Written by | Zhao Lingwei
Edit | Yang Guang
Produced | Automotive Sankei
If you want to fire, let Li want to come and "slash a knife".
In the past two days, on the belief and common sense of car building and entrepreneurship, a series of speeches by the CEO of Tuanche "angered" Li Xiang, who worked hard to build cars.
Wen Wei, CEO of Tuanche, said at a previous press conference that "the starting point of car building is a foreign team of 100 people." In his description, this team can undertake product planning, styling design, engineering development, testing, chassis, three electrics, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, systematic integration solutions, production support, supplier management and almost all car manufacturing processes.
Li wanted to comment on Weibo, "There are still people who can openly speak out of this view without shame, which really refreshes the bottom line of entrepreneurs." The essence of entrepreneurship is: rhythmic and patient long-term growth. ”
Wen Wei, after replying to "don't think of yourself as a prophet", on January 18, he released a paper product launch invitation letter, publicly @ Li Xiang.
However, this invitation letter does not mention any time information, which belongs to the covenant frame, and it is not completely agreed.
Li Xiang's "GengZhi" personality often let him say some controversial remarks, and this time about the group car's remarks that made him feel offensive, public opinion mostly sided with Li Xiang - a number of industry people told the auto industry and economics that they could not understand, but were greatly shocked.
The "savior" may not yet exist
In the general perception of the industry, a mature car-making team covering the entire industry chain of 100 people can be found. What makes people wonder is, why should this capital and the "heavenly dish" of the times turn to the group car?
An informed dealer told Sankei that Wen Wei's 100 artificial car team is likely just an idea, "first throw out this plan, and then look for such a team."
However, such a team does not seem to need the role of a group car. For example, at the beginning of Xiaopeng Automobile's entrepreneurship, the company had less than 100 people, and a "Xiaopeng Automobile 1.0" was not launched, but it was the basis for subsequent research and development. Last year, Xiaopeng Motors already had 7,923 employees, including 3,091 R&D personnel, selling the most cars among the new forces in 2021.
Tesla had fewer than 1,000 employees when the company went public in 2010, and there was only one roadster that had been polished for five years, and Musk is now the most likely person to change the world.
In fact, judging from some of Wen Wei's remarks, the group car is not personally built.
According to him, he only came into contact with this "top 100 artificial car team" in the second half of last year, when the team already had semi-finished models, and the first car of the group car will be selected from these semi-finished models, priced between 100,000 yuan and 200,000 yuan, and is expected to open pre-sales in the second half of this year. The group car is responsible for the marketing and service of this model.
Some automotive industry KOLs commented, "Building a car is the most difficult and complicated entrepreneurship, and the CEO of Tuanche is actually superstitious about a hundred mercenaries."
Tuanche CEO Wen Wei
Even if this team does exist, the two sides are most likely cooperative partners, but in the conversation, Wen Wei no longer hints at his own car.
"We believe that there is still a two-year window period for the new energy automobile industry, and the threshold for making cars is not very high." But not long ago, Weilai chairman Li Bincai said, "Now if an enterprise does not have 40 billion reserve funds, the risk of (building cars) will be very large." ”
Wen Wei also said, "It doesn't matter if the first car fails, I can make another one in 3 months." ”
You know, after the failure of the first SEV, Li wanted to catch up and it took nearly two years to put the ideal ONE on the market. For several new car-making practitioners who have repeatedly hovered on the line of life and death, seeing that Wen Wei underestimated the difficulty of car-making so much, it was sad that Li Xiang could not help but go down and spray.
In the mainstream market of independent brands upwards and heavy attention to intelligent electric tracks, for the positioning of car manufacturing, Wen Wei said, "In the long run, it is to play its own differentiation in this market, neither too much pursuit of luxury, nor excessive pursuit of science and technology." ”
Even so, he still felt that "at least a fifty percent odds of winning." ”
The despair behind the absurd
If we put the group car-making incident in the context of the magical reality of the past two years, it is not unreasonable.
In November 2018, Tuanche.com was listed on the NASDAQ with the title of "Meituan of Auto New Retail" at an issue price of $7.8 and a market capitalization of $626 million on the first day. The price was not ideal, and the total market value of Uxin, an auto e-commerce company listed in the same year, was $2.761 billion.
The business of tuanche is mainly offline automobile exhibition, and some people in the team are from Ali Tiejun, and the offline execution and operation ability are very strong.
But this is already a dividend of the last era.
The basis for the existence of the group buying platform is the volume of the buyer, and the gathering of a huge buyer volume can make the platform have bargaining power. The cold winter of the automobile market and the arrival of the direct operation model have made this model more and more dispensable. Coupled with the impact of the epidemic on the development of offline activities, the main business model of tuanche is in jeopardy.
According to the financial report, the performance of group vehicles in 2020 has seriously shrunk, with the volume of matchmaking transactions plummeting by 60.4%, and the GMV (total commodity transaction volume) decreasing by 58.32% year-on-year. Net income decreased by 48.8% year-on-year, gross profit decreased by 47.3% year-on-year, and the net loss for the full year was 160 million. This is also the third consecutive year of losses since its listing in 2018.
Tuanche.com is a labor-intensive enterprise, while the US stock market loves technology-driven enterprises more. And due to the heavy reliance on the online car show to match transaction services, the future marginal income of the group car network model will not rise exponentially.
The stock price has been depressed for a long time, which has made Wen Wei plan to privatize and delist the tuanche network from nasdaq, and now when announcing the car, the "funds" on the US stock market have become an important chip in his mouth.
Tuanche, whose business lacked imagination, was cold in the secondary market, which damaged the equity investment income of Evergreen, Bertelsmann (BAI) and Plateau Capital, who participated in several rounds of financing before its IPO, after the online market of Tuanche.
If the stock price is speculated through "car building", the transformation of self-design and the withdrawal of capital satisfaction, the two dead ends will be clear.
Unfortunately, after the release of the car-making news on January 6, the stock price of the group car has declined - even if there is a "super savior", it cannot save the group car.
Write at the end
A self-branded product owner found a possibility for the immortal team's statement, "if these 100 people can pull bigger resources behind them."
The confused speech made the industry really confused, and the intelligent car product manager could only tell us, "there is no conditional conclusive view, there is no way to argue."
I wanted to know when the CEO of Tuanche unilaterally met with Li Xiang at the press conference, but the two had invariably closed the Weibo comment area.