In the past 2021, China's new energy market has ushered in a big outbreak. According to the data released by the Federation of Passenger Vehicles, the wholesale sales of passenger cars in 2021 were 21.1 million units, an increase of 6.7% year-on-year, of which the total wholesale volume of new energy passenger cars reached 3.312 million units, an increase of 181.0% year-on-year, while the retail sales reached 2.989 million units, an increase of 169.1% year-on-year. In terms of penetration rate, the domestic retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles in 2021 will reach 14.8%, which is significantly higher than the 5.8% penetration rate in 2020. Due to the good situation, the Association predicts that the sales of new energy passenger vehicles will reach more than 5.5 million units in 2022, and the penetration rate is expected to reach about 25%.
In detail, whether it is the "Wei Xiaoli" in the first echelon of the new car-making forces or the Nezha, Zero Run and WM Cars that are closely catching up in the back, they have gained a lot in 2021, of which the annual sales of "Wei Xiaoli" are 91429, 98155 and 90491, respectively, while Nezha, Zero Run and WM Cars are followed by 69674, 43121 and 44157 vehicles.
However, under the bustle, the fate of Aichi Automobile, which is also a new force of car manufacturing, is somewhat sad. Although compared with the likes of Byton and Bo County, which have entered bankruptcy and liquidation, AIWAYS Automobile is still working hard to survive, but its achievements are difficult to come up with. The data shows that from January to November 2021, the cumulative sales of Aiways automobiles are only 2992 vehicles, which is not even as good as the current one-month sales of Nezha automobiles in the second echelon, which shows that Aiways automobiles have fallen behind.
Although it is lagging behind, Aichi Automobile has not given up on self-help, and it finally waited for "life-saving money" some time ago. According to media reports, AIWAYS Automobile Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "AIWAYS Auto") recently obtained a new round of financing from Chen Xuanlin and his Dongbai Group, with a financing amount of hundreds of millions of dollars.
However, the "life-saving money" is not easy to take, after this financing, AIWAYS Auto ushered in a high-level "blood change". The latest information from aiways auto officials shows that its founder Fu Qiang will continue to serve as the president of AIWAYS Automobile, while Chen Xuanlin, as an investor, directly "joins" AIWAYS and serves as the chairman of AIWAYS Automobile; while Zhang Yang, who was once vice president of Weilai, serves as the CEO of AIWAYS Automobile. After the completion of the job change, the original head Fu Qiang will be marginalized, and the car-building plan after AIWAYS will be controlled by the capital represented by Chen Xuanlin.
For this time, the capital personally went down to coordinate the construction of the car, which also highlighted the current helplessness of Aiways Automobile, which was actually dug too many pits before, resulting in a step backwardness behind opponents such as Nezha, Zero Run and Weima Automobile.
Aichi, a little late
For Aiways Automobile, the biggest difference between it and "Wei Xiaoli" and Nezha, Zero Run and WM Motors is that it has no sense of existence, which is the fatal weakness of the car manufacturer as a new entry. No presence means you don't have traffic, and no traffic means no sales. The reason why AIWAYS automobile has caused the current dismal situation is that I think it is caused by many aspects.
The first is that the time to build the car is slow. Compared with the early establishment of "Wei Xiaoli", although Aiways Automobile also took advantage of the emergence of the east wind of new energy, it was established a little late. Of course, if you want to count from the predecessor of Aiways Automobile, then the earliest time for Aiways Automobile to enter the new energy must go back to 2015.
In 2015, Foxconn found Tencent and Harmony Automobile to jointly invest 1 billion yuan to create the Internet car brand "Harmony Futeng", and there are two sub-brands under its main brand, namely Future Mobility Corp (FMC), which focuses on the high-end electric vehicle market, with Dai Lei and Bi Fukang as executives, and the other brand is a car company, with Fu Qiang, who single-handedly created the Audi and Skoda brands, as the CEO, which is the predecessor of Aichi Automobile.
With the withdrawal of Foxconn and Tencent, the powerful and powerful harmonious Futeng quickly disintegrated, Dai Lei and Bi Fukang renamed FMC to Byton Automobile, while Fu Qiang took the car project to Tencent and obtained investment, established AIWAYS Yiwei at the end of 2016, and renamed AIWAYS Yiwei to AIWAYS Auto in February 2017.
