Text | Travel by wire, author | Zhou Xiongfei, Editor | midnight
The unknown regimental car can be described as a fire in recent days.
At the beginning of this year, the automotive Internet platform Tuanche announced a high-profile entry into the car-making industry, and its CEO Wen Wei also said that Tuanche would cooperate with the top teams in the industry to achieve complementary advantages. According to the plan, the first model of the group car will open pre-sale during this year's "Golden Nine Silver Ten" period and be officially delivered next year.
Although entering the game of car manufacturing is a big thing, due to the low popularity of the group car before, this news did not attract too much attention, until the founder of ideal car Li wanted to "add a fire" to it.
Just a week after Tuanche announced the construction of the car, Li Xiang forwarded a media interview report by Wen Wei in his personal Weibo, and expressed his views on the views in the interview: "Someone can actually tell this view publicly, which really refreshes the bottom line of entrepreneurs." ”
In this evaluation, Wen Wei quickly responded to Li Xiang in his personal Weibo, saying, "I didn't expect that the first shot of the Long March came from Mr. Li Xiang, and no one should regard himself as a prophet, nor should he become the person he hates the most." He then invited Li Xiang to attend the first product launch.
Li wants to shout with Wen Wei in the air, and the source of the picture is the personal microblog of both sides
After this battle, not only did the group car successfully board the hot search in the voice of doubt, but also let the public and the industry know about the group car and the car it wanted to build.
In the automotive Internet industry, tuanche is not the first case.
On April 1 last year, e-car released a warm-up video on its official micro-blog, and said that it was "e-car's first new car conference", which once attracted much attention in the industry. Facts have proved that this move is just a hot spot for Easy Car to rub the heat of "car building", but at that time, there were also voices in the outside world that Easy Car was not without the possibility of building a car.
Before there are easy cars "rubbing heat", after there are group cars to build cars, these car Internet platforms have been eyeing the back of the car, in fact, highlighting the plight of these platforms.
Before the announcement of the car, the performance of the group car has fallen into a downward trend. According to Wind data, tuanche's revenue in the third quarter of last year was in decline year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter, and its net profit continued to be in a loss, and it was in a triple-digit expansion from the previous quarter. According to the car market story, the inside of the group car has been fully waiting for work and cannot be paid.
Easy cars and auto homes that are slightly more famous than group cars, life is not very good. Although the former experienced delisting and was backed by Tencent, it was exposed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology last year to leak user information, and was once subjected to large-scale user complaints; the latter was exposed to large-scale layoffs this year, and its performance was also in decline.
For these automotive Internet platforms, there is only a line between them and car manufacturing, and now the group car that is the first to enter the car manufacturing industry can walk out of a clear road for the entire industry to get out of trouble?
01 "Group cars" trying to build cars
"For the car building thing, I think there is at least a 50% chance of winning."
Just 9 days after the tuanche official announced the construction of the car, Wen Wei said this to many media at the headquarters of the tuanche in Beijing. In his view, although compared with "Wei Xiaoli" and other new energy vehicle companies to enter the market late, but this track will have a window period in the next two years or so, especially the market segment, will give new brands more opportunities.
Perhaps it is precisely with this self-confidence that when the regiment announced the construction of the car at the beginning of this year, it deliberately put on its own official micro-company Aite Weilai, Ideal and Xiaopeng three major car companies, and had the meaning of challenging these three car companies that have stood at the head of the new car-making forces.
The regimental car official announced the construction of the car, and the source of the regimental car network official micro
In addition to the observation of the industry, the so-called team also gave Wen wei the confidence to build a car. According to him, the biggest driving force for tuanche car manufacturing comes from an external team of more than 100 people, although the number is only more than 100 people, it can undertake product planning, modeling design, engineering development, testing, chassis, three electrics, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, systematic integration program, production support, supplier management almost all car manufacturing processes.
