Car stuff (public number: chedongxi)
The author | James
Edit the | Xiao Han
Evergrande is deeply in crisis, so is Evergrande Automobile about to finish playing? Not really.
Just in the past 2021, Evergrande Automobile's Tianjin plant reported the news that the assembly was fully connected, and the first Hengchi 5 has been driven off the production line.
The haze that has haunted Evergrande and Evergrande Automobile in recent months seems to be dissipating, so can Evergrande Automobile really build the car with its teeth when the parent company is in a great crisis?
▲Hengchi 5
In the first week of 2022, Che Dongxi came to the Evergrande New Energy Automobile Factory in Tianjin's Dongli District, and through on-site personal observation and exchanges, saw a Evergrande automobile that was completely different from what he imagined.
Although it is located in the suburbs, Evergrande Automobile's factory and office building present a busy scene - the test vehicle of the first model, Hengchi 5, conducts unmouflaged road tests near the factory, and from time to time large trucks pull parts or other materials in and out of the factory, while evergrande automobile and supplier staff are also busy inside and outside the factory.
At the end of the day after dark, 10 connecting buses, hundreds of employees' private cars, and various online ride-hailing cars will even cause a congestion at the gate. Evergrande Automobile employees told Che Dong that at present, the company has solved the previously delayed wage and social security problems, and now there are more than 1,000 employees from Shanghai, Guangzhou and Tianjin, and everyone is concentrating on the mass production of Hengchi 5.
Although the stalls and voices of Evergrande Automobile are much smaller than when they shouted "buy, buy, buy and build cars" than before, the above scenes all show that Evergrande Automobile is riveting its last efforts.
If Hengchi 5 can be successfully mass-produced, Evergrande Automobile will still have the opportunity to move around to attract external capital to survive. If it falls on the eve of mass production, it is really upside down.
First, the test vehicle has been on the road The factory is busy
January 4, 2022 is the first working day since the beginning of the year. In the afternoon of the same day, Che Dongxi came to the Evergrande New Energy Automobile Factory in Dongli District, Tianjin. As far as the eye can see outside the factory, there are no restaurants, entertainment shops, and even buying bottles of water are very difficult. Around it, on one side are several factories that are producing, and back to the wasteland that is endlessly untapped.
The external conditions are relatively harsh, but the interior of Evergrande factory seems to be very busy: factory employees wear gray overalls, outsiders all wear bright colored vests, people outside the south gate of the factory, cars come and go frequently, and courier brothers pull full cars of couriers to deliver pieces.
▲Outside the south gate of Evergrande Automobile Factory
Inside the Evergrande Automobile Factory, there are stamping, body, painting, assembly workshops, as well as vehicle trial production workshops, R&D office buildings and an internal test site. On the west side of the factory, two more buildings are under construction.
As can be seen from the satellite map, after entering from the south gate of the factory, the counterclockwise direction is the body (welding) workshop, the R&D office building, the stamping workshop, the trial workshop, the test field, and the parking lot. Observing on the periphery of the factory, it is temporarily impossible to determine the location of the painting and final assembly workshop.
▲Satellite map of Evergrande factory
In the afternoon, the car happened to see a blue Hengchi 5 outside the south gate of the factory, which was about to leave the factory for public road testing. The car was hung with test license plates and the body did not have any camouflage, indicating that it was very close to the final production version. Evergrande Automobile employees told Che Dongxi that this road test car should be tested by the quality department.
▲ Hengchi 5 for public road testing
At the same time, in the internal test site on the north side of the factory, there is another black Hengchi 5 for field testing. On the day of the car's visit to the factory, the car was undergoing a reverse storage test. There are 6 engineers on site testing and recording data inside and outside the car.
▲Hengchi 5 in the test field
In addition to these two test vehicles, there is also a small parking lot on the west side of the Evergrande factory, but here are the models that have been crashed and scrapped. In this area, there are both crash-tested Hengchi 5, as well as Hengchi 6, Guoneng NEVS 93 and unknown car bodies, with a total of more than ten vehicles, of which Hengchi 5 and Hengchi 6 have the largest number.
▲Abandoned test vehicle parking lot
In addition to the test vehicles, there are also six-axle trailers in the factory from time to time, transporting large cargo.
At 5 p.m., the sky gradually darkened, and the lights in the factory office area were gradually lit. In the R&D office building, more than half of the lights are on, and the employees in the office area are basically working on the desk, and there is a small discussion. From time to time, the sound of reports and discussions is heard in the conference room.
