Author/ Author of "Finance and Economics" Weekly Author Wang Xin
Edited / Mao Shiyang
Ideal Auto founder Li wants to "keep his mouth shut" again, which has aroused another round of attention.
On the evening of January 16, Li Xiang 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 wants to call the group car into the game to build a car, is "counting on finding a super savior entrepreneurs", and they are "generally liars, or most likely they are liars", while he also criticized that "it really refreshes the bottom line of entrepreneurs".
On January 5, the group car network that started from the car group purchase announced that it would enter the car manufacturing bureau, and the company's CEO Wen Wei said that it would use an external team of more than 100 people to complete almost all the car manufacturing processes, which can not only reduce the car manufacturing cycle of new energy vehicles from 36 months to 18-24 months, but also reduce the mass production cost of a car to about 50 million US dollars.
For Wen Wei's statement, most practitioners in the automotive industry did not comment, and Li Xiang was the only industry leader who publicly expressed his opinion.
In fact, Li wants to often publish more fierce words, sometimes in response to the outside world's doubts about ideal products and technical routes, and sometimes expresses his own feelings, and the "intimidated" people have both car owners and peers, so they are called "public relations killers". Some people in the industry believe that as the founder of a new car brand, it is more necessary to maintain patience and maintain a distance from enterprises and brands in order to go further.
This time, after Li wanted to "shoot" at the group car, the trouble was far from over. On January 17, Wen Wei, CEO of Tuanche, responded to Li Xiang's question 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 car-making remarks, Li wants to see it?
Public information shows that 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.
Behind the entry into the car, the crisis of the group car itself has emerged.
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 the group car itself and his views on the new forces at present.
It is reported that the basis of the group car is from a foreign 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 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."
"I think there's at least a 50 percent chance of winning." Wen Wei said that the team has trial and error costs, "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 car manufacturing, 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 one of the few points of the new forces in 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, and profit models still have room, and new formats such as software subscriptions will emerge, "everyone does not have to worry about track crowding, there will be segmentation, and the next 2 years is the last window period for my understanding."
Who is optimistic about the group car to build a car?
Since The Group Car announced its official entry into the car-making field on January 5, the market has not given much positive encouragement to the Group Car, and after the announcement of the car, the stock of the Group Car Network has declined slightly.
In addition to Li Xiang, most of the automotive industry practitioners are also looking for, where is the magical 100-person team claimed by Tuanche?
"Not optimistic, in the terminal and this company often cooperate, they have no influence, there is 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.
According to the "Finance and Economics" weekly combing, the current number of employees in the world is more than 9,000, Xiaopeng is more than 5,000, and the current team size of Ideal Automobile is more than 4,000, which is the smallest of the three Weixiaoli. But at this order of magnitude, even if there are more than 4,000 people, the ideal internal division according to different business divisions, organizational management is still a big problem.
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." ”
Li wants to be 40 years old and "mouthless"?
In the eyes of many people, it is not surprising that Li wants to shell the regiment car this time, after all, Li wants to never care about becoming a topic maker.
At the end of 2021, Li Xiang posted on his personal Weibo "40-year-old me and 14-year-old Li want to say a few words from the heart", saying, "When you were 40 years old, you were still speechless, annoying, annoying, and did not live as mature and stable, broad-minded, rational and objective that others wanted." 26 years later, your heart and behavior are almost the same as when you were 14 years old, and you haven't complicated yourself because of your environment, which is perhaps the proudest insistence in these 26 years. ”
As Li Xiang said, in the past year, Li wants to "curse the rumor-mongers", endorse the ideal car, do the ideal brand of the "public relations killer", "provoke" peers to lead the battle, is a rare active member of the automotive circle, in addition to sharing new technology trends and entrepreneurial feelings on Weibo, he will also participate in various hot events voting and praise.
