Whether you are happy or worried, time is always like water.
2021 is finally over. In the past year, the shadow of the epidemic is still there, and the downward pressure on the economy is still there. Real estate funds are tight, education and training have suffered "double reduction", Internet giants have encountered anti-monopoly, and in comparison, the automotive industry is relatively stable. With the help of the east wind of new energy vehicles, the automobile market is even very lively, and it has become a target sought after by capital.
Looking back a year, 2020 is the year of life and death of the new forces of car manufacturing, once fifty, hundreds of new forces, after the big wave of sand and sand, only a few remained Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng, Weima, Hezhong, etc., the vast majority of names passed away with the wind, and even the legend did not leave. However, the battlefield is not sparse, and more powerful players have entered. Even Byton, who burned out more than 8 billion yuan, was also pulled up from the grave by Foxconn, and the future of death and not zombie also relied on the meta-universe to borrow corpses to return the soul, and it was indeed a new chess game. It is conceivable that in 2022, the story of the combination of vertical and horizontal will be even more exciting.
The war was fierce, but not everyone who died before he was born deserved admiration. Let's not talk about Jia Yueting, after all, he is still tossing, let's let time prove it. Let's say that the like of Sai Lin, no matter how it looks, is like using the anxiety of "don't care, get on the car first and then say" to come to China to scrape oil and water.
There are also real estate companies such as Baoneng, Evergrande, Huaxia Happiness, Country Garden, R&F, and Agile who have also extended their magic claws to the car. From a positive point of view, it is real estate companies that seek a second growth curve; from a negative point of view, they hope to raise more funds from the stock market and cut leeks; with malicious speculation, I am afraid that it is to hang up sheep's heads and sell dog meat, and take land in the name of building cars. Since October 2017, Baoneng has built factories in Hangzhou, Kunming, Guangzhou and other places, with a total area of nearly 10,000 mu and a total investment of up to 124 billion yuan. Nowadays, the car can be said to be gone, and it is estimated that there is no trace of the factory.
Some people say that Baoneng is a drag on new energy vehicles, and this pot of new energy vehicles can not be backed. Attacking on all sides with great fanfare, such a high profile does not look like doing things in a down-to-earth manner, but like a show. However, such a performance, the audience has seen too much.
Evergrande looks more serious than Baoneng. "Buy, buy and buy", "fit together", "circle circle", "big and big", "good and good", the domineering president is so rough and direct. Evergrande Automobile used more than 40 billion yuan to buy various modules in the industrial chain such as production qualifications, power battery production technology, advanced motor technology, production and research base, and sales channels. However, building a car is not a dinner party, and it is not so easy to digest and absorb. "Big big" once saw the effect, Evergrande Automobile's market value once exceeded 600 billion Hong Kong dollars, and it was only once. As for "hehehe", "circle circle", "good and good", I am afraid that I will not have a chance to see it.
Perhaps real estate companies do need and have motivation to find new growth points, but once they go down, they are still accustomed to the usual methods of capital operation and financial leverage, and have embarked on the old road of quick success and quick profit. As everyone knows, times have changed, and the experience of success may become a deadly poison.
If it is said that real estate companies build cars to some extent, there is a suspicion that the dark of the boardwalk is Chen Cang, then the home appliance companies are much more sincere. As early as 20 years ago, home appliance companies tried to enter the field of car manufacturing, but at that time, commercial vehicles were the mainstay. In the first few years of the 21st century, Chunlan acquired Dongfeng Nanjing Automobile, Midea acquired Yunnan Bus Factory and Hunan Sanxiang Bus, and Oaks acquired Shenyang Shuangma Automobile, hoping to use commercial vehicles as a breakthrough to cut into the field of car manufacturing.
However, whether it is from the accumulation of technology of home appliance companies themselves, or the scale of the industrial chain of automobile manufacturing, the accumulation of talents and the maturity of the automobile consumer market, the subjective and objective conditions are not enough to support the dream of expanding the track.
In 2016, Gree invested 3 billion yuan in Zhuhai Yinlong to manufacture new energy vehicles. Unfortunately, the MPV and Yinlong 5024EV manufactured by it have not been recognized by the market, and the car manufacturing business is unfavorable and dilemma. Enter, burn more money, it is difficult to achieve; retreat, friends and businessmen attack, unwilling. Maybe the car still has to be built, but in another way, not the whole vehicle manufacturing, but into the automotive industry ecosystem, looking for their own ecological niche. After all, cars are intelligent, home appliances are also intelligent, and everything is interconnected. Haier has changed its name to "Haier Zhijia", Midea is also developing mechanical and electrical manufacturing related to auto parts, and Gree itself has also expanded business sectors such as Internet of Things and communication chips.
Based on its own technology accumulation and supply chain advantages, extending and incubating new business forms from the inside out is a more stable way to attack. "Suffocation for dreams" as a slogan to fight chicken blood is certainly bloody, but if it is really suffocated, it is to lift the dream and drop it on your own feet.
The next genre is the phone manufacturer. The first is Huawei, of course, Huawei does not only sell mobile phones, but the mobile phone business is the most well-known to mass consumers. Huawei once said "do not build a car", that depends on how to define "car building". Broadly speaking, it is not only the self-built factory that makes the car out and then labels it with Huawei's trademark.
Together with the Ningde era and Changan Automobile, we will create a high-end electric vehicle Avita, is this not a car? Huawei is also in charge of Avita's soul. Huawei's smart choice of SF5 and Q&I M5, from the installation of car machine systems to the design and sales, is this not considered car building? The law of true incense cannot be escaped even by business tycoons.
