IAUTO
Speed Depth Attitude
Introduction |
2022/01/03
Behind the "Banner of the Changing King of the City Head" is the surging capital force and the "deep sea bottom line".
Reporter 丨 Wang Xiaoxi
Responsible editor 丨 Yang Jing
Editor 丨Zhu Jinbin
Regarding "big factory", there is a forum "one acre and three points of land" is explained like this, "large factory has two meanings: one is that the programmers are more large; the other is that there are more Chinese and more H1B (except for the ICC in India). I can immediately think of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Bloomberg, Citadel, Yahoo, Uber, Didi, Huawei, Tencent, Baidu, Ali, ByteDance, Intel, Qualcomm, NVIDIA..."
Big factory means monopoly. In the automotive industry, "big factories" refer to those parts giants that have monopolies. Because of the monopoly position, it is more difficult to speak, for small or weak car companies, parts companies, you have to "rely on people's noses" and see the face of the big factory.
Of course, the growth of these big factories is not overnight, but also worthy of the "wind and clouds" or after "ten years of grinding a sword". However, in the case of capital, there are many variables. The originally precarious and unknown people may become competitive opponents on the same stage as the big factories in the blink of an eye.
These miracles, which were not seen before, and even the situation of constantly "changing the banner of the king at the head of the city", have now become commonplace. The surging capital force behind it cannot but be said to be "deep under the sea".
Capital-driven
For example, in June, a parts and components company with a registered capital of up to 16 billion yuan, China Automobile Chuangzhi Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "China Automobile Chuangzhi"),was established. The birth of CHINA AUTOMOBILE Chuangzhi means that the three major car companies FAW, Dongfeng and Changan have completed an unprecedented alliance in the form of a joint venture.
This is a typical capital-driven approach of "getting rid of the curse of the big factory", which is the "Royal Three Houses" to gain a certain right to speak in parts and components. From the perspective of the main business of the new company, in addition to the research and development of auto parts, it also includes software development, integrated circuit manufacturing, electronic component manufacturing, battery manufacturing, industrial automatic control system device manufacturing and so on.
From the perspective of the new company's business, its main business covers almost all the key components of the car, and the "hard bones" of difficult technologies such as integrated circuits and software are included. From this situation, the three car companies are accelerating the exploration of independent technology, and have the intention of completing the key components of the autonomy. This is also the best way to get rid of the "big factories" such as the mainland and Bosch.
Because of this, Volkswagen, Toyota, and BBA have built a fuel moat through a century of efforts with the parts giants, and in more than ten years, tesla has been broken through the "full-stack self-development" method, which can be described as truly getting rid of the "curse of the big factory". Why does Tesla have so many "special blows"? This change in the pattern undoubtedly makes practitioners under the pattern change see more hope and opportunities.
For example, Rivian went public, and its market value quickly rushed to $100 billion, surpassing established car companies such as General Motors and Ford. This was unthinkable in the past. And I also wrote in "Rivian's market value exceeds 130 billion, behind which is the great change in industry logic", in addition to the pursuit of capital, behind this is the change in the logic of the entire industry and the logic of car manufacturing.
In the case of this logical change, it is easy to understand the rapid change of the "Wei Xiaoli" of capital to promote the new forces of car manufacturing. Through capital, "Wei Xiaoli" quickly completed the listing and obtained the most valuable "blood" for initial development. In terms of technology, it is also on track through "full-stack self-research" and rapid integration of the supply chain.
Huang Mingming, founding partner of Mingshi Capital, who invested in 7-wheel ideal car, once said that the automotive industry is entering the era of new energy, not only the transformation of the automotive power system from the fuel engine to the battery, but also the most advanced technologies of this era such as 5G and artificial intelligence are concentrated on the carrier of the car, and only China and the United States have the conditions for the birth of a new generation of world-class car companies.
This, he added, is the industry that Mingshi Capital "has been looking for at a tipping point of technological change that is about to produce disruptive upheavals." ”
The meaning behind this sentence is that when the traditional "three major pieces" are transformed into new motors, electronic controls, and batteries, including changes in electronic and electrical architecture and operating system, the barriers of the former "big factories" are being broken down one by one.
In fact, from the capital path of the rise of the Ningde era, we can also clearly see this process of breaking the curse of the big factory. In the process of challenging Samsung, Panasonic and SDI, with the help of the power of capital, the Ningde era quickly made itself a "super giant" and a "big factory".
Similarly, next, there will be other car companies or peers who will start to think about getting rid of the Ningde era through the blessing of capital and technology. This cycle repeats itself, and the automotive industry evolves in this cycle.
From the Eastern Zhou To the Warring States, roles changed
What gives car companies and parts the power to get rid of the "curse of the big factory"? It's a matter of time.
We say that the traditional automotive industry is also a capital-intensive industry, because of its high technical equipment rate, high level of mechanization and automation, so in addition to the company's own capital, the dependence on external financing is very large. Moreover, because of the high threshold, it is much more difficult for new entrants to raise funds and financing behavior than traditional enterprises.
However, through the blessing of electrification and intelligent technology, capital can be quickly replenished to enterprise capital, and car companies can also quickly fission. This is a path that was unimaginable in the past.
In addition, with the gradual realization of the new energy "curve overtaking", the entry threshold has been relaxed and the cross-border entry of multiple forces has been concentrated in the field of new energy vehicles. Since 2019, policies such as the Regulations on the Administration of Investment in the Automobile Industry, the Measures for the Administration of Access to Road Motor Vehicle Manufacturers and Products, and the Regulations on the Administration of Access to New Energy Vehicle Manufacturers and Products have been intensively introduced, and the entry threshold for new energy vehicles has been continuously "loosened".