On December 22, 2021, Li Xiang also posted the ideal delivery volume for November on Weibo, not forgetting to name his peers, saying that the ideal sales volume "exceeded the total sales volume of Volkswagen's medium and large SUVs". In 2021, the ideal ONE delivered a total of 90,000 units, an increase of 177.4% over 2020. Since its delivery, the ideal ONE has delivered 124,000 units.
Behind the naming of Volkswagen, Li Xiang and Volkswagen China CEO Feng Sihan once had a "contest" over the air.
At Volkswagen's PHEV technology conference in September 2020, when Volkswagen China CEO Feng Sihan was asked by the media about his views on range extended range hybrid technology, Feng Sihan said that from the perspective of a bicycle, it has certain value, but from the perspective of the whole country, the range extender electric vehicle is the worst solution.
Li wanted to be very unconvinced, to let the Audi Q7 PHEV representing the highest level of the public compete with the ideal one, but the public did not face the battle.
In addition to being intimidated by his peers, Li wants to be equally rude to car owners and consumers.
In July 2021, a car owner found a substance suspected of mercury (commonly known as mercury) on the ideal ONE car seat, and it can be seen from the video screenshot that in the gap of the ideal ONE seat involved, there are a large number of silver high-gloss beads rolling. Subsequently, the owner of the ideal ONE mercury gate incident was released with a medical examination report and was diagnosed with mercury poisoning. In this regard, Ideal Auto said that in the production and manufacturing of ideal ONE parts, mercury substances will not be used.
After the incident, Li Xiang, the founder of Ideal Motors, responded on social media, saying, "The people and media who spread rumors about us with mercury wish you mercury in your blood and mercury in your brains." ”
In April last year, Ideal Automobile fell into the controversy of "cutting leeks", and the ideal ONE mid-term revamp appeared in the employee scolding reporter incident, Li wanted to send a Weibo to show his doubts: "In addition to fulfilling the responsibility of dismissing employees, does the enterprise have the responsibility to bear the responsibility of public apology to the party who was insulted and insulted?" This incident directly triggered the owner of the old ideal ONE to find that he had been "cut leeks", and the owners of the car after being provoked collectively denounced the ideal car.
When competitor Weilai fell into the dilemma of "automatic driving fatality", on August 16, 2021, Li wanted to post in the circle of friends, calling on the media and industry agencies to unify the standards of Chinese terms for automatic driving, avoid exaggerated publicity caused by misunderstanding of user use, he also said, "In the promotion of restraint, in the technical investment, long-term benefits to users, industries, and enterprises." ”
In addition to intimidating others, Li Xiang sometimes reflects on his own problems on social media.
On January 11, 2022, he began to reflect on himself, "In the early days of the company, because my personal financing level was too poor, too poor, too poor, limited funds could not support us to carry out the technical self-research work of intelligent driving (not that the team did not want to engage in self-research, but the money raised barely met the product research and development, self-built factory, supply chain and service system construction, and pay the team)." This situation has a fundamental turning point after the IPO of Ideal Automobile in 2020, that is, there is money to engage in technology research and development, not just product research and development. ”
On the evening of January 16, 2022, Li wanted to start a business again and lamented "The Importance of Rhythm Control for Entrepreneurship", saying that Wei Xiaoli "three Internet laymen have become the sales in front of the new forces", rather than the executives of multinational car companies, the core reason is that Li Bin, He Xiaopeng, and Li want to be continuous entrepreneurs, "for the rhythm control and mental strength (better)." The worst entrepreneurs in this round of failure are often executives of multinational auto companies, most of whom want to do from the 10-100 stage. ”
He warned entrepreneurs, "Don't try anything, either go all out and do it, or 'die' early." ”
There are many people who like Li Xiang, and they appreciate that Li Xiang's poisonous tongue is a rare true temperament and juvenile feeling in the car circle, but there are also industry insiders who believe that Li Xiang's remarks are often "out of control" and are the public opinion risk of the ideal car. What impact li thinks of many "out of line" remarks has brought, I am afraid that only the public relations team of Ideal Auto knows best.