Cross-border car manufacturing has long been nothing new, especially in the era when smart cars are known as "four-wheeled mobile phones", the threshold for car manufacturing is gradually decreasing, and car manufacturing is no longer out of reach.
It is foreseeable that with the resurgence of car-making fever, there will be people with lofty ideals who want to enter the market and share a piece of the market in the trillion-dollar new energy market. No, Stone Technology, which has a place in the smart home market, has also announced that it has built a car. A few days ago, some media exposed the founder and CEO of Stone Technology Chang Jing's car-making project Luoke Automobile has completed a financing of 100 million US dollars at the end of last year, it is understood that Stone Technology has applied for the "Pole Stone Automobile" brand, its first new car is positioned in a hard-core SUV, using range extender power, endurance or will exceed 1,000 kilometers.
In fact, this is not the first time that Stone Technology has been exposed to build a car, as early as last April, when Xiaomi announced the car, Stone Technology was exposed to enter the field of car building. From the information applied by "Shanghai Luoke Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd." on May 17 last year, it can also be seen that stone technology was exposed to build a car at that time.
Not only that, Stone Technology's car-making project has been launched at the end of 2020, and its angel wheel valuation has reached 240 million US dollars, and Institutions such as Gao Rong Capital, Northern Lights Venture Capital, an old shareholder of Stone Technology, have invested in the project. According to media reports, Yan Feng, former CTO of WM Motors, has joined the car-making project of Stone Technology.
For the entry of stone technology into the field of car manufacturing, in today's cross-border car manufacturing tide, I believe that no one will be surprised. Although the first new car of Stone has not yet been released, from the current exposure information, it is still possible to explore the future direction of Stone Technology.
Stone to build a car, take the manager thought
Although there is currently a lot of news that the first new car of Stone Technology should be benchmarked against Mercedes-Benz Big G, and even exposed that the founder of Stone Technology, Chang Jing, entered the car because he himself is a typical car enthusiast, especially fond of off-road vehicles, but in my opinion, this is more to attract the attention of consumers, so that more people will focus on the matter of stone technology car manufacturing. After all, in the matter of cross-border car manufacturing, there is traffic, which means that the subsequent financing and publicity difficulties will be greatly reduced.
In fact, from the news exposed by Stone Technology this time, Stone Technology's car is fake against the big G, and the construction of off-road vehicles is real, and the big probability is still a range extender SUV. At this stage, although the threshold for car manufacturing has been lowered, it is still a huge costly thing, which is also an important reason why the group car has only 50 million US dollars to build a car before it has ushered in many doubts. Although the strength and resources of Stone Technology are better than those of the group car, and the funds for entering the car are also 100 million US dollars, but this is still a cup of water, so the stone technology is not too ambitious to enter the car, and at the beginning of the choice of pure electric route, but choose the safest and most mature range extender route.
Although the early ideal car manufacturing misjudged the domestic policy and chose to enter the car with a low-speed electric vehicle SEV, it took a lot of time, but Li wanted to stop the horse from the cliff, adjust the direction of car construction in time, and chose the range extension route that was not optimistic at that time. Due to the immature battery technology and imperfect related charging equipment at that time, the ideal ONE without endurance crisis achieved the highlight moment of the ideal car in the past two years. In the past 2021, Ideal Auto has achieved a good result of delivering 90,491 units by relying on Ideal ONE, and it is only one step away from profitability. It can be said that the extender route has proven to be a viable route.
Most importantly, the range-up route is also supported by policies. At the end of 2020, the Society of Automotive Engineers of China issued the "Energy-saving and New Energy Vehicle Technology Roadmap 2.0" (hereinafter referred to as "Technology Roadmap 2.0"), which emphasizes the mainland's technical route of adhering to the development of pure electric drives, and clarifies the development goals of hybrid vehicles and fuel cell vehicles. With the release of the technology roadmap 2.0, the mainland has set off a wave of increased range routes, and Li Yinan, who is also a cross-border entrepreneur again, has also used the range increase route for the Niuchuang electric vehicle he founded.
However, unlike Pole Stone Automobile, which only chooses to increase the range, Niuchuang Automobile has also entered the pure electric car at the same time in addition to the range increase route. Of course, this has a great relationship with Li Yinan's initial financing of 500 million US dollars, and secondly, it is not unrelated to Niuchuang Automobile' already obtained the relevant qualifications of Mahayana Automobile.
Speaking of this, although there is no news that Polestone Automobile currently wants to build a factory or OEM, from the past situation of Stone Technology and the current financing amount of Polestone Automobile, in order to launch the first car to the market as soon as possible, Polestone Automobile has a large chance of adopting the OEM model. Why?
