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The battlefield of new energy vehicles is chasing deer, and Li Yinan, who rushed to the late set, wants to occupy a place, which is full of difficulties.
Written by | Tabor Network Yang Wenfei
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2021 is coming to an end, but the car-making circle is getting more and more lively.
On December 15, Niu Innovative Energy Technology Co., Ltd. officially released a new car brand, and Li Yinan's car-making and entrepreneurship has finally reached the stage of publicity.
The public opinion that caused an uproar is not necessarily just another member of the new energy track, perhaps more because of the labels of "genius teenager", "Huawei prince" and "Huawei traitor" that have been labeled on this cross-border car-making man.
Before Li Yinan built a car
Li Yinan, 51 years old this year, has a legendary first half of his life.
At the age of 15, he was admitted to the first junior class of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (now Huazhong University of Science and Technology) and became one of the 23 "genius teenagers".
In 1992, Li Yinan, a second-year graduate student, came to Huawei for an internship under the guidance of a tutor. At that time, this piece of gold was difficult to hide, and the company's executives keenly saw the potential in him and directly commissioned important project research and development. After graduating from graduate school in June of the following year, Li Yinan officially entered Huawei.
After joining the company, Li Yinan's momentum developed by leaps and bounds. On the second day, he was promoted to Huawei engineer, half a month to chief engineer, half a year to deputy general manager of the Central Research Department, and two years to Huawei's chief engineer and president of the Central Research Department. At the age of 27, Li Yinan has become Huawei's youngest vice president.
The author of the book "Ren Zhengfei Biography" mentioned that Ren Zhengfei privately recognized Li Yinan as a "dry son", and Huawei tacitly believed that he would be Huawei's successor.
In 2000, in response to the cold winter of the telecommunications industry, Ren Zhengfei encouraged employees to start businesses internally, allowing departing employees to serve as agents of Huawei products, but prohibiting departing employees from engaging in core product research and development projects.
Young and vigorous is inevitably arrogant, li yinan, who was huawei vice president at the time, also joined the army of departures, no matter how Ren Zhengfei retains, he is determined to leave. It is said that Ren Zhengfei even led Huawei executives to send him off at a five-star hotel in Shenzhen, and it was difficult to hide that Huawei's door would always be open for him.
However, Li Yinan does not seem to have followed Huawei's departure agreement and gradually changed from an agent to a competitor of Huawei in the field of information and communication. He converted Huawei shares converted from technical contributions into start-up capital, and relied on Huawei equipment to create a harbor network, and even dug people from Huawei for product research and development.
In December 2003, Li Yinan's Harbor Network and Juntian Technology, founded by Huang Yaoxu, announced a merger with the intention of entering the operator's optical transmission market , where Huawei is rooted.
After Ren Zhengfei learned of this acquisition, he quipped, "Obediently, the Red Army and the Red Fourth Front Army have also won the division!" ”
About half a year later, Huawei officially established the "Anti-Harbor Work Office (commonly known as the Hong Kong Office)", and the harbor network led by Li Yinan began to encounter Ren Zhengfei's multi-dimensional hunting.
In 2006, the incident ended with Huawei's $1.7 billion acquisition of Harbor Network. Li Yinan abided by the agreement of "working at Huawei for at least two years" and entered Huawei for the second time until he left to join Baidu in October 2010.
Since then, Li Yinan seems to have become a "homeless" prodigal son, two years of Baidu CTO career, a year and a half of Unlimited Xunqi CEO experience, and even a venture partner in GSR Ventures.
Li Yinan hurriedly came and hurried away.
Create the myth of the Maverick electric car
In 2014, Mingshi Capital investor Huang Mingming approached Li Yinan and asked him to be the CEO of "Maverick Electric".
Li Yinan did not miss this project. In the early days of its founding, Li Yinan pulled a lot of resources for Maverick Electric, found Luo Yonghao, Li wanted to help publicize, and also found a technical team of Honda, the king of motorcycles, to cooperate in research and development.
Perhaps benefiting from its past fame, mavericks soon received $50 million in Series A financing from GGV, IDG, Sequoia and other institutions.
On June 1, 2015, Li Yinan appeared in the center of the stage riding a calf electric car, introduced himself to everyone with a smile, and said that "this will be the last business in his life."
Enthusiastic on stage, he could not have imagined that the dawn of success would be so short.
