an inevitable result, but the current new energy vehicle track has been very crowded, Niuchuang wants to compete with many car companies, which will be a huge test.
2
Positioning medium to large high-end SUVs
Just after the official announcement of the brand name, you can get the car after 9 months, which can be said to be quite fast in the new energy vehicle industry.
But Li Yinan's car-making plan can be traced back to 2018.
NiuChuang car project was established in 2018, headquartered in Beijing, R & D center set up in Shanghai, in terms of talent reserves have more than 1,000 core R & D personnel, all from first-class car companies at home and abroad, with an average working experience of more than 10 years.
In terms of infrastructure, Niuchuang did not choose to build its own factory, but instead acquired the Mahayana Automobile Factory in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, a modern intelligent manufacturing base covering an area of 770,000 square meters, with an overall production capacity of about 180,000 vehicles per year, which will be put into use in March 2022.
It is worth mentioning that the park has not acquired other production lines, does not have the production capacity of core systems such as batteries, motors and electronic controls, or will be mainly assembled and post-test tuned.
Swiss ABB automated production line, source: car things
In the past three years, Niuchuang has identified the parallel direction of the two technical routes of pure electric BEV and extended-range electric EREV, and developed the Gemini twin platform. Based on this, the first model self-touring NV will be positioned as a medium-sized high-end SUV, providing users with two powertrain options to meet the needs of their short-distance transportation and long-distance travel.
Extended range chassis (left) and pure electric chassis (right), Source: Network
At present, since youjia NV has completed three rounds of engineering trial production, the R & D and testing process has exceeded one million kilometers, the first round of winter and summer tests have also been completed, and the second round of winter tests is underway. In terms of design, the shape and interior have been basically fixed, and only minor adjustments will be made in details, but they will not be much different from the models produced in mass production next year.
3
"Benchmarking" ideal ONE
Since the beginning of this year, the performance of the domestic new energy vehicle market has been particularly eye-catching.
In November, production was 457,000 units, up 128% year-on-year and 15% month-on-month, while sales in the first 11 months reached 3.023 million units, up 167% year-on-year, while sales in November reached 450,000 units, up 121% year-on-year and 17% month-on-month, and cumulative sales in the first 11 months reached 2.99 million units, up 167% year-on-year.
New energy vehicle production and sales have maintained rapid growth, and repeatedly set new highs, and just last month, the new car-making force "Wei Xiaoli" monthly sales collective exceeded 10,000, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers predicted that in 2022, domestic new energy vehicle sales are expected to exceed 5 million, a better market environment for Niu Chuang, is both good and challenging.
Similar to "Wei Xiaoli", Niu Chuang also takes the route of light asset car manufacturing, except for a few parts and vehicle systems, the three major system components of automotive batteries, motors, and electronic control cores are almost all from suppliers.
In terms of models, the self-touring NV is quite similar to the ideal ONE, both adopt the extender electric technology route, in the battery technology is not yet mature, the extender has transitional significance, and the self-touring NV range extender product is "electric to oil", rather than "oil to electricity", emphasizing that it is based on the tram as a platform.
Compared with the range increase, pure electric is the real future of new energy vehicles, so unlike the ideal, the self-touring NV chooses to walk on two legs, and will also launch a pure electric vehicle based on the same platform.
However, it is worth noting that all car companies hope to launch electric vehicles with a range of more than 1,000 kilometers in 2022, all of which are competing on batteries, which means that the price of batteries on the market will further increase, thereby pushing up the cost of the car itself, superimposing the decline of national new energy subsidies, and the price advantage of new energy vehicles will gradually weaken.
In other words, as long as the cost control of new energy vehicle manufacturers is not good, there will be losses, Weilai founder Li Bin also said that "there is no 20 billion do not build a car", automobile manufacturing is too fierce, there is no doubt that it is a high capital threshold industry, whether Niuchuang can sustain blood transfusion will be particularly important for its future development.
From the perspective of new energy vehicle companies on the market, it has to be said that the bubble of new energy vehicles is quite large, for example, the market value of "Wei Xiaoli" continues to soar, once surpassing many traditional car companies, and now the valuation has overdrawn performance expectations, when a large number of funds and resources are involved in the new energy vehicle industry, the inner volume intensifies, after the baptism of time, the bubble without strength support will eventually be punctured.
4
epilogue
China's new energy vehicle field is advancing by leaps and bounds, the industry is becoming more and more mature, and the market acceptance is getting higher and higher, which is a trillion-level blue ocean market, but now the level of the track is becoming clearer, and the competition has gradually entered a white-hot stage.
To a certain extent, the capital's vision of car-making enterprises will only become more and more picky, Niu Chuang is late, there is not much competitive advantage in research and development strength, whether it can have the ability to continue financing and seize the market demand point is a great test for it.