▲R&D office building in Evergrande Automobile Factory
In the office area of the factory floor, there are also many employees working. Some workers sit at their desks, some are looking at the shared screen, and some are calling other employees.
From the outside, the production workshop is obviously not so busy, even at night the lights are very weak, it seems that only the lights of the entrances and exits and passages are lit. But an employee of the Evergrande factory told Che That the production workshop was also very busy.
▲Evergrande Automobile factory workshop
Obviously, the production work of Evergrande factory is underway, and from the perspective of road test vehicles and test site vehicles, Hengchi 5 models have entered the critical stage before mass production. As the first model of Evergrande Automobile to the market, the importance of the task shouldered by Hengchi 5 is self-evident. So, when will Hengchi 5 be able to go offline?
Second, the first model is about to roll off the production line The factory is making final preparations
According to the on-site visit and interviews with many employees of Evergrande Automobile, Evergrande Automobile Factory is likely to hold a Hengchi 5 off-line ceremony this week.
On the afternoon of January 4, when Che Dong came to Evergrande Automobile Factory, he found that all parts of the factory were renovating and building. On the outer wall of the stamping workshop, workers are adjusting the position of the four big characters of "Hengchi Automobile", and the four big characters will be more conspicuous when looking inward from the outside of the factory. Outside the south gate and east gate of the main entrance and exit of the factory, the previous words "Evergrande New Energy Vehicle" are being dismantled by workers and replaced with new words.
▲ Workers are adjusting the height of the text
Prior to this, Evergrande Automobile had hung banners on many different occasions that read, "Three months after three months of work, hengchi's first car at the Tianjin factory rolled off the production line", one of which was outside the R&D office building. The banner was hung outside the hall on the first floor when the car arrived at the factory on January 4, and had been removed when it came back to the factory on January 5. This means that Evergrande Automobile's Tianjin plant may have completed the roll-off.
▲The slogan outside the R&D office building was removed
Che Dongdong learned from an engineer from an automotive instrument supplier that he came to Evergrande Automobile Factory to debug the dashboard of Hengchi 5. He said that the confidentiality of Hengchi 5 is very strict, and supplier personnel must bring internal R&D personnel out of the factory to bring in the door. After entering the factory, you need to wear a bright color vest, and the phone camera is all pasted with stickers to prevent shooting.
"It is normal to operate this way before the vehicle goes off the line, before going to Volkswagen's factory even asked to hand in the mobile phone, and then the communication was really inconvenient to open the use of the mobile phone." As mass production of vehicles continues, there will be fewer and fewer things that need to be kept secret. He said.
He revealed to Che Dong that at present, the factory production line has trial produced 7 Hengchi 5 models, and the goal of the factory at this stage is to build 10 vehicles.
An engineer in the logistics department of Evergrande Automobile revealed to Che Dong that there are not many trial cars in the factory. However, before that, a number of Hengchi 5s produced at the Guangzhou plant were shipped to the Tianjin plant for testing together with the models of the Tianjin plant.
▲Evergrande Automobile Factory
Talking about the upcoming off-line ceremony, the logistics department engineer told Che Dong that the time is set for the 10th of this month.
However, the security personnel in the factory gave a different time. A security officer told the car that the off-line ceremony is scheduled for the 12th of this month.
At the time, the security guard was conducting a drill on the day of the off-line ceremony. In the open space in front of the R&D office building, there are seven sightseeing vehicles, led by one vehicle, and other security personnel driving the sightseeing vehicles to conduct route drills in the factory.
▲Route drills are conducted in the factory
Outside the south gate of Evergrande Automobile Factory, there are several Evergrande Automobile News Department personnel, who are stepping on the spot to shoot promotional videos, which are scheduled to officially start filming on January 5. There are photographers carrying telephoto lenses, and videographers flying drones to shoot the scene.
▲ The cameraman shoots with a drone
Che Dongxi confirmed to Evergrande's public relations department that the off-line ceremony of Evergrande's Tianjin factory will indeed be held in the near future, and it is expected that before the Spring Festival, the specific circumstances of the off-line ceremony have not been disclosed to the outside world.
Obviously, from the ordinary employees to the security team, to the brand's news department have taken action to make final preparations for the off-line ceremony of Hengchi 5. As soon as this week, the news of Hengchi 5's downline will be made public.
Third, engineers researchED NIO's ES6 Tianjin plant took the lead in mass production
While the entire plant stepped up its work to roll off the production line, the R&D department was also working intensively to develop various functions in the car.