"This team has more than 20 years of experience in car manufacturing, and has precipitation in technology and sample cars, and can do cars with more than 20 million yuan, and can also do cars below 50,000 yuan, including commercial vehicles and logistics vehicles." Wen Wei said.
In Wen Wei's description, the team is almost omnipotent, and it is with semi-finished models, and the first car will choose one of these semi-finished models, "Most of the new car-making forces are racking their brains in order to find a weapon to take advantage of, and we are racking our brains in the arsenal." ”
According to the introduction of the group car, the first model will adopt mature programs, mature technology, mature suppliers, the quality of the product itself, quality control is completely mature and controllable, the pricing is 100,000 yuan - 200,000 yuan range, in 2022 "Golden Nine Silver Ten" period can be pre-sold.
For the choice of model power mode, Wen Wei said that he would prefer pure electricity, mainly because the team he said had experience in solar energy and hydrogen energy, and the choice was relatively large.
For the planning of model products, Tuanche believes that in addition to the first car will use a semi-finished product, the subsequent models may be newly developed, and two cars will be produced in the next three years, and the crowd facing them is likely to be different.
After building a car, you will face the problem of how to sell the car. According to the plan of the group car, the car will rely on this team, and the subsequent car sales group car will rely on its channels and sales network. "They have a reverence for selling cars, and we have a reverence for building cars." Wen Wei said so.
Although from Wen Wei's introduction, it can be seen that he has a lot of trust in this team of more than 100 people, but he also made a consideration if the first model fails. "It doesn't matter if our first car fails, we can make another one in 3 months."
Under such a series of disclosures, although some preliminary plans and layouts about the group car are shown, for some key information about the car, the group car may not be determined at present.
For example, for product positioning, although Tuanche said that it wanted to make a differentiation, it hoped to make a brand and model that was completely absent now. However, how to differentiate specifically means that I have not yet thought about it. For brand positioning, brand concept and specific market segments, it is also an uncertain state.
For the most critical car-making team, it only exists in Wen Wei's mouth at present, according to his explanation, because "there is no announcement, there is no way to say which one." ”
Because of this, after the announcement of the group car and Wen Wei's interview, the industry is not very optimistic about the group car, "for the car, although the group car is relatively close to the automotive industry, but as far as the current information is concerned, it is not enough to support the huge project of car manufacturing." Sun Hao, head of research and development of a domestic new energy vehicle company, told Wired Travel.
There is also Li Xiang who has the same view, which has the passage that appears in his personal Weibo: "Those entrepreneurs who hope to find a super savior, those entrepreneurs who hope to be able to do everything by opening the second pulse of Ren Dou, and finally find liars, or most likely they are also liars." ”
Implicitly, Li thought that perhaps the group car building was a farce. And such a farce does not only happen on the body of the group.
On April 1 last year, E-Car Official Micro suddenly released a warm-up video about the "first new car launch of E-car", and said that this conference will be held that night, and the silhouette and interior of some vehicles can indeed be seen in the video.
Easy car for the "car" preheating, the source of the easy car official micro
As a result, after the microblog was issued, it once became the focus of attention in the industry, after all, yiche, as the head player of the domestic automotive Internet industry, entered the game to build a car, which is also a major event.
But what I didn't expect was that the conference that night did not release any substantive products or concept cars, but just let the host make a joke out of thin air, and said at the end of the conference that "easy cars do not build cars, everyone Happy April Fool's Day." ”
At that time, the public and many people in the industry understood that "easy to build cars" was just an April Fool's Day joke. Even so, there are also voices in the industry that with the decline of the car-making threshold, it is not impossible to build a car in the future, and the joke at that time was more like a preview to spy on the market and consumer reaction.
From the popularity of easy cars to the group car into the market, in the industry's view, these car Internet platforms have more or less been associated with car manufacturing. The reason why these platforms that originally only provide new car information will do this may be to solve their respective dilemmas.