Two days later, Li Yinan was taken away by prosecutors at the Shenzhen airport on the grounds that he was accused of taking advantage of his position to make more than 7 million yuan from stock speculation through inside information during his tenure at GSR Venture Capital in 2014. In the end, Li Yinan was sentenced to two years and six months and fined 7.5 million yuan.
In the two and a half years that Li Yinan was imprisoned, There were many turbulences in Maverick Electric, and the problem of electric vehicles frequently encountered complaints. Subsequently, GGV Capital also announced its divestment.
Affected by this impact, the operation of Maverick electric vehicles has also deteriorated. The 2020 annual report shows that in the three years from 2016 to 2018, the cumulative loss of Maverick Electric Vehicle was 767 million yuan, although it turned a profit in 2019, but compared with Yadi and Emma, its market share in 2019 was less than 1%.
In March 2018, Li Yinan resigned as CEO of Niudian Technology and joined Meihua Angel Ventures as a partner. Half a year later, Maverick Electric went public as desired, although holding 43.8% of the shares, Li Yinan did not stand in the C position of the bell ringing scene after all.
In fact, when he founded Maverick Electric in 2014, Li Yinan had the idea of building a car and estimated that $3 billion could initially complete the project, but he felt that he could not raise so much money.
It was not until November 2018 that the project was officially approved.
"In 2014, I judged that I couldn't raise $3 billion to do this thing, and now I think I have a high probability that I should be able to raise this money to do this thing." Li Yinan said.
Among the new forces of car manufacturing: there are people with money who have a great chance of winning
"NIUTRON", Chinese self-traveler, was established in November 2018.
Serving more than two years in prison, Li Yinan thought a lot, coupled with the bleak prospects of the two-wheeled electric vehicle track, he quickly stepped into this stormy track and determined the direction of the two technical routes of pure electric and extended range electric.
Li Yinan said that since the establishment of Youjia, the brand has clearly designed the platform architecture, appearance and interior of the Self-Youjia NV model in accordance with the idea of pure electric vehicles. "According to our internal statement, our extended range technology is actually 'electricity to oil', not 'oil to electricity'."
The first product launched from the Youjia NV, positioned in the large 5-seater medium and large high-end SUV, offering pure electric and extended range electric two powertrains to choose from, the car is expected to be launched in the first half of 2022 and accept pre-order, mass production delivery in September.
Since Youjia Automobile currently has nearly 1,000 core R & D personnel, the brand headquarters is located in Beijing, set up a research and development center in Shanghai, the manufacturing base is located in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, the overall design capacity of 180,000 vehicles per year. The plant is currently undergoing pre-mass production retrofitting and calibration and will be operational in March 2022.
According to Li Yinan, Ziyoujia Auto has now obtained a series A financing of 500 million US dollars, invested by IDG Capital, COATUE and other institutions.
As for the team, the self-touring car is also full of confidence.
Previously, Hu Yilin, a well-known designer at Frog and Microsoft, served as vice president; Zhang Yibo from Xiaomi served as vice president of marketing; Liu Chengdong from Wanxiang Electric Vehicle was vice president of system research and development; and chief product designer was Joseph Nelson from WILD DESIGN.
Although Niu Electric Technology has said that "Niu Innovative Energy Technology is not directly related to Niu Electric", Niu Electric executives have also repeatedly voiced that there is no plan to build cars. However, there are reports that Liu Chuankai, vice president of Maverick Electric Design, will join the self-tourer. According to public information, before joining Maverick Electric, Liu Chuankai served as a design director at Designworks, a creative consulting company owned by BMW Group.
In addition, Fang Qing, who once served as the head of cost analysis at Xiaopeng Motors, has also joined the self-traveler, and Wang Yafei, editor-in-chief of Blue Whale Financial Automobile Channel, has served as the company's public relations director.
Although it has received $500 million in Series A financing, there is no clear statement on the later financing and R&D investment. What is particularly critical is that since the beginning of this year, Internet giants such as Xiaomi and Baidu have also entered the game with high profile and are menacing. With only 4 months left until trial mass production, is it really enough?
Once, Li Yinan released the first smart electric N1 of Maverick Electric in less than two years, and in only 15 days, it created a miracle of crowdfunding of 72 million yuan.
Or perhaps, after more than three years of low-key silence, Li Yinan is really ready, and everything can only wait for delivery next September.
After all, mass production does not lie.
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