Written by | Yang Guang
Produced | Automotive Sankei
On December 18th, a low-key press conference and a sentence we are back, bringing future cars back into the public eye.
But I don't know how many people remember that the last time the new force held a public event was at the end of 2019.
Lu Qun said that the pace of promising cars has indeed slowed down a lot in the past two years, because "sometimes we are too focused on technology, thinking that with good technology, we can do anything, but we have not done a good job in marketing and capital." ”
On the same day, Qiantu delivered several K50s that had just rolled off the production line to new users, which also announced the official restart of the Suzhou factory. Inside the test yard, Qiantu's second mass-produced model, the K20, is entering the final road test stage.
Everything seems to be back on track, but in the eyes of the industry, it is not so much that the future has been resurrected, but rather that the future has won itself a chance to be resurrected.
Lu Qun used the phrase "Xiongguan Mandao is really like iron, and now he is stepping forward from the beginning" to describe the situation of him and the company at this moment, and whether the new strategic plan that has just been released can make the future car dead and reborn, leaving it with a window of time, but there is not much room for trial and error.
After 730 days, the land group changed and did not change
Has the future car reached its most dangerous moment? Two years ago, I asked Lu Qun this question.
At that time he thought about it and said, "Will it be worse, I don't think it will." ”
Today, two years later, at least from the perspective of a series of new actions in the future, Lu Qun's "stubbornness" is still there, such as still quietly engaging in new material research and development, and his reason is that materials are the foundation of manufacturing.
Correspondingly, The company recently announced that it will join hands with world-renowned experts in the field of light alloys, Academician Yu Aibing, Academician Wu Xinhua and Monash University in Australia, and the three parties will jointly focus on the research and development and production of aluminum alloy 3D printing technology, fluid metal body skeleton structure, new body connection technology and light alloy body manufacturing.
However, Lu Qun's thinking has also changed slightly, such as taking the initiative to cater to the younger generation of consumer groups in marketing: developing meta-universe racing games and creating offline events based on K50 modified GT racing cars, combining online games and offline events.
This is also as he himself reflected and summed up: in the past, we must change where we were wrong, but we must persist where we did the right thing.
So Lu Qun set himself three small goals for next year: K50 sales, K20 listing, and overseas expansion.
Clear-eyed people know that K20 is the most important thing inside, it can't stand up, and the other two targets are floating clouds.
If K50 is to help the future establish a high-end brand image, then the next K20 is to reduce the posture for the group of young people aged 18-28.
For this new car Luqun has high hopes, he once said that once the K20 achieves the upper volume, the future will soon be able to achieve self-hematopoiesis and positive cash flow, and this process only takes half a year.
"The appearance is cool, the performance is great, the quality is very good, the cost of purchase and use is not high, is there such a product now?"
In Lu Qun's view, not yet. It's just that this is already his judgment two years ago. Today, this segment has long changed from a blue ocean to a red ocean, and whether the K20 can succeed needs to be marked with a question mark.
In the new car tasting session, a supplier representative circled the K20 several times and commented that this car is better than the Hongguang MINI. I don't know if this can be counted as a disguised incentive.
Their future
Compared with the future of the rather low-key press conference, the Suzhou Olympic Sports Center 50 kilometers away on the same day is full of people, and Weilai, which is also building cars for new forces, is holding its fifth NIO DAY.
Li Bin sighed that a few years ago, he said that the capital threshold required to build a car was 20 billion, and now there is no 40 billion that may not be able to do it.
If you count the 10 billion yuan that Lei Jun invested in the early stage of Xiaomi car manufacturing and the 3 billion US dollars that Li Yinan wanted to raise for Niu Chuang, the starting point of car manufacturing has become the consensus of the industry.
But as new people keep pouring in, the new people who were once new keep falling.
Byton burned out 8.4 billion yuan and still failed to achieve mass production, Sailin also declared bankruptcy after exhausting 5.9 billion, and Bo County has experienced 6 rounds of financing and has not escaped bankruptcy.
In the same situation, there are also singularities, Yangtze River, Green Chi, Rangers, etc., and even rich real estate developers like Evergrande and Baoneng have frequently encountered obstacles on the road to build cars this year.
In stark contrast, this year's China's new energy market growth rate of 1.7 times year-on-year and more than 12.7% penetration rate, under the good situation, this year alone, at least 15 new energy vehicle factories officially put into production or start construction, the new production capacity of more than 3 million vehicles.
It is not difficult to understand why in the past month, there are still new brands including Self-Touring Home, Box, Binli, Light Orange and other new brands entering the game.
Everyone wants to squeeze into this track, even if they have been ruthlessly kicked down.
It's just that when the arms race in this market has long transcended design, technology and even money, and even now has been circled to the color of the carpool body and the way to open the door, a differentiated route is particularly important.
Therefore, the cautious Lu Qun also left a backhand for himself, through cooperation with Suzhou Canadian Solar Power Technology Co., Ltd., the future plans to mass-produce the world's first solar photovoltaic car in 2022.
Write at the end
Although the industry is mostly critical of the future, there are a few things that have not been questioned so far, such as building a factory by yourself, such as winning qualifications yourself.
To this day, the six-year-old car manufacturer is still one of the few in the industry with dual qualifications from the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Sometimes rollover is not terrible, and the vast development space of China's new energy vehicle market has also given many brands the opportunity to turn back.
And the worst ending is only to end up with one, "Give you a chance you are useless." ”