02 The plight of the "group cars"
To say that Wen Wei and the car really got acquainted, we must start from the group car.
According to a number of media reports, Wen Wei is a serial entrepreneur, before founding the group car network he had four entrepreneurial experience, design channel sales, corporate communications, corporate training and other fields, but these ventures have finally failed, until the fifth time to start a group car.
In 2009, Wen Wei learned by chance that some consumers would spontaneously organize groups to go to offline 4S stores to see cars and bargain to buy cars through QQ groups, thinking that they saw business opportunities, and founded tuanche in one fell swoop the following year.
The initial business of tuanche was to try to gather consumers who were interested in buying the same brand and model models through online channels such as QQ groups and Tieba and then organize these consumers to go to the offline 4S store to "group buy" cars and buy cars.
Compared with group cars, easy cars and auto homes start earlier. The former was founded in 2000 by Li Bin, the current founder of WEILAI, and the latter by Li Xiang in 2005. At the beginning of the establishment of EasyCar and Autohome, both of them were mainly engaged in the release of information on automobile information, including providing information on new car prices and promotions.
After its inception, not only the release of vehicle-related parameters and prices, but also with a real and rigorous evaluation article and the most complete model information of the whole network, due to a certain extent to break the information gap between the buyer and the seller, Easy Car and Autohome soon also gained a group of loyal and sticky users.
With the accumulation of user scale, EasyCar and Autohome have also established digital marketing services on the basis of information content, after which both platforms have earned their own "first bucket of gold", and in 2010 and 2013, they have successively landed on the US stock market to complete the listing.
At the same time that EasyCar and Autohome harvested the highlight moment, Tuanche also completed the financing from angel round to C round in accordance with the annual law of 2011-2015. According to the enterprise investigation, the group car has raised a total of nearly 20 million US dollars through these four rounds of financing.
The financing information of the group car in the past period, screenshot from the enterprise check
The appetite of the group car with money has also become bigger.
In 2016, under the leadership of Wen Wei, Tuanche increased the sales business of the automobile exhibition based on the "group purchase" business. In Wen Wei's view, the final transaction scenario for consumers to buy a car is a 4S store, but if multiple brands are gathered in the same offline scene, for consumers, it can not only improve the efficiency of car purchase, but also reduce costs.
At the same time, Tuanche has also begun to develop online, launched a digital marketing business, and cooperated with Tmall Auto, RenrenChe and other platforms, gradually becoming an automotive Internet platform that integrates offline sales and online marketing. As one of the main businesses, offline auto show marketing has achieved results quickly after launch.
According to the public data of Tuanche, in 2017 and the first half of 2018, Tuanche held 304 and 315 large-scale transactional exhibitions respectively, which contributed to more than 193,000 and nearly 148,000 automobile transactions, with total sales of about 30 billion yuan and 21.4 billion yuan respectively.
After harvesting such a good-looking result, Tuanche and Wenwei also ushered in a "highlight moment". In November 2018, Tuanche landed on the NASDAQ at an issue price of US$7.8 per share, and the listing of Tuanche was called "the first share of automotive new retail" by the media at that time.
Group car listed, the source of the group car network official micro
Facts have proved that the listing did not buy the group car for the continuous positive development after that.
In March 2019, Tuanche handed over its first annual report after listing. According to public data, the revenue of Tuanche in 2018 was 651 million yuan, an increase of 131.95% over the previous year; but in terms of net profit, it was in a loss of 0.79 billion yuan.
After that, in 2019, the performance of the group car was still in a downward trend, and the revenue achieved by the group car in that year was 645 million yuan, down 0.96% compared with 2018; in terms of net loss, it achieved 251 million yuan, an increase of 218.48% over 2018.
Entering 2020, with the sudden outbreak of the epidemic, the offline business of Tuanche has been greatly affected, resulting in a sharp decline in revenue that year, only achieving revenue of 330 million yuan, down 48.78% year-on-year; net profit is still in the loss.