However, Aiways Automobile, which was originally later than the establishment of "Wei Xiaoli", did not rush to build cars at that time, and Fu Qiang recruited Gu Feng, who had served as the CFO of SAIC Motor, as the co-founder and CEO of Aiways Automobile, and solved the problem of car-making qualifications with him. However, it was not until August 2019 that AIWAYS Auto spent 1.747 billion yuan to acquire Jiangling Holdings to solve the qualification problem. Compared with Ideal Automobile's acquisition of Lifan Automobile and WM Automobile's acquisition of Huanghai Automobile, which cost 650 million yuan and 1.18 billion yuan respectively, AIWAYS' acquisition of Jiangling Holdings set a record for the highest cost of obtaining production qualifications for new domestic car-making forces at that time. A moment of extravagant spending caused Aichi Automobile to be short of money for a long time.
According to the data, since the completion of the Pre-A round in October 2016, as of now, it has completed 8 rounds of financing, according to the publicly disclosed amount of funds, the total financing of AIWAYS has exceeded 9 billion yuan, and the purchase of production qualifications has accounted for more than one-fifth of the total financing of AIWAYS, which shows how luxurious the early AIWAYS spent money.
In 2019, Aiways Auto, which obtained production qualifications, released its first model, the AIWAYS U5. According to the introduction of AIWAYS, the AIWAYS U5 is positioned as a medium-sized SUV, and the cruising range of the vehicle can reach 503 kilometers. In terms of intelligence, the AIWAYS U5 is equipped with an EyeQ4 chip from Mobileye, which can achieve L2+ automatic driver assistance with the cooperation of 22 sensing hardware throughout the vehicle.
In contrast, "Wei Xiaoli" is significantly more rapid in product launch, such as the Xiaopeng G3 began mass production delivery as early as the end of 2018, and Weilai has even achieved mass production delivery of ES8 and ES6 models at the end of 2019. Although it lagged behind "Wei Xiaoli" in terms of product launch time, the product strength of U5 was not bad at that time, and even the price of 169,900-249,900 yuan after its subsidy was quite competitive at the time, why did it cause the situation of AIWAYS today? This is the second point of the day.
Compared with the early days of "Wei Xiaoli", which mainly focused on the domestic market, AIWAYS Automobile "found another way" at the beginning, focusing on the European B-end rental market, and the sales of the domestic and European C-end markets also began at the end of that year. At that time, Gu Feng, CEO of Aiways, also said in an interview, "After 3 years, Aiways will achieve export sales greater than domestic sales." ”
For Aiways Automobile, whose strength was not outstanding at that time, it was understandable to choose to focus its main energy on the European B-end rental market to avoid "Wei Xiaoli", but it was this wrong strategic decision that caused Aiways Automobile to miss the window of the new energy market outbreak in the past two years.
According to the data, the production and sales of new energy vehicles in 2020 were 1.366 million units and 1.367 million units, up 7.5% and 10.9% year-on-year, respectively, while in 2021, the total wholesale volume of new energy passenger vehicles reached 3.312 million units, an increase of 181.0% year-on-year; while the retail sales reached 2.989 million units, an increase of 169.1% year-on-year. In contrast, the total sales of Aiways Automobile in China in 2020 is only 2600 vehicles, and in 2021, the cumulative sales of Aiways Automobiles as of the month is only 2992 vehicles, which shows that Aiways Automobile has not enjoyed the fruits of the domestic new energy outbreak.
Not only that, the domestic market is not booming Aiways Automobile in overseas market development is not very smooth. It is true that after nearly two years of operation, among the new forces of Car Manufacturing in China, AIWAYS Automobile can be called "the crown of overseas sales", but the color is not good, as of the end of May, the cumulative export volume of AIWAYS has reached 2500 vehicles. Such achievements are difficult to say excellent, and it is impossible to support Aichi to continue to move forward.
Most importantly, the overseas market that Aichi is proud of has also ushered in many challenges, such as BYD, as a veteran player of new energy vehicles going to sea, began to ship the first batch of 100 Tang EVs from Shanghai Port to Norway in June last year. According to BYD's plan, it will also deliver 1,500 Don EVs to Norway in the future.
In addition, established car companies such as the Great Wall and Geely are also focusing on promoting new energy vehicles to go to sea. In addition to the traditional car companies have laid out overseas markets, "Wei Xiaoli", as the first echelon of new car-making forces, has also set its sights on overseas markets last year. According to the data, in December 2020, Xiaopeng Motors has successfully exported 100 G3 units to Norway. According to the news previously revealed by He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Motors, in the future, Xiaopeng Motors will continue to promote the export of G3 and Xiaopeng P7, and Weilai officially established the first overseas Weilai center in Norway in September last year to open an overseas car sales journey, as for the ideal car, although the pace lags behind Xiaopeng and Weilai, it also established its own overseas market team in May last year and began to study overseas market sales channels and other issues to prepare for large-scale overseas going to sea. It can be seen that as more and more competitors set their sights on overseas markets, Aiways, which was already slightly inferior, can hold out in this war for a long time.
