| "Finance and Economics" weekly Wang Xin
Editor| Mao Shiyang
The gradually crowded car-making track became a jungle of controversy.
On the evening of January 16, Li Xiang, the founder of Ideal Automobile, forwarded the content of the media interview after Wen Wei, CEO of Tuanche, announced the construction of the car on his personal Weibo, and bombarded it for refreshing the bottom line of entrepreneurs.
Li wanted to call Tuanche a "business entrepreneur who hopes to find a super savior" and that they are "generally liars, or most likely scammers themselves." At the same time, he also criticized that "it really refreshes the bottom line of entrepreneurs."
The car builder group car network, which was angrily spewed by Li Xiang, just announced a week ago that it would enter the car building with a low-cost, small team.
After Li wanted to "shoot", on January 17, Wen Wei, CEO of Tuanche, responded to Li Xiang's questioning and escalated the contradiction again. "I didn't expect that the first shot of the Long March came from Mr. Li Xiang. Apart from rhythm and patience, have you forgotten your vision and judgment? Wasn't Feng Sihan (CEO of Volkswagen China) being repulsed too early to see his eyes sprayed? Therefore, no one should think of themselves as prophets, nor should they be the ones they hate the most. ”
Wen Wei's "Puxin-style" car-making myth
Without thinking clearly about the many problems, small-cost car manufacturing, and the magical car-making team, both inside and outside the industry are very curious about where Wen Wei's car-making confidence comes from.
According to public information, Wen Wei is a serial entrepreneur. Wen Wei graduated from Northern Jiaotong University in his early years, majoring in industrial foreign trade, and later entered Shanghai Mitsubishi Electric Company to engage in channel sales, and began to start his own business in 2000. In 2009, Wen Wei started his fifth venture, he found that some people gathered in the community, and then went to the 4S store to bargain to buy a car, and since then founded the group car network. In 2018, Tuanche.com landed on NASDAQ, becoming the first new retail stock of automobiles listed in the United States in China.
On January 13, Tuanche released its third quarter financial report. In the third quarter of 2021, the net revenue of Tuanche.com was 61.1 million yuan, a decrease of 38.9% year-on-year; the gross profit in the third quarter was 46.8 million yuan, a decrease of 35.1% year-on-year. The operation status of this auto retail platform with the auto show as its main business is being challenged, and Tuanche.com urgently needs to find new performance growth points.
"When I saw that 'Wei Xiaoli' first started building cars, I actually had an impulse, but the conditions were not yet ripe at that time." The real determination was in the second half of 2021, after matchmaking, we began to contact the top team in the industry and saw the possibility of successful car building. In an interview with the media on January 14, Wen Wei talked a lot about the advantages of tuanche's own car manufacturing and his views on the new forces at present.
It is reported that the biggest motivation for the group car to decide to build a car comes from an external team of more than 100 people. Wen Wei said that this team can undertake almost all car manufacturing processes, including product planning, engineering development, and intelligent driving, and has more than 20 years of car manufacturing experience. Not only that, this team can also do more than 20 million yuan of cars, but also can do cars below 50,000 yuan, including commercial vehicles, logistics vehicles.
In Wen Wei's description, the team is almost omnipotent. The team already has semi-finished models, and the first car of the group car will choose one of these semi-finished models, the pricing will be between 100,000 yuan and 200,000 yuan, and it is expected to open pre-sale in the second half of this year, "the first car adopts mature programs, mature technologies, mature suppliers, and the quality and quality control of the product itself are completely mature and controllable."
Wen Wei, an external car-making team, can even reduce the car-making cycle of new energy vehicles from 36 months to 18-24 months. And the cost of mass production of a car was reduced to about $50 million. Therefore, this external team is responsible for building cars, while Tuanche is responsible for product positioning, marketing, and channel networks. Simply put, one party is responsible for building cars, and group cars are responsible for selling cars.
"I think there's at least a 50 percent chance of winning." Wen Wei said, "It doesn't matter if our first car fails, we can make another one in 3 months." ”
As for the source of funds for tuanche to build cars, Wen Wei said that tuanche itself is a listed company in the United States, and there are many investors who are very interested at present, and the desire of local governments for car-making projects can also become one of the solutions, and "the funds used for the mass production of a car are measured to be one of the few points of the new forces of car-making." Niu Chuang got $500 million, and we're probably one-tenth of him. ”
Is there still a window of time for car building in 2022? Wen Wei said that if the market capacity is 5 million units, it will be crowded, and if it is 20 million or 30 million units, there will be opportunities. The differentiation of electric vehicles and new operating models, business models, profit models still have room, and new formats such as software subscriptions will emerge, "You don't have to worry about track crowding, there will be segmentation, the next 2 years is the last window period for my understanding." ”
Who is optimistic about the group car to build a car?
From the current point of view, since January 5, Tuanche announced its official entry into the field of car manufacturing. And Wen Wei's original impulse to build a car came from "Wei Xiaoli". However, the market did not give positive encouragement to tuanche to build cars, and after announcing the car, the stock of Tuanche.com declined slightly.
In addition to Li Xiang, most of the automotive industry practitioners have also eaten melons to find where the magic team is.
"Not optimistic, in the terminal and this company often cooperate, they have no influence and the local old auto show than nothing, all by bribing the marketing manager to pull the auto show, the scale is also very small." There is also no volume. This kind of corporate culture is not a good car to build. An auto industry practitioner said.
"With all due respect, is this team of more than 100 people so invincible? Can you do so many things? With more than ten years of experience in the industry, I feel that adding a zero to do these things will also be tired and half dead. A netizen engaged in automobile manufacturing said that this is more like cutting leeks.
In addition, the remarks of "50 million can build a car" and Wen Wei still have a vague understanding of many problems in the car-making process, which makes the reliability of the group car car greatly reduced. "I didn't think about anything, I didn't make anything, and it's not easy to integrate the two teams in this project."
Earlier, Li Bin, chairman of Weilai Automobile, said in an interview with Caijing Tianxia Weekly that the threshold for car manufacturing has risen to 40 billion yuan, "If an enterprise does not have 40 billion reserve funds, the risk will be very large." ”
This article is originally produced by AI Finance and Economics, an account of Caijing Tianxia Weekly, without permission, please do not reprint it on any channel or platform. Violators will be prosecuted.