Then last year, although the domestic epidemic situation eased, the group car did not get out of the predicament. Judging from the financial reports of the first three quarters that have been announced, the revenue has reached 0.81 billion yuan, 132 million yuan and 0.61 billion yuan respectively, which shows that after the revenue experienced an increase in the first and second quarters, the revenue fell again in the third quarter, and the year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter declines reached 2 digits.
In terms of net loss, the same trend is also shown. In the first and second quarters of last year, the net loss of tuanche was 0.17 billion yuan and 0.06 billion yuan respectively, but in the third quarter, the net loss expanded to 0.37 billion yuan, and even reached 509.71% month-on-month.
Similar to the group car, the life of easy car and auto home in the past two years has not been good.
In 2020, ten years after the listing of ECar's U.S. stocks, eCar was privatized and delisted and officially put into the arms of Tencent. Behind this also reflects the decline after the listing of easy cars. According to public data, although the revenue of e-car in 2015-2019 was growing, the year-on-year growth rate of revenue was declining, from 53.24% in 2015 to 1.64% in 2019.
The change in revenue and year-on-year growth of e-car from 2015 to 2019, the data comes from Wind, and the mapping of wired travel is provided
In terms of net profit, e-car has also begun to fall into losses since 2015, and the total loss of e-car as of 2020 has reached 4.384 billion yuan. In September last year, E-Car was exposed to leaking the privacy of users' personal information, and was even named by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which fell into the dilemma of user distrust.
Also last year, Autohome was also exposed by a number of media to large-scale layoffs, although it said that "laying off 800 people is absolutely not true, there is no layoffs, but it involves the adjustment of the organizational structure at the end of the year." But it soon triggered the rights of some employees.
Behind the large-scale layoffs, it also highlights the decline in the performance of the auto home. According to public data, the net revenue of Autohome in the third quarter of last year was about 1.764 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 23.8%; the net profit was 522 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 38.4%, becoming the worst quarterly financial report of Autohome since Ping An took over in 2016.
In this way, whether it is a group car, or an easy car and a car home, all of them are currently in trouble. In order to break this dilemma, the group car took the lead in moving towards car building.
03 Can building a car help the "group cars" get out of trouble?
If you want to build a car, you must first calculate an account - how much does it cost to build a car?
As more and more players join the new energy car-making track, there are more and more answers to this question. From the earliest Li Bin's "no 20 billion yuan do not come to build a car", to Jidu Automobile invested 50 billion yuan in 5 years, and then to Xiaomi Lei Jun entered the bureau to build a car, the first investment took out 10 billion yuan.
At the end of last year, Li Bin, who has led Weilai through 7 years, has a new answer to this question: if the capital reserve is not 40 billion yuan, the possibility of failure to build new energy vehicles will be much higher.
In summary, 10-20 billion yuan can be regarded as the threshold for new energy vehicles. For the current group car, the funds on hand are a little far from this "threshold". According to the public financial report, as of September 30, 2021, the total cash, cash equivalents and restricted deposits of tuanche were only 134 million yuan.
According to a person familiar with the matter quoted by the car market, the salary of the employees inside the group car has not been paid, and since December 30 last year, all the members of the group car have been waiting at home, and the resumption time has not been determined, during which only 2,000 yuan / month is given a minimum wage.
Based on the reality of no money, Wen Wei also talked about how to find money. "We will walk on multiple legs, on the one hand, Tuanche is a US listed company, we have the ability of open market or private equity, on the other hand, in China, whether it is state-owned assets or the government are interested in cooperation."
From his words, we can see that there are only two ways for the group to get money - to get financing from the investment market, or to ask for money from state-owned asset background institutions and the government. But I didn't say when I got the money or how much I got it.
After talking about the money, let's look at the team. According to the above, the group car currently has a team of 100 people, which can take into account the entire car manufacturing process of pre-design, product development and production and manufacturing. But compared to "Wei Xiaoli" or Xiaomi car, such a team size is pitiful.