With the blessing of policies, capital is also constantly entering this field. According to the "New Energy Vehicle Investment and Financing Data Report in the Past Ten Years" released by the Enterprise Investigation Big Data Research Institute, the total amount of financing in China's new energy automobile industry exceeded 100 billion yuan for the first time in 2020, up 159.4% year-on-year.
From the perspective of car-making logic, in the context of the "software-defined era", the roles of traditional car companies and Tier1 and Tier2 are changing. Zhang Li, a partner of Kaihui Smart Energy Fund, said at the China Automotive Blue Book Forum that the boundary between parts manufacturers and OEMs (car companies) is becoming more and more blurred.
"At present, we see that many parts manufacturers have carried out a multi-faceted layout in the field of automatic driving, if parts suppliers can do chassis, can do systems, plus automatic driving - can move people from point A to point B, then why do you need OEMs? With this possibility, how can OEMs differentiate their core competencies from different boundary ranges? "So, this has caused the original big factory to become no longer a big factory." Coupled with the fuel of capital, the original large factories have become not calm.
At the end of the day, getting rid of the "big factory curse" is the latest version of the alternating old and new, just like the story of Apple's mobile phone replacing Nokia. The biggest role of capital is to accelerate the speed of development, just like the role of "genetic modification" to create a "super soldier".
In 2021, cross-border car-making enterprises began to proliferate, including Internet companies such as Baidu, Ali, and Tencent, and communication technology companies such as Huawei, Xiaomi, and OPPO, all competing to lay out the field of smart cars, and industry competition entered the "Warring States Era". From unification to the Warring States, the original fuel era pattern was broken, and the share of the parts giants suddenly became no longer important.
The most typical example of this year, Xiaomi Group announced the official establishment of Xiaomi's smart car business, and Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Xiaomi's intelligent electric vehicle business, said that the company's first investment was 10 billion yuan, 10 billion US dollars in ten years. However, Xiaomi's first car will take at least 3 years to be delivered to consumers.
Although Xiaomi's car still has a long period of mass production, there is a problem that we cannot ignore, once Xiaomi has successfully produced a car, capital will definitely follow up quickly, which makes Xiaomi a force that surpasses many traditional car companies in a short period of time.
Including Xiaomi, among the armies of cross-border car manufacturing, there are the waves of people and companies that turn to the automotive industry to make smart phones when the global mobile phone industry is facing a growth ceiling, and the companions include technology giants, home appliance giants, and travel giants.
The common goal of this new round of new car-making forces is to use the historical opportunity of the development of intelligent electric vehicles to break the automotive industry pattern that has been monopolized by a small number of "big factories" in the traditional automotive industry for hundreds of years and achieve curve overtaking. Behind this, capital is an important driving force to achieve this goal.
Disrupt the value chain
Judging from the breakthrough path of a new round of new car-making forces that get rid of one of the main forces of the "big factory curse", there are several paths:
Through the breakthrough of components such as "three electricity" and intelligent cockpit, change the monopoly pattern of fuel "big factories" in the past century and achieve overtaking in curves; secondly, the software side strives to be the "Android" of the intelligent automobile industry; third, copy the "millet model" and integrate the supply chain to build cars.
This brings us to the hot topic of "full-stack self-research" in the industry. Of course, in the competitive track of smart electric vehicles, the practice of "full-stack self-research" first comes from Tesla, completely subverting the original supply chain system, thus breaking the "big factory curse". Followers of the climate, the "Wei Xiaoli" are already on the way. In fact, behind this is also the fuel of capital.
Moreover, in the era of "software defined vehicles" (SDA), the original structure of the car is undergoing profound changes. Over the centuries, the traditional model of mechanical and EEA electrical and electronic architectures defining automobiles has evolved into software playing an increasingly important role in the automotive industry.
Therefore, the elements that give greater value to automotive products are also changing from powertrains, chassis, gearboxes and electrical and electronic equipment to on-board hardware, software, autonomous driving chips, etc., while cars need more powerful sensors, IoV hardware devices, chips and computing capabilities, so it is an inevitable trend for the automotive industry to subvert the traditional value chain through software functions.
A deloitte report once pointed out that the gradual realization of highly intelligent shared driving scenarios will deeply reshape the pattern of the future automotive industry chain, establish a new independent value chain, join new value chain participants, and reconstruct the value chain link.
The various enterprises in this value chain, through various capital promotions, are also rapidly "butterfly change".
For example, we can see that the domestic SAIC Motor participated in Momenta's Series C financing, and the two sides will jointly create a "Chinese solution" for autonomous driving. According to Yiou data, as of now, Momenta has completed 7 rounds of financing, and investors include SAIC, TOYOTA, Cathay Fund, Tencent, Yunfeng Fund, Temasek, etc. Capital is never absent for the future.
And this convergence is accelerating under the thrust of capital. As Yang Jiongyang, president of Huaxi Securities, said at the 2021 Auto Capital Forum, "The development and growth of any new industry is inseparable from the strong support of the capital market, and the two-way cycle of deep integration of capital and industry can further integrate and optimize the high-quality resources of the industry and empower the high-quality development of the industry." ”
This article is excerpted from the cover story of the November and December issues of Automobile Commune magazine
| Wang Xiaoxi |
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