New car manufacturers are still "updating".
Before the Year of the Tiger arrived, from calves and tuanches to stone technology, more and more enterprises began to devote themselves to car building. Among them, the most concerned is the group car that li wants to "scold on the hot search". After Wen Wei, CEO of Tuanche, revealed to the outside world in an interview that "100 foreign teams are proficient in everything", "the car-making cycle is compressed to 18-24 months" and "three months to rebuild a car", Li wants to angrily spray Tuanche to build a car is a "liar" and "no shame". Wen Wei responded directly and invited Li to launch the first product launch.
After some tug-of-war, the business difficulties exposed by the staff of the group car were turned over again: all the employees of the group car were waiting for work, and only 2,000 yuan of minimum wage was paid during the period. In this regard, the relevant person in charge of the group car responded that it was caused by the epidemic. So does the group car, which has evaporated 90% of the market value and is fully waiting for work, have the ability to build a car, or is this just a "storytelling" scam?
Who is Wen Wei?
According to public information, Wen Wei, who graduated from Northern Jiaotong University, has tried to start a business four times, including the earliest domestic hitchhiking club, corporate communications, training, electronic consumer goods, etc., but in the end they all ended in failure.
"Serial entrepreneur" Wen Wei has not given up on this, he has been looking for opportunities. Until 2009, Wen Wei learned that someone in the QQ group, initiated to go to the 4S shop group to buy a car, thus discovering business opportunities Wen Wei officially created the main group car network.
At this time, tuanche network coincided with the government's introduction of the "purchase restriction order", and the automobile market changed from a seller's market to a buyer's market. In a positive environment, Tuanche Network has accelerated its horsepower to develop the market, and its footprints have spread throughout the third- and fourth-tier cities and county markets. Tuanche.com's new car sales also increased from 2,000 units at the beginning of its business to 200,000 units in 2015, and its market share once exceeded 10%.
The group car network also successfully completed the A-C round of financing, with a total amount of up to 37.26 million US dollars.
In November 2018, with the title of "Auto New Retail Meituan", Tuanche successfully went public in the United States, and Wen Wei ushered in his own highlight moment.
This year, the performance of the group car in the financial report was also exceptionally outstanding. In the context of the slowdown in the growth of the automobile economy, unlike the losses of friendly businesses such as EasyCar and Uxin, in 2018, the revenue of tuanche reached 651 million yuan, an increase of 131.9% year-on-year; cash and cash equivalents reached 579 million yuan.
"The moment the bell rang, I had in mind a ship ready to sail, and we were about to embark on a new journey in a port." Wen Wei recalled to the media the imagination when it was listed. However, Wen Wei may not have thought that the darkest cold winter of the group car is quietly coming.
Forced to build a car?
"The performance bonus of the group car in the second half of last year was not paid, and after December 30, all the staff were waiting for work, and they could only receive a minimum wage of 2,000 yuan." An internal employee of the group car revealed to the media.
Although Wen Wei denied this and explained it as caused by the epidemic, it is an indisputable fact that he is deeply involved in business difficulties.
If you look at the history of the group car, you can see that the successful listing is already the highlight moment of the group car. But then capital also poured cold water on it. On the first day of listing, Tuanche suffered a break, and since then the stock price has plummeted, starting at only $1.7 per share, and now it has been hovering between $2-3 per share for a long time.
Similar to the downward trend of stock prices, Tuanche has never made a profit in the past five years, and its losses are also increasing. The cumulative loss in 5 years is nearly 700 million yuan, of which 250 million yuan was lost in 2019. The latest financial report shows that the operating income of the group car in the first three quarters of 2021 was 274 million yuan, down 67.07% year-on-year, and the net loss was 59.362 million yuan.
The losses could not be stopped, and the group car had reached the point where there was no rice to cook. According to the 2021 Q3 of Tuanche.com, the total assets of Tuanche are only 396 million yuan, and the cash and cash equivalents are only 100 million yuan. If calculated according to the loss margin of previous years, the group car will consume this last cash in 2022.
Due to the inability to reverse the business difficulties, the loss intensified, in early 2021, the group car issued an announcement disclosing that it would be privatized, but at the end of the year, the group car revoked the privatization, indicating that it wanted to open more opportunities, and this more opportunity should be the car building in early January.
