Image source @ Visual China
Text | Shentucar, by | Dawn, edited by | Wei Jia
"Cats and dogs" are building cars again.
U.S. stock listing, consecutive years of losses, market value of 54 million US dollars of the group car network, on January 5 officially announced the car, and sent Weibo @ Weilai Automobile, Ideal Automobile, Xiaopeng Automobile, with the text: "Do you think it is crowded? ”
On January 16, Ideal Auto CEO Li Xiang bombarded tuantuan cars on Weibo, saying that the high probability is a liar, "it really refreshes the bottom line of entrepreneurs." Wen Wei, CEO of Tuanche.com, publicly rebuked Li Xiang on January 17, saying, "Don't think of yourself as a prophet." ”
Li wants to shell the regiment car to build a car source / Li wants to Weibo
Tuanche.com was listed on the NASDAQ in November 2018, and is known as the first new retail stock of automobiles listed in the United States in China. However, since the listing, the stock price of Tuanche.com has fallen by 91%. At the beginning of 2021, Wen Wei tried to privatize the tuanche network and delisted it, but failed to implement it. Now that the car is built, it is inevitable that people will question its motives.
At the beginning of 2022, the list of cars that will go down the road has become longer. For those melon-eating masses who are accustomed to seeing the cross-border construction of cars by various gods, it is no longer strange.
After all, even Evergrande Automobile's first model, Hengchi 5, was offline on January 12, and the self-tour home founded by Li Yinan, the founder of Xiaoniu Electric, also released the first official model on the same day, and Sony released the first electric SUV concept car at the CES exhibition in early January.
In the matter of building a car, the bullets have to fly a little longer.
However, it is necessary to be vigilant that the players who enter the car have their own thoughts. Don't think about building a car, think of it simple.
"A cat and a dog", and came to build a car
In the past year, many new faces have appeared on the car-making list. Deep way first do not say xiaomi, Baidu, these with their own traffic, nor to say that the group car network has just been intimidated, say a few you may not have heard.
In the light orange era, a company that was publicly informed that it was only established in June 2021 suddenly held a press conference in November and officially announced the construction of the car. The founders say its first model will be available and delivered in 2022.
That said, from the announcement of the car to the delivery, the company may only need a year or so. "No ancients before", some people joked.
The key is that this is a brand new brand, according to public information, the founding team has no previous experience in car building, CEO Mu Lu has worked in Tencent's game business department for many years, is to do game planning and research and development; founder side label, before doing finance.
The light orange era said that the early stage was an asset-light operation, and the product did not have any benchmarking. "I can only say that we are benchmarking the times, benchmarking this new era, we are because of users, because of the times of the enterprise."
The PPT shows this: "Integrating automobile manufacturing, intelligent technology, mobile Internet, etc.", "Integrating technology, design, ecology, cross-border resources and business models to become a new paradigm of intelligent mobility and life".
The tone is not small, but what does it say?
"Capital integration to build cars." Someone defines it that way.
Source / Network
As for the product, there are not many details to reveal at present. I only know that there will be a "gamepad steering wheel", "intelligent central armrest box", and the first prototype car is called "VC". Coincidentally, in the capital circle, VCs generally refer to venture capital.
Let's look at another one. Renren, a social product used by many post-80s and post-90s in college, is a listed company in the United States, which has a second-hand car business. In 2018, the business was renamed Happy Motors, and then landed on the NASDAQ in 2019 as a backdoor listing. Then, the stock price broke.
Happy Cars, which is depressed by capital, like the long-lost Renren Network, has a mess in stock prices and performance. Long-term losses aside, the stock price falls below $1 from time to time, which can easily trigger a delisting warning.
Starting in April 2021, Happy Auto has done things. First, it reached a sales cooperation agreement with the import car e-commerce platform "Haitaoche" and JD.com, and then fully acquired Haitaoche. Then it was rumored that it would negotiate with domestic caravan retailers to launch a caravan business. But these messages, like stones thrown into the sea, did not stir up much splash.
In August 2021, Happy Automobile suddenly announced the establishment of a new energy vehicle division for the establishment of new energy vehicle research and development, production and marketing. As soon as the news came out, the stock price soared by more than 100% on the same day, the largest single-day increase in the second half of the year.