The first is the problem of qualifications, although the current car-making threshold continues to be lowered, it seems to have reached the point where cats and dogs can build cars, but in fact, car-making qualifications are still not cheap, for example, Ideal Car spent 650 million yuan to buy Chongqing Lifan Automobile Co., Ltd. in 2019, which has been the low point of qualification prices in recent times. You know, WM has spent more than 1.18 billion yuan on car manufacturing qualifications, if Jishi Automobile wants to build its own factory, the current financing of 100 million US dollars can not even solve the qualifications, let alone talk about car manufacturing?
The second is that Stone Technology did not have the tradition of building its own factories in the past. According to the data, Stone Technology does not have a self-built production base, all its products are produced by commissioned processing, of which Sunwoda is one of the core commissioned processing manufacturers of Stone Technology, which once accounted for 100% of the total commissioned processing procurement of Stone Technology. Judging from the most secure range increase route for The Entry of Pole Stone Automobile, its initial goal is obviously to survive in the current competitive market, rather than spending most of the money on car manufacturing qualifications.
Pole stone car, millet ecological help
For The pole stone car at this time to enter the car, compared to other Internet cars, it still has many advantages, or in the technology can be learned. For example, Stone Technology has long established a technical basis based on laser ranging module (LDS), and the laser radar and visual SLAM positioning technology applied by its sweeping robot are connected with the current unmanned driving technology. With the continuous expansion of the market share of stone technology sweeping robots in these years, the accumulation of stone technology in intelligent driving technology is believed to be shared in future cars.
In fact, for their own related intelligent driving technology, Chang Jing, the founder of Stone Technology, has previously said, "On the one hand, the lidar on the sweeping robot is the same as the lidar logic of Google's unmanned vehicle, and we are equivalent to applying the unmanned vehicle technology to the field of sweeping robots; on the other hand, we have moved the relevant path planning and positioning technology indoors and used in the sweeping robot." ”
Perhaps in terms of intelligent driving, the intelligent algorithms accumulated by Stone Technology in the past on sweeping robots can be used as a reference to a certain extent, but building a car is not so simple. In addition, at this stage, the current intelligent algorithm of Stone Technology has not been verified on the mass production car, so the first new car of Jishi Automobile is very likely to be purchased from outside the city in terms of intelligent driving technology, supplemented by demonstration of its own technology. Only after the demonstration of its related intelligent driving technology is mature, it is possible for Stone Technology's intelligent algorithms to be transferred to cars.
Not only that, in the era of smart cars, intelligent driving is only one aspect, and ecology is fundamental. For the Pole Stone Automobile, which has just entered the car, it is too early to talk about ecology at this stage, and it is doubtful whether there is energy and funds to develop the entire intelligent ecology in a short period of time.
For many large car companies, ecology is related to the "soul" of car companies, basically will not give up, but for many newly established, poorly funded car companies, survival is the problem, the soul is not, which is also the fundamental reason why Cyris opened all its souls to Huawei before.
Polar stone car is the same, but unlike Cyrus, stone technology has always been a member of the millet ecology, the pole stone car car to build a car in the early stage to stand firm, the probability will be integrated into the millet car ecology, I think this is also the pole stone car in the millet announced soon after the establishment of the car is an important reason.
Lei Jun previously elaborated on the advantages of Xiaomi car manufacturing, saying that the millet model, millet brand and user, and full intelligent ecology are the three major advantages of millet car manufacturing, of which the first and third points are related to millet ecological chain enterprises. For PoleStone Automobile, it is impossible to spend too much money on the intelligent ecology in the early stage, so integrating into the Xiaomi ecology is the only way to go. The most important thing is that unlike the Zhimi automobile that previously announced the construction of the car, stone technology has been out of the control of millet, I believe that the pole stone automobile will also take the road of stone technology, both to maintain a certain distance from the millet car ecology, but also with the help of millet car ecology and existence.
In summary, The pole stone car will not only become a supplement to the xiaomi car-making ecology, but also a new exploration outside the millet car-making ecology. As for whether it will succeed in the end, it depends on what kind of products Chang Jing, the helmsman, comes up with.
Summary: In today's wave of car building, Stone Technology will not be the first to build a car, nor will it be the last. Although there are many players in the current new energy market, this does not mean that Stone Technology has no opportunity to stand out, for example, in today's smart car market, there are still many market segments that have not been tapped, especially in the mass market below 200,000, there is still no model with excellent sales, if the first new car of Stone Technology is positioned appropriately, it is not without opportunities. You know, the reason why the ideal car was unexpected at the beginning was also to cut to the market segment, and the most intelligent ideal ONE of about 300,000 rose.
Once, Chang Jing led Stone Technology, almost relying on a single product of sweeping robots to achieve a market value of nearly 60 billion, and now he has started a business again to build a car, although in the end he may not be able to copy the same story again, but he wants to at least try to know whether this road can work.