New Autobots scramble to | SAIC Chen Hong: Long gone, the taste of being an "opinion leader"

Wen / Pu Zhenyu as a leader of state-owned car companies, Chen Hong does not have a lot of personal heroism aura of private enterprise bosses, and the moments when he is concerned are usually only at the annual SAIC shareholders' meeting, and the same is true in 2021.

The only difference is that at the shareholders' meeting held this year, Chen Hong "refused" the possibility of cooperation with Huawei on the grounds of guarding his "soul", dropping a deep-water bomb on the bustling automotive circle, and while some peers expressed understanding of him, the voices questioning his conservative stubbornness also swept in.

In fact, with such a result, Chen Hong may be more or less mentally prepared. After all, in the eyes of many people, low stock prices are the original sin.

As early as 2015, the second year of Chen Hong's tenure as chairman of SAIC, some shareholders accused SAIC of being a junk stock in front of him. In 2021, SAIC's stock price is still criticized, and Chen Hong can only helplessly appease investors with words such as "not only we SAIC, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW stock prices are not very good".

Frankly speaking, at the 2021 shareholders' meeting, the question of "whether SAIC will consider cooperating with third parties such as Huawei in autonomous driving" triggered Chen Hong's "soul" theory is far from sharp.

Chen Hong exploded on this issue, and his "soul" theory was not a defensive reply, but an obvious offensive view output around the dominance of car building.

At a time when many car company leaders are still thinking about how to make their trees bear intelligent fruits, Chen Hong's thinking focuses on how to avoid their own fruits from being eventually picked by others.

If you don't forget it, there will be an echo. Particular emotions and ideas often result from reflections on past experiences. On the issue of "picking fruit", Chen Hong did have lessons learned.

In 2014, SAIC motor cooperated with Alibaba to build Zebra Network with a 45% peer-to-peer ratio, becoming the first echelon of intelligent networking leading the "Internet car" trend. Under the initial exclusivity agreement, Zebra Systems could only supply SAIC's products.

The market is changing, Ali wants to open up and scale effect, SAIC hopes to control superior resources and create differentiated competitiveness, and "Zebra" has lost its way in the game between the two sides. This kind of disorientation eventually ended with Zebra Network being controlled by Alibaba, and the unique secret that had made SAIC proud began to empower more and more other car companies.

Although I don't know if it is the disappearance of "Zebra", Chen Hong has planted an obsession with intelligent dominance in her heart, but it can be seen that after more than half a year, the industry's discussion of the "soul" of the car is still enthusiastic.

As the number one of China's largest sales listed car companies, Chen Hong, who has "become famous in one sentence", has tasted the taste of "opinion leaders" who have been absent for a long time.

At the end of 2021, Huawei's high-profile release of the new car brand Xilis asked the world, although the brand nominally belongs to the well-off Cyris, but in fact it is considered to be the product of Huawei taking over the "body" and "soul" at the same time, so the fear of Huawei dominating car companies has also spread in the hearts of many people.

Interestingly, when the outside world is more questioning Huawei's car-making ambitions, SAIC motor highlighted in the year-end summary of 2021 that it has embarked on the road of independent control of the "soul", "SAIC motor will strengthen the independent control of the 'brain and soul' of smart cars through self-research of global core software." Pride and self-satisfaction overflowed on paper.

Judging from the latest investment plan, Chen Hong is quite persistent about independently controlling technology. In April 2021, SAIC motor released the world's first automotive SOA platform, SAIC Zero Beam Full Stack Solution, and announced that it will invest 300 billion yuan in innovative fields such as intelligent electric vehicles in the next five years.

Even in the automotive industry, which is known for its capital-intensive, 300 billion yuan is a huge investment. If you calculate according to the car-making threshold of 40 billion yuan for Li Bin, the founder of Weilai, 300 billion yuan is also enough to create 7 emerging car companies.

Of course, if you think that Chen Hong wants to take saic gas belt in the direction of closure, it is not correct. He just wants to take the lead, not to refuse any cooperation on the new ecological chain.

When she first "refused" to accept Huawei's overall plan, Chen Hong did not forget to emphasize that "SAIC Motor has a lot of cooperation with Baidu and Huawei, and has many cooperation projects with Huawei in 5G and Internet ecology."

In addition to technical cooperation, Chen Hong does not want SAIC to go it alone at the capital level - saic motor used to think a lot of thinking in the industrial era, relying on rolling development, coming by itself, and now actively using the capital market.

How to let SAIC Complete a Safe Road of Electric Intelligent Transformation is Chen Hong's heavy responsibility. But the time left for him may only be about 3 years.

"SAIC's layout on the new track is difficult for the general new car-making forces to do." In Chen Hong's eyes, SAIC's strength in electrification and intelligence is not weak, but it is hidden in the old "shell" of SAIC Motor, a manufacturing enterprise with a very traditional appearance, and the outside world does not perceive it.

How can we fully see the value of SAIC? Chen Hong officially released the intention of creating a "new SAIC" and shouted out "exploring the diversification of capital structure to promote spin-off and listing".

Up to now, SAIC Motor has hatched 20 "science and technology innovation small giants", each project is equivalent to the volume of a start-up company, of which the spin-off and listing process of Jet Hydrogen Technology has been launched in November 2021, and China Haiting and Lianchuang Electronics will also follow up.

Chen Hong's small calculation on the issue of spin-off and listing is easier to understand than his "soul" theory. With the acceleration of the transformation of the "new four modernizations" of automobiles and the heating up of market competition, more and more car companies are splitting subsidiaries to operate independently or even go public independently to seek more funds, more cooperation and a larger sales market.

The effort to create a "new SAIC" is not only reflected in financing, but also in the brand. At the brand level, Chen Hong has a lot of cards in his hand, but the quality of the card surface has to be said twice.

In 2021, SAIC's wholesale vehicle sales reached 5.464 million units, and its own brands sold 2.857 million units (of which Roewe and MG brands sold about 800,000 units together), accounting for 52.3% of total sales, exceeding 50% for the first time.

In terms of overall sales, SAIC's 2021 report card has achieved Chen Hong's previous goal of "independent brands and joint venture brands going hand in hand".

However, the gold content of sales volume is debatable, among which SAIC-GM-Wuling sales in the low-end market account for about 30% of the group's total sales. Positioning the high-end zhiji and feifan, they have not yet entered the large-scale delivery period, and no one knows their true strength.

In the once-in-a-century period of industry change, no matter how powerful the traditional car companies, they are facing a severe test of life and death, and SAIC motor is no exception. And Chen Hong, who has worked for the old SAIC for more than 30 years, can successfully reshape a "new SAIC" without shortcomings during his tenure?