In the past year, although the headquarters of Baoneng New Energy Automobile Group has been able to settle in Guangzhou, rumors of wage arrears, layoffs, and store closures have put it on the edge of the situation. Until recently, the news of the release of the new car has brought Baoneng Automobile back to the public's vision again.
On January 22, Baoneng Automobile's new car tasting meeting was held in Guangzhou Baoneng Qoros Cultural Center. At the new car tasting meeting, Baoneng Automobile released a number of new cars, including BAO's GX16 (internal code, the same below), GX18, and Qoros's C21. At the same time, Baoneng revealed the focus of betting in 2022.
Over the past year, it has struggled on the brink of "dishonesty"
The reason why the new car tasting meeting was selected in Guangzhou may be mainly due to the fact that Baoneng New Energy Headquarters has landed in Guangzhou before.
On the morning of June 15, 2021, Baoneng Group signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Guangzhou Development Zone. According to the agreement, the headquarters of Baoneng New Energy Automobile Group Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Baoneng Group, will be located in Guangzhou Development Zone, and the state-owned enterprises of Guangzhou Development Zone will strategically invest 12 billion yuan in Baoneng New Energy Automobile Group.
Moreover, on the 24th of the same month, Baoneng New Energy Automobile Group announced that the Chinese of its luxury intelligent new energy vehicle brands is named "Baoneng Automobile" and the English name is "BAO", and it is open to the global collection of brand slogans.
According to the official planning of Baoneng Automobile, based on the main technical routes of Baoneng extender iREV and pure electric BEV, dozens of new models will be released and modified from 2021 to 2025, including SUVs, cars, MPVs, sports cars and other body types, gradually covering the high-end electric vehicle segment.
In terms of new car planning in 2021, Baoneng's Qoros Automobile plans to launch the first Qoros REV3 equipped with the core technology of Baoneng New Energy iREV in August; in September, it launched the first iREV SUV product Qoros REV5; in October, launched a new high-end new energy vehicle brand and the first pure electric SUV (internal code GX16), positioned as a pure electric intermediate SUV, based on Baoneng Automobile's new large-scale pure electric platform development, benchmarking mainstream luxury brands.
At that time, Baoneng New Energy, which received a large investment of 12 billion yuan from the Guangzhou Development Zone and released a brand plan on the back foot, aroused widespread concern and was considered to be an upward "opportunity".
However, unlike the expected trend, Baoneng Automobile has since fallen into the whirlpool of public opinion of layoffs, wage arrears and store closures.
According to reports, in July 2021, Baoneng Group's automotive sector carried out large-scale layoffs, and both the group and directly operated stores were the "hardest hit areas" of layoffs, with a reduction rate of more than 65%. The remaining employees have also been exposed to months of unpaid wages and those owed by the company to social security. These voices are emerging endlessly on social networks and in Baoneng Automobile's official Microblog.
At the same time, the closure of Baoneng Automobile stores also continued to ferment. The latest news shows that all the employees of Baoneng Automobile Tianjin Dasi Store have officially signed a termination labor contract agreement on December 19, 2021, and the store is the earliest and most important provincial-level directly operated store established by Baoneng Automobile in Tianjin.
In terms of production capacity, in addition to the Guangzhou base, a number of manufacturing bases of Baoneng Automobile were exposed to be in a state of construction interruption. In terms of new cars, the planned new models were not launched as scheduled last year, but postponed to 2022, that is, the two new cars released at the new car tasting meeting.
Judging from the above-mentioned multi-level events, Baoneng Automobile has experienced many difficulties in 2021, and some of the factors behind its silence can be seen. However, according to the choice of Baoneng Automobile to release new cars at the beginning of the year, Baoneng has still not given up on building cars.
Guangzhou Development Zone into the stake, is baoneng turning point of the focus?
At the press conference, Yao Zhenhua, chairman of Baoneng Group, said, "At the beginning of 2022, Guangzhou Baoneng Automobile introduced the Guangzhou Development Zone Science City Group and the Knowledge City Group into the strategic shareholding, and is currently promoting the research and development of new energy models, base construction, equipment introduction and other work at full speed. ”
Public information shows that after the completion of the latest equity change, Guangzhou Development Zone Construction Venture Capital Co., Ltd. and Guangzhou Knowledge City Investment Holding Co., Ltd., which are subsidiaries of Guangzhou Development Zone, have become shareholders of Guangzhou Baoneng Automobile, holding 41% and 10% of the shares respectively; Guangzhou Baoyao, a subsidiary of Baoneng Automobile, holds 49% of the shares.
Baoneng's goal is, "In the face of the era of great change in which new energy vehicles coexist with opportunities and challenges, and in the face of cruel market competition, Baoneng Automobile will strive to become a real 'leader' from a 'latecomer' in the automotive industry." ”
Officials also made a special mention of the new GX16. As the first model of the BAO brand, the GX16 was developed by Baoneng Automobile Guangzhou Research Institute and is equipped with a power battery independently developed by Baoneng Automobile. In terms of production capacity, the GX16 will be put into operation at Baoneng Automobile's Guangzhou base and is expected to roll off the production line in July this year. The Guangzhou base, which undertakes the task of mass production, resumed work since September last year, and has completed the main construction of the steel structure of the five major craft workshops, and will complete the construction of the plant by the end of March 2022.
For this tasting meeting, consumers and netizens actually have doubtful views, and the topic still focuses on "employee wage arrears". However, from the information disclosed by the official, it can be seen that Baoneng's current focus lies in the cooperation with the Guangzhou Development Zone, that is, Baoneng Automobile's bet on 2022 and the focus of high-end.
And this round of betting may become one of the few opportunities for Baoneng Automobile to prove itself. After all, in 2022, when the auto market will continue to change, the development space left for marginal people will only become more and more narrow, and more importantly, Baoneng Automobile is also facing the problem of how to pull back the sense of trust, presence and establish a new image.