50 million can build a car? Li wants to shell the regiment car "most likely a liar", and the regiment car recoils "don't think of yourself as a prophet"

Crowded new energy vehicle track, there are players entering, this time a familiar stranger.

On the evening of January 16, Li Xiang, founder of Ideal Automobile (02015.HK/LI.US), forwarded a group car (TC.US) on his personal Weibo to announce that Wen Wei, CEO of the car, was interviewed by the media after the car was built, and bombarded it for refreshing the bottom line of entrepreneurs.

Li xiang said, "Those entrepreneurs who expect to find a super savior, those entrepreneurs who hope to be able to open the second vein of Ren Dou, and finally find liars, or most likely they are liars." There are still people who can openly speak out of this view, which really refreshes the bottom line of entrepreneurs. ”

Li wants to criticize the group car, a week ago announced the entry of the car, the first car priced at 100,000-200,000 yuan.

On January 17, Wen Wei, CEO of Tuanche, responded to Li Xiang's question through his personal Weibo: "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. ”

The CEO of Tuanche said that "the threshold for building a car is not high"

There is a 50% "chance of winning"

New energy vehicles are transforming from a blue ocean to a red ocean.

The brand of new car-making forces has experienced a round of big waves, and only a few head enterprises are left in the "Hundred Regiments War"; traditional car companies have turned around and invested heavily in new energy; xiaomi, Baidu, Huawei and other technology giants have also rushed in... The group car announced the construction of the car at this point in time, where is the confidence?

Regarding the reasons for the group car itself, Wen Wei said in an interview with the media on January 14, "When I saw that 'Wei Xiaoli' first started to build cars, I actually had an impulse, but the conditions were not 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. ”

For the timing of car building, Wen Wei said that there are still opportunities for market capacity. "We believe that there is still a two-year window period for the new energy automobile industry, and now the threshold for car manufacturing is not very high, and the market can also accept new enterprises to enter the car industry."

According to Wen Wei, his confidence in building cars mainly comes from an outside team of more than 100 people. In Wen Wei's description, this team has more than 20 years of experience in car manufacturing, can undertake almost all car manufacturing processes including product planning, engineering development, intelligent driving, etc.; can do more than 20 million yuan of cars, can also do cars below 50,000 yuan, including commercial vehicles, logistics vehicles; can reduce the new energy vehicle car manufacturing cycle from 36 months to 18-24 months; the mass production cost of a car to about 50 million US dollars, after Weilai Automobile founder Li Bin told the media on NIO Day, The threshold for car manufacturing has risen to 40 billion yuan.

Wen Wei said that the team already has semi-finished models, the first car of the group car will be selected from these semi-finished models, the pricing will be between 100,000 yuan - 200,000 yuan, is expected to open pre-sale in the second half of this year, "the first car using mature programs, mature technology, mature suppliers, the quality of the product itself, quality control is completely mature and controllable."

"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." ”

Lee wants to shell "most likely a liar"

The industry is skeptical

Auto analyst Liu Hao told Red Star Capital, "Wen Wei's description of this team is beyond the general understanding of the current industry and is one of the main factors that Li wants to think that 'high probability is a liar'." To be able to reduce costs and speed up so obviously, the industry has never heard of such a 'top' team. ”

Regarding the details of the car, Wen Wei said very vaguely. According to him, the foreign team is responsible for building cars, and the group car is responsible for selling cars. Some auto industry insiders expressed their doubts about tuanche to the Red Star Capital Bureau, "but car manufacturing is not a simple cobbleachment of two teams to succeed, and the corporate style of tuanche also makes the industry skeptical." ”

The confidence of the group car also comes from its marketing advantages. According to Wen Wei, the area of tuanche is good at is "selection", and analyzing user preferences is a strong point. The existing business and the car business will be completely independent, and the existing business will empower the car business and provide strong support for its sales.

Wen Wei mentioned that Tuanche will be based on the current innovative business model and the huge user group that has been operating in depth for many years, and integrate into the future new business with a sales network covering the first line of the country to the county, as well as a strong sales ability.

"We give priority to the direct sales model, and also have the channel advantage of landing in the sinking market, in fact, whether it is franchise or direct sales, we have a variety of options."

As for the source of funds for Tuanche to build cars, Wen Wei said that Tuanche is a listed company in the United States and has financing capabilities. In addition, both state-owned assets and local governments are very interested in our projects. Due to the low cost of building group cars, there is currently no need for much capital.

Wen Wei experienced five times of entrepreneurship, the first four times were fruitless, and the result of "the last bet again" was the group car. The entrepreneur said he would treat car building as if it were his last venture.

The group car lost 705 million yuan in 5 years

Privatization was announced and revoked

There has never been any indication that the group car may enter the game to build a car. On January 5, Tuanche announced that it had formally established a strategic plan for the new electric vehicle business line to include design, R&D and manufacturing teams, and expanded its business to electric vehicle manufacturing.

This makes many people wonder: "Who are you?" ”

According to public information, Tuanche is an auto group buying e-commerce website focusing on the "scenario-based new retail" model, founded in 2010 and listed on nasdaq in the United States in November 2018, with an issue price of 7.8 US dollars / ADS. Tuanche once created the double eleven sales myth, and its current business covers more than 140 regions in 29 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government.

Tuanche has been in a state of loss since 2016. From 2016 to 2018, the loss was 0.87 billion yuan (RMB), 0.9 billion yuan and 114 million yuan respectively, and in 2019, it was a huge loss of 251 million yuan. In 2020, the epidemic made it difficult to carry out its core car owner business, with a loss of 163 million yuan for the whole year. The cumulative loss in 5 years is about 705 million yuan.

Tuanche's stock price reached a peak of $31.7 per share in early 2019 and has since fallen all the way. As of January 17, Tuanche's share price was only $2.76 per share, down 64.6% from the issue price.

It is worth mentioning that the market has not given positive encouragement to the group car, and after the announcement of the car, the stock of the group car has declined slightly.

In early 2021, the group car announcement will be privatized. But in November 2021, Wen Wei announced the withdrawal of privatization, saying it was to open up more opportunities for the company.

On January 13, Tuanche released its third quarter financial report, with a loss of 59 million yuan in the first three quarters of 2021. Affected by the domestic scattered epidemic and the global chip shortage, the third quarter of 2021 was only held in 65 cities, a year-on-year decrease of 57.2%.

Mo Daiqing, director of the online retail department and senior analyst of the e-commerce center of the network economic society, believes that auto e-commerce companies such as tuanche have previously grown rapidly with the speed of the Internet by virtue of the light assets of the online platform, but they have suffered serious losses due to burning money. Once it encounters a capital winter, enterprises must make adjustments for cost considerations.

Liu Hao told Red Star Capital Bureau that the long-term losses since 2016, especially the huge losses in 2019, reflect the plight of auto e-commerce itself under the changes in the auto sales environment. Coupled with the impact of the epidemic on the main business of the auto show, the group car has no way to retreat, and has to find new growth points.

Red Star News reporter Wu Danruo

Edited by Yang Cheng

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