As of the third quarter of last year, Xiaopeng and Ideal alone had more than 4,000 and 2,000 R&D personnel, respectively; for Xiaomi, according to public information, there were about 500 R& D teams on the job.
Although the group car is closer to the car than Xiaomi, it is really from the perspective of capital reserves and research and development investment, there is still some gap between the group car and these cross-border players, not to mention the distance between the group car and "Wei Xiaoli".
"At present, the group car itself is not a particularly successful Internet company, coupled with the obvious lack of capital reserves, and at the same time, there is a lack of research and development personnel and car manufacturers, so it is difficult to build a car." And its official announcement of the car this time, more to release the news to raise a sum of money, how to build a car may not have given too much thought. Zhang Xiang, a researcher at the Automotive Industry Innovation Research Center of North China University of Technology, told Wired Travel.
In the industry's view, even if the group car finally builds a car, it may not improve much for its own plight.
The primary reason why Tuanche is in trouble is that the industry it is in is overly competitive. According to the "2021 China Automotive Industry Marketing Research Report" released by iResearch, platforms such as Autohome, E-Car and Chedi are all at the head of the automotive Internet industry.
In contrast, although Tuanche does similar business with these platforms, the gap with these platforms is too large in terms of industry popularity and influence, so that the market share that Tuanche can compete for is relatively limited, and the income obtained is relatively limited.
Secondly, as a platform for providing marketing and trading services for automobile manufacturers, Tuanche should obtain more traffic and facilitate transactions for customers through various activities and means. However, with the development of the new energy automobile industry, the configuration of offline direct + business district stores has become the standard of new energy vehicle companies, which further impacts the traditional model of offline 4S stores that Tuanche previously relied on to see cars and buy cars, so that it becomes difficult to realize traffic.
For this threat, Wen Wei once said that the "online booking + offline direct sales store (delivery center or service center)" model of the new car-making forces represented by Tesla is a typical "light asset heavy operation", and in the early stage of brand establishment, the production capacity has not been fully released, and it is necessary to "hit the brand and improve positioning" stage, this direct store model can be used to solve the problem from 0 to 1.
Tesla offline stores, the source of tesla official micro
But this model "can't do sales" because "China is too big to cover all regions." Wen Wei's solution is still to rely on the sales network of the group car to sell the car. According to the previous public data of Tuanche, the sales network of Tuanche can cover more than 230 cities in line 1-5 across the country.
In Zhang Xiang's view, for the group car to build a car, due to its lack of influence and popularity, even if the car is built, it is difficult to sell the car, let alone be able to feed the group car and increase its influence to compete with platforms such as autohome and easy car; it is also because it is difficult to sell the car, there is no possibility of bringing traffic and realization to it.
For the same car And Auto Home, which belong to the automotive Internet platform, it is still in a predicament. They have not yet made it clear that they want to build cars, but in the industry, even if they build cars in the future, they will be as difficult to break their respective predicaments as group cars.
"Assuming that Easy Car and Autohome will build cars in the future, they will enter an antagonistic relationship with the car companies they have previously cooperated with, and even a competitive relationship, which is not conducive to their own business development, let alone get out of trouble, and this truth also applies to group cars." Because of this, the possibility of easy cars and auto homes building cars in the future is very small. Zhang Ming, an investor who has been paying attention to the field of car manufacturing for many years, told Wired Travel.
At the moment, Wen Wei led the group car into the car-making track in a high-profile manner, although as far as the current situation is concerned, it is difficult to save the group car with a high probability. However, in Wen Wei's cognition, he has regarded car building as his last venture, and "has not considered failure or retreat."
However, for Wen Wei, it may be more convincing to build the car first than to continue to brag and shout.
(At the request of the interviewees, Sun Hao and Zhang Ming are pseudonyms.) ）