In this case of continuous losses, the group car has been difficult to protect itself, and it is still rushing into the field of car manufacturing, I am afraid that it will only be more difficult.
In addition, the business model on which the group car depends for its survival has also been deconstructed.
It is understood that the main business model of tuanche relies on the user's experience at the auto show site and then the single business model of matching transactions. Nowadays, affected by the black swan event, the offline exhibition operation mode of the group car has suffered a serious impact, and the monthly transaction volume of the new car in 2020 has once been cut.
If the epidemic is an obstacle to the development of group vehicles at this stage, the hot direct operation model in the past two years has directly cut off the opportunity for the survival of group vehicles. Because the direct operation mode itself is focused on experience, you can directly place orders in the store, and the advantages of the on-site experience of the group car no longer exist. Under this double blow, the business model on which the regiment car depends for its survival has been in jeopardy.
Some analysts believe that the group car such as automobile e-commerce burns money seriously, and the operation has been hit hard, and it has reached the point where there is no way to retreat, so the group car has to find another way out.
The road ahead is bumpy
The difficulty of building a car is obvious to all. Real estate tycoons Evergrande and Baoneng almost folded here; Bo County, Byton, these new cars with strong backgrounds fell in the last step of mass production; Li Bin, who has successfully started a business for many times, almost became the "most miserable person" because of the next car.
However, Wen Wei, who chose to build a car in the next place, does not seem to feel the difficulty of building a car.
The car-making team is proficient in "almost all car-making processes" from product planning to supplier management, "can do more than 20 million yuan of cars, can make cars below 50,000 yuan", in Wen Wei's introduction, this foreign team of only 100 people seems to be omnipotent, and all of them are all all-round pacesetters.
Not only that, the team can shorten the car construction cycle to half of the multinational and domestic manufacturers. Wen Wei said that it doesn't matter if the first car fails, and another one can be rebuilt in 3 months.
For Wen Wei's introduction, some analysts believe that the industry has never heard of such a top team. Some insiders also commented, "Why would such an elite team be willing to be under the command of Tuanche.com?" "Regardless of the team's history, Tuanche's 100-person R&D team is dwarfed in this increasingly competitive field of new car manufacturing. Xiaomi has recruited a team of 500 people at the beginning of car manufacturing, and from the harsh conditions of Xiaomi's recruitment of car manufacturing teams, it is speculated that these 500 teams are elites in related fields.
In addition, Xiaopeng Motors had only 100 employees when it was first established, but it did not build a mass production model at that time. Today, Xiaopeng Automobile employs nearly 8,000 employees, and R&D personnel account for half of them. Nio has more than 9,000 employees, ideal automobile has the least number of employees, but there are also more than 4,000 people. Niu Chuang, who is also a novice, has been planning for 4 years since the end of the tour before the car is built, and the team has reached more than 1,000 people in the early stage of entrepreneurship.
In addition to the entrepreneurial team full of "mystery", Wen Wei's elaboration of funds cannot help but be suspicious.
According to Wen Wei, there is no eyebrow of funds now, but there are many interested parties, and the team can compress the cost of research and development to a very low level. "Niu Chuang got $500 million, and we could be 1/10 of him." This means that the group car can only raise 50 million US dollars. It is worth mentioning that the enterprise investigation and equity penetration shows that Wen Wei owns 66% of the equity of Tuanche, is the controlling shareholder, and the only investment institution, Puhua Capital, owns 2.7% of its equity.
The funds are not in place, and the group car, which is still in the PPT stage, can attract a batch of investment with this car manufacturing is unknown.
And today's car-making threshold has risen sharply, and the difficulties encountered by group cars in the future are bound to be more dangerous. Weilai Libin, who previously said that the car-making threshold is 20 billion yuan, believes that this value needs to rise to 40 billion yuan, "If an enterprise does not have 40 billion reserve funds, the risk will be very large." Xiaomi Lei Jun said at the press conference that it will invest 10 billion yuan in the first year and will invest 10 billion US dollars to build cars in ten years. The cash flow of the group car is less than 200 million yuan, and its own funds are like a dime for car manufacturing.
Five thousand dollars, a hundred people outside the "elite" team, with a sales background of the group car, perhaps as the industry speculated, the group car "car" is only responsible for the sales of this last link. In any case, at the key node of "shutdown rumors" and privatization, the admission of group cars to build cars is a good story.