Xiaomi entered the smart electric vehicle business, with an investment of 10 billion yuan in the first phase, and the first mass-produced model will be positioned as a high-end family car or SUV of more than 100,000 yuan. Not to mention that the 100,000 yuan level is not high-end, it depends on Lei Jun's successive withdrawal from a number of Xiaomi's affiliated companies, and the determination is still quite large.
Analysts say this is an important signal of its focus on car building. However, in the author's opinion, this move is quite tragic, a battle against the water, in case of car failure, it can also reduce the impact on the original business because of pre-cutting.
Xiaomi has invested in Xiaopeng, Weilai and other new forces, and has been carrying out the research and development and accumulation of automotive intelligent technologies such as cruise control, navigation, driving assistance, etc., and now it is a big fanfare to enter the field of intelligent cars, according to Xiaomi's dedication to the Xiaomi ecology, it is likely to use the form of OEM of the vehicle factory or even direct acquisition of the factory to manufacture Millet cars.
In addition, OPPO is also continuing to apply for patents in automotive software, cooperating with new forces such as traditional OEMs and ideals, hoping to gain something in the wave of smart cars.
Next up is the Internet tech giant. In addition to the Huawei mentioned earlier, as well as Ali, Tencent, Baidu, Meituan, etc., all those who have spare strength want to get a piece of the pie. Alibaba cooperates with SAIC Motor and Pudong New Area to build a high-end pure electric car brand Zhiji Automobile. Baidu pulled Geely to set up Jidu Automobile, plans to engage in the design and development of smart cars, manufacturing, sales and service of the whole industry chain business, plans to invest 50 billion yuan in the next five years to produce smart cars. Tencent has also said that "it will not build cars", and it is currently mainly involved in the fields of internet of vehicles and automatic driving.
However, who can say for sure what will happen in the future. There is also a heavyweight player, Apple, who launched the Titan project in 2014, which is currently relatively low-key, but once the product is taken out, it is likely to be another competitor besides Tesla that can cause great pressure on its own brand.
Finally, the main owner - those car manufacturers, including new forces and traditional fuel vehicle manufacturers. Wei Xiaoli has initially gained a foothold in the new forces, and the next step will be to further iterate products, improve product structure, and build differentiated core competitiveness. BYD has relied on new energy vehicles to soar through this year, and the Great Wall, Geely and others have set up flags. Geely plans to sell 3.65 million units in 2025, while Great Wall aims to reach 4 million by 2025. I believe that these sales may include export sales, otherwise although the Chinese market capacity is large, it cannot guarantee that all car companies will achieve their grand plans.
Why do anyone with a little bit of capital and a little bit of technology want to build a car?
From an industrial point of view, automobiles are one of the few industries that can support the hope of the future today. Automobile manufacturing can be called an axis industry, the industrial chain is long enough, can drive the development of a number of manufacturing industries, create a huge market space, different genres can find potential profit opportunities in it.
On this basis, the electrification and intelligence of automobiles have broken the original industrial boundaries and lowered the threshold for car manufacturing. Cloud computing, artificial intelligence, 5G and other technologies have become the underlying technologies in the era of the Internet of Everything, and common technologies will inevitably bring about the integration of industries. It's not your traditional competitors who beat you, but people in another irrelevant field, and this situation will become the norm.
From the perspective of the economic situation, many industries in 2021 have encountered unprecedented pressure, mobile phones, Internet traffic have begun to change from incremental to stock market, the pursuit of high growth listed companies need to find a new growth engine, and capital needs a new story. The partial automobile market has ushered in the outbreak of the new energy vehicle market.
Fueled by the global environmental protection issues, new energy vehicles have been put on the agenda by European and American automakers, and the days of banning the sale of fuel vehicles have been booked, and there is no action at all. Under the demonstration of the vigorous development of new energy vehicles in China, the established process will be accelerated. Even Toyota, which has always been stable and not very interested in electric vehicles, has released more than a dozen electric vehicles at once, and has also issued a wind noise to cooperate with BYD.
New energy vehicles not only receive the blessing of political correctness, but when they are linked with intelligence, they have produced wonderful chemical cooperation. The car will not only be a means of delivery, but will become an extension of the human limb like a mobile phone, becoming a key node of the Internet of Everything, until it becomes a super entrance to the metaverse.
It can be said that in addition to mobile phones, cars are the second item that modern urban people can't do without every day and have high-tech malleability. It has both a realistic function and a future imagination; it has both a mature consumer market and the possibility of a new blue ocean market. What other field can have such a vast imagination? No wonder some people suffocate over and over again to build cars, and it's no wonder that the capital market values Tesla so much.
There is always hope, but it may not be yours. There were originally roads in the world, and the more people walked, the more roads there were. There is no doubt that in this wave of car-making tide, not all players who go to the sea can reach the end. There are probably three endings.
The first is to carefully create automotive products that meet the needs of the times, and even create products that subvert the industry ecology like the iPhone; such enterprises will have a place in the automotive market and leave a name in the history of China's automotive industry development.
Second, do things with heart, make a single-point breakthrough in a certain technology in the process of building a car, or discover a new related market, become the pioneer of the new blue ocean, lose the mulberry elm in the east corner, or inadvertently insert willows and willows, such enterprises will naturally find their own position in the larger industrial ecology.
Third, or abandoned in the middle way, or misguided, and eventually turned into legends, or reduced to laughing stock, after all, the matter of building cars is not something you want to build.
At this moment of renewal of unity and renewal, we will all have good wishes, hoping that practitioners with a sense of awe, a craftsman's heart, and a creative heart can walk out of their own way and break out of their own piece of the sky.
In 2022, the plot is more exciting.