Aichi, it's not too late
Compared with the new car-making forces such as Bo County and Byton, which have entered bankruptcy and liquidation, Aiways Automobile, which has not fallen at present, still has a great chance to rise again. The most important thing is that in addition to the purchase of production qualifications, the current fundamentals of AIWAYS Automobile are not bad, if it can be solved quickly, I believe that in the domestic new energy market, there is still a place for it.
Why? As the saying goes, it is better to die than to live, and the most important thing in front of today's Aichi car is how to survive. You know, in the domestic new energy market, everyone was feeling the stones to cross the river before, so it is difficult to make decisions wrong. Taking the ideal car as an example, Li Xiang was the first to actually exert efforts in the micro-electric vehicle market, and the SEV launched by it was once trial operated in the European market. Because the domestic policy has not been liberalized, Li's idea of solving the last mile of users with SEV has not been realized, so he directly cut off the SEV project and hurriedly launched the ideal ONE, which was hailed as a transitional product at that time. Because there is no endurance worry, the ideal ONE has been selling well since its listing, selling more than 90,000 units in 2021, which has to admire li xiang's courage to break his wrist.
In addition to the ideal car, like the current new car-making force of the second echelon of zero-run cars has actually encountered a business crisis, its early years of miscalculation of the entry coupe market will usher in an outbreak, so the launch of S01 this quite characteristic small sports car. However, contrary to expectations, S01 did not cause an outbreak due to such and such problems after its listing, and even fell into a quality crisis for a time. In order to survive, the zero-run car transformed in time and launched the micro-electric vehicle T03. Although it was once questioned by the industry to imitate Mercedes-Benz Smart, T03 has won the pursuit of many young people with its low purchase threshold and the highest endurance of the same level. After the launch of the T03, the cumulative sales volume of the T03 will reach 10,266 units in 2020, becoming the main sales force of zero-run cars. In 2021, the zero-run T03 delivered a total of 38,463 units throughout the year, accounting for nearly 90% of the sales of zero-running cars. It can be seen that in order to survive, the zero-run car that has been insisting on full-stack self-development is also putting down its body.
In contrast, AIWAYS Auto obviously does not have much baggage, mainly the problem of strategic direction. From the marginalization of Fu Qiang, Chen Xuanlin and Zhang Yang, who came to the front of the stage, also know more about car manufacturing and automobile industry. As a previous investor of AIWAYS Automobile, Chen Xuanlin has rich experience in investment and operation in the automotive industry, and is currently the chairman of Shanghai Zhongtong Ruide Investment Group Co., Ltd., the chairman of Shanghai Wanxiang Automobile Manufacturing Co., Ltd., and currently in charge of Zhongtong Ruide Investment Group, whose industries involve automobile manufacturing and trade, general aviation industry and technology manufacturing.
As the CEO of AIWAYS, Zhang Yang has served as vice president of NIO's industrial development and other positions, and has publicly shared NIO's exploration of business model and industrial development many times. This time, Chen Xuanlin hired him as CEO, I believe it is because of his previous work experience. Not only that, after Chen Xuanlin and Zhang Yang entered AIWAYS, the internal changes of AIWAYS are still continuing, and at present, Chen Xuanlin and other shareholders have sent some employees to AIWAYS Automobile.
In addition, the injection of funds has also accelerated the development of Aiways Automobile, which is already short of money. You know, the main reason why aiways U6, the second model of AIWAYS that should have been listed in September last year, has not been listed until today is also a lack of money. Not only that, aiways automobiles that inject funds are also expected to accelerate in channel construction. According to public data, by the end of 2020, AIWAYS has more than 50 offline sales stores, covering more than 35 cities, including 25 experience centers and 2 delivery centers. In contrast, the number of offline stores of the three "Wei Xiaoli" at the end of 2020 reached 204, 160 and 52 respectively, which is why the sales of Aiways In China will not improve. It can be said that with this financing, if aiways automobiles with money and people no longer continue to bet on overseas markets, full energy is invested in the country, in the domestic new energy market that continues to erupt, Aiways automobiles will inevitably have no chance to catch up later.
Summary: For Aiways Automobile, the past 2021 has been very difficult, especially watching the "Wei Xiaoli" of the new car-making forces have achieved good results, and this pain is even more difficult to express. Fortunately, in this year, Aiways automobile did not slide down the abyss, and in the stage of new energy outlet blowing again, it ushered in "life-saving money". As for whether aiways cars that have gained a glimmer of life can be revitalized in 2022 and return to the mainstream vision? I don't think it's going to be too long, half a year is enough.