"It is not excluded that some listed companies announced that they wanted to make a car to speculate, do a short-term speculation, market value management." An industry insider analyzes the deep way.
Some people draw big cakes, some people rub hot spots, and some people join in the fun.
Easy car to build a car, it sounds like an April Fool's Day joke. On April 1, 2021, the automotive Internet information and service platform e-car announced the opening of the first new car conference and broadcast it exclusively on the e-car APP. EasyCar named the new car "One Car" and claimed to have "a shocking design".
However, not many details were announced at the press conference. The most eye-catching is the appearance of the concept car - it is evaluated by netizens as "like a lubricated soap".
E-car launch poster
Interestingly, the first to let this concept car land is not an easy car, nor a foundry, but a net red handmade Geng known as the "mudslide of the invention world".
Geng once made a "Gatling machine gun", "Thor hammer bag", "kitchen knife mobile phone case", this time he drew his own drawings, using the discarded materials in his yard, referring to the appearance of "a car", and made an electric car that could walk sideways. The car has a stainless steel closed body, a four-wheel motor driven independently, can be attached to the battery compartment, and can also extend backwards metal arm ratio gestures.
A car made by hand
Some netizens watched the video and said: "Brother Geng has led Lei Jun too much. Luo Yonghao commented: "This is called the new force of car building!" For the new forces, it can be said that it is not very harmful and extremely insulting.
Car building is considered the golden track for the next decade. As car-making continues to be hot, I believe that there will be new players entering the game next.
Regrouping, resurrection, transformation, and car building also have "resurrection races"?
Different enterprises have different purposes for entering the market to build cars, and the depth and sincerity of participation are also different. In addition to the increasing number of "cats and dogs" who build cars, another phenomenon worth paying attention to is that some car-building players who originally "disappeared" have suddenly been "resurrected".
Near the end of 2021, Qiantu Automobile suddenly promoted its own Douyin account on the public account, and said with the text: "I am back again", and also brought the news that the new car will be mass-produced and listed. More than a year ago, the company had stopped production and closed its store in Sanlitun, Beijing, "disappearing" from car-building players.
Unlike the two car-making projects mentioned above, FutureCar is an old player. It was founded in 2015, and "Wei Xiaoli" belongs to the same wave of new car-making forces, and took the lead in winning the "double qualification" with high gold content.
Backed by its parent company, Great Wall Huaguan, it started out as a mass-produced sports car, and the first mass-produced model, the Future K50, was launched in August 2018, earlier than most of the new car-making forces. This car is priced at 686,800 yuan after subsidies, which is much more expensive than Weilai, and is known as "domestic McLaren".
However, later, the future automobile market strategy failed, new car sales were not good, and the parent company Great Wall Huaguan was delisted from the new third board and quickly fell into the wind outlet.
In 2021, when "Wei Xiaoli" made rapid progress, and new forces such as Nezha, Zero Run, and Weima accelerated forward, people originally thought that the future car had completely withdrawn from the stage of history. At this point in time, the meaning behind the "resurrection" is worth playing.
The car brands that will be resurrected in 2021 are not only promising cars, but also xinte cars.
This is a company originally headquartered in Guizhou, established in 2017, and began mass production and delivery of the first product in 2018, setting a record for the fastest mass production and delivery of new car-making forces, and at that time claimed to be "fully among the first echelon of emerging car-making enterprises".
In 2019, the domestic new energy vehicle market declined, superimposed on the double impact of new energy subsidies, and xinte automobiles fell rapidly. After a series of twists and turns, such as the failure of the factory project, the change of investors, and the restructuring of the business, the company withdrew from the public eye. It falls as fast as it rises.
In 2021, Xinte Automobile carried out a major blood change. The headquarters was moved from Guizhou to Chongqing, replaced by the father of the gold lord, changed the shareholders and management, and reorganized into a new Chongqing Xinte Automobile. Then it held a press conference in August 2021 and released a pure electric scooter YOUNG Guangxiaoxin, returning to the market.
For Xinte Automobile, it is not so much a resurrection as a "blood-changing reorganization" and a complete "makeover". Because except for the brand name, the other basic changes.