On January 5, Che Dongxi came to Visit Evergrande Automobile Factory the next day, and there was an interesting discovery: Evergrande Automobile R & D personnel and three people walked out of the factory and studied the colleague's Weilai ES6.
▲Evergrande Automobile employees analyze the logic of ES6 car locks
The car learned from one of the R & D personnel that hengchi 5 is still in the PT0 (Production Trail, small batch trial production) stage, before the large-scale determination of various selections, such as body size, window size, etc., but such as lights, door handles and other details have not been finalized, recently Hengchi's research and development department is determining these small details.
He said that today several colleagues came out to see this Weilai ES6, just to understand the way its car keys unlock the vehicle. "When the driver approaches the NIO ES6 vehicle, the key can be recognized, and the door can be unlocked by pulling the door. Although this method is convenient and simple, it is inevitably more expensive. So now their engineers are comparing a large number of models on the market and finding a better solution as much as possible. ”
Employees of Evergrande's auto logistics department told Che dong that Hengchi 5 recently achieved final assembly off the production line, and the mass production time is expected to be in August this year.
Talking about the preparation before Hengchi 5 rolled off the production line, he said: "The first few months were busy, and the welding workshop was still working at night, so the logistics department was also busy. The machines in the factory are all newly installed and have been commissioning for some time. "From now until mass production, the production equipment will have to undergo a lot of commissioning, because it is not very perfect now.
In order to ensure that the vehicles of the Tianjin plant roll off the production line, Evergrande Automobile has focused on this plant, and the factories in Guangzhou and Shanghai have made more slow progress. He analyzed that this is because the Tianjin factory has a car manufacturing qualification, and if the other two factories obtain the qualification, they can also produce synchronously.
He also said that in the first two months, Evergrande Automobile had organized a small-scale test drive for employees to test drive Hengchi 5, and his most intuitive feeling after the test ride was that the electric car started very fast. At the same time, the quality of the vehicle is significantly higher than that of the joint venture brand model of the same level.
When chatting with the car, he also expressed his concerns about the Hengchi brand. He said that the price of Hengchi 5 may be 200,000 yuan, which is not cheap compared to many families. At the same time, Evergrande is a real estate enterprise, compared with the old car companies its brand power is insufficient.
Fourth, concentrate more than a thousand people in the three places to work The problem of wages and social security has been solved
As night fell, at about 5:30 p.m., the workers in the factory returned home from work after a day's work.
Due to the stricter secrecy in the factory, employee vehicles are parked on both sides of the road outside the south gate of the factory, and the number of private cars is estimated to be hundreds.
At the same time, on the south side of the road extension, there are 10 buses, which are Evergrande commuter vehicles, transporting employees to and from work.
During the rush hour, there was a rare bustle outside the south gate of Evergrande Automobile Factory, and private cars, taxis, online ride-hailing cars, and employees who came out of the factory gave life to the originally desolate factory, and even a few minutes of congestion.
▲Factory entrance during rush hour
Che Dongxi learned from the employees of Evergrande Automobile Logistics Department that there may be more than 1,000 employees in Evergrande Automobile's Tianjin plant. This is because in addition to the inherent employees of the Tianjin factory, many employees of the Guangzhou and Shanghai factories have also recently joined the team in Tianjin and jointly worked together to achieve the mass production of Hengchi 5.
"A month or two ago, at noon dinner, we found that there were more than 700 diners, and with the addition of employees in Shanghai and Guangzhou, there may now be more than 1,000 people," he said. ”
Che Dongxi also learned from the employees of Evergrande's auto logistics department about the salary suspension that had been exposed earlier. He said that the problem of his delay in paying and social security suspension has been solved.
He said that from August to November last year, his social security payment was suspended by the company. However, in December last year, the company paid a total of 4 social security in one month, and made up all the social security in the previous months. In January this year, the payroll payment time was also adjusted to the normal payment time of January 5, while in the first 2 or 3 months, the payroll time was postponed to the 20th of each month.
Judging from the situation of employees and salaries, the various problems that Evergrande Automobile may have faced before are being solved one by one, and its fate has become less heart-wrenching.
Conclusion: Evergrande Automobile is almost mass-produced
Judging from this visit, Evergrande's road to building cars is indeed very difficult, but fortunately, the production line has been opened and the off-line ceremony will be held soon. In the next step, the focus of Evergrande Automobile will also be implemented on the mass production of Hengchi 5, and it is only close to mass production.
Entering 2022, the competition in the domestic new energy vehicle market is still becoming more intense, as a new force in car manufacturing, Evergrande Automobile can not let Hengchi 5 into more families, but also need to be fully tested by the market.