The current CEO of Xinte Automobile is the former head of marketing of Sailin Motors. Sailin Automobile is the car-making company that burned out billions, did not sell many cars, the factory was sealed, and the person in charge was registered.
There are many similar stories, such as cheetah cars. The car company was on the verge of bankruptcy due to business difficulties, and in April 2021, it applied to the court for bankruptcy protection. However, in September, in the 343rd batch of application directories of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, a declaration map for a new car appeared- Cheetah Jiayuan KOMI, which has a body size similar to that of Wuling Hongguang MINIEV and is expected to focus on the pure electric mini car market.
The vanished car-makers have quietly returned. The vigorous car-building war has now reached the stage of "resurrection race".
Future Auto and Xinte Auto have some things in common, such as having had a highlight moment, starting out with a strong momentum and great ambition, belonging to the earliest new car-making forces, but on the other hand, their fall speed is equally amazing, and the product has not withstood the test of the market. In 2021, they are making a comeback in various ways, hoping to join the car-building war again and get tickets for the second half.
However, today is different from the past. These resurrected players will face more opponents, more brutal competition, and more complex battles than in the past. Whether the resurrection will be a flash in the pan will take time to test.
Now that you are building a car, are you drawing a big pie?
Building a car is a long cycle, and it takes at least a few years from the beginning of the product design to the official mass production delivery. Taking Xiaomi car as an example, the official announcement is in March 2021, and the mass production is expected to be in the first half of 2024, which will take three years. If you count the pre-research and post-delivery, this time will be longer.
Three years out of the car, it is a very fast progress. For new forces starting from scratch, the cycle will be longer.
And now, the new forces represented by "Wei Xiaoli" have gained a firm foothold, and traditional car companies are also accelerating their efforts, for those players who have just announced the construction of cars, or the products have not yet been delivered, will it be too late?
Many investors in the deep way contact have said that they do not look at new car-making projects now, because "the overall situation has been determined". "It is not very suitable for VCs to enter, and now we mainly look at some upstream and downstream ecological chains." Insiders of a dollar fund that invested in Xiaopeng Motors told Shentu.
The time window is important. Indeed, in the past two years, few newly formed car brands have announced large financing.
"New energy vehicles can no longer be financed by storytelling." Zhang Junyi, managing partner of Oliver Partners, said.
But the funding threshold for car building is very high. Li Bin, the founder of Weilai, said five years ago that "at least more than 20 billion yuan of capital reserves are needed", and at the end of 2021, he said that "there is no 40 billion yuan that may not be done now." He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Motors, said that it costs about 20 billion yuan to build a car from 0 to 1, and it will definitely need more than 30 billion yuan from 1 to 100. Xiaomi invested 10 billion yuan in the early stage of car manufacturing, and plans to invest 10 billion US dollars in 10 years. Jidu Automobile plans to invest 50 billion yuan in the next five years.
The average player simply can't afford to play. Therefore, since last year, the car manufacturers have basically been some giants who are not bad money, or the subsidiaries spun off by traditional car companies.
However, on another level, the market does not seem to need so many car companies.
Xiao Yaqing, minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said in September 2021 that there are too many new energy automobile companies and they are in a small and scattered situation. It is necessary to give full play to the role of the market, encourage enterprise mergers and reorganizations to become bigger and stronger, and further increase industrial concentration.
This is not good news for new entrants.
Fu Jixun, global managing partner of GGV Jiyuan Capital, believes that the survival of too small car companies will be more difficult, because the research and development investment in smart cars is very large, which means that there must be a scale effect on each car to be effective, "I don't think it will be a big one, but it will not bloom and all kinds of smart cars will be available." ”
At present, what needs to be more vigilant is those unreliable car-making projects, or "rubbing hot car-making". After years of market education by "Wei Xiaoli", consumers' trust in electric vehicles has just been established, and it still needs long-term operation.
"Car manufacturing is still a very rigorous thing, and listed car companies with scale may not be able to survive in the future, let alone some companies that are not serious." Zhang Junyi said to Shentu, "The most worrying thing is that there are more and more of these enterprises, the good and the bad are uneven, and the good enterprises that should have taken the funds cannot get them, so it is not good for the market and enterprises." ”
For car companies, whether it is hot spots or resurrection, car building is the outlet, but it is necessary to chase rationally.