Recently, it was reported that Huaren Express is considering a $500 million Hong Kong IPO and will cooperate with UBS and Morgan Stanley on IPO matters, which will be carried out as early as this year. Compared with many new car-making forces, Huaren Express is also focused on the future automobile field, but it is somewhat different: on the one hand, its development path is a little different, such as the thinking that "it is better to build a car than to pave the way first", on the other hand, it is also one of the few new forces that dare to declare that it is not bad at the initial stage.
Ding Lei, the operator of an IPO Chinese Express who is a middle-aged car-making man, is an acquaintance who has always been on the front line of China's car-making. Ding Lei is a high-achieving student in the Department of Physics of Fudan and a disciple of the former President Xie (the famous physicist Xie Xide). After graduating from Fudan in 1988 with a master's degree, he gave up the opportunity to study in the United States for a doctorate, entered Shanghai Volkswagen and began a career of more than 20 years of SAIC, rising from a grassroots engineer to vice president of SAIC Motor Group Co., Ltd. and general manager of Shanghai General Motors Co., Ltd., during which he experienced and promoted Santana's domestic production, participated in the creation of Shanghai General Motors and launched more than 20 new cars during his tenure at shanghai GM, and took charge of SAIC-GM's impressive performance of winning the first place in domestic sales in 6 years and 4 years. In 2011, due to his excellent performance in the automotive industry, Ding Lei was transferred to Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, serving as executive deputy director and deputy secretary of the management committee and chairman of Zhangjiang Group. In 2013, Ding Lei served as the deputy mayor of Shanghai Pudong New Area and participated in the construction of the early Shanghai Free Trade Zone almost the whole time. Ding Lei, who briefly left the automotive circle in 2014, participated in Tesla's domestic production in China as the deputy mayor of Shanghai's Pudong New Area, and this experience also made him excited. When Ding Lei first experienced the performance limit that the fuel engine could not reach due to electrification and saw the disappearing physical buttons on the ModelS, he judged that the future automotive industry chain and product form would usher in a huge change. At the same time, Ding Lei noticed that there are already companies like Ningde Times that have made some early products for BMW, and China's supply chain can still support the wave of automobile electrification, so he decided to resign and start a business. In March 2015, Ding Lei once again decided to return to the automotive circle and followed Jia Yueting to join LeTV Super Auto and became the co-founder of the company. But then with the financial crisis of LeTV, Ding Lei's dream of building a car was shattered. On March 20, 2017, Ding Lei announced that due to physical reasons, he would no longer serve as the global vice chairman of LeTV SuperCar and the CEO of China and Asia Pacific. In this year, Ding Lei set up the East Coast Fund - a special fund raising industry fund, into the intelligent transportation industry fund management platform, and established a cooperative relationship with the Government of Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, Huaren Express (Jiangsu) Technology Co., Ltd. came into being, then the chairman of the East Coast Fund Ding Lei officially became the chairman of Huaren Express on December 12 of that year, once again restarting the dream of the car. After accumulating enough experience and network resources in the automotive, political and financial circles, Ding Lei also set up a luxurious senior management team for Huaren Express: in addition to Murphy and Chen Weixu, two old partners of SAIC-GM, there are also Mark Stanton, Shi Zhijie and other multinational car companies from Jaguar Land Rover, Toyota, FAW, GM and other multinational car companies, as well as intelligent electronic architecture, Vehicle Networking and autonomous driving experts Li Qian. Compared with some new car-making forces with internet backgrounds, the top management of Huaren Express is mostly automobile veterans who have been working in the automotive industry for more than 20 years. Building a car is not the end of Huaren Express, Ding Lei said: "Building a car is not a difficult thing, our vision is to change the way people travel in the future!" "In its grand plan, it is not only to build electric vehicles, but also to plan smart transportation and build smart cities." In Ding Lei's view, the current travel environment is fraught with problems: due to the uneven distribution of traffic flow, the command system is not intelligent enough, and the local traffic paralysis caused by timely adjustment. In addition, the high cost of autonomous driving systems will also hinder the further commercialization of vehicles and the popularization of vehicle intelligence. At present, a smart road built by Huaren Express in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, is "the most complete and functional road in the country", on the one hand, this road has the scene simulation ability of autonomous vehicle and road coordination, on the other hand, it can also simulate intelligent traffic management.
Huaren Express hopes to gradually move from the research and development and industrialization of intelligent vehicles to the layout and operation of intelligent transportation, and finally from the construction of intelligent transportation as the entrance, to build a future smart city, and finally realize the vision of better travel for mankind in the future.
Sales exceeded that of Porsche
On July 31, 2019, Huaren Express officially released the Gaohe HiPhi brand, and some people used different keywords to describe this new brand: "Apple in the automotive industry" and "The next Tesla", with such a name, mainly like Tesla, Huaren Express and Gaohe brand chose the development route of entering high-end models at the beginning of its establishment.
In September 2020, Gaohe's first mass-produced stereotyped car, the HIPhiX, released a pre-sale price, with the six-seater and four-seater of the founding version priced at 680,000 yuan and 800,000 yuan; in November 2021, Gaohe Auto released its second flagship HiPhi Z globally. Among the many new power brands in China, Xiaopeng Automobile is 150,000-400,000, Weilai Automobile is 400,000-500,000, and Gaohe has broken the price ceiling of Chinese automobile brands with an average transaction price of more than 600,000-800,000 bicycles, and has become one of the most expensive new energy vehicle brands in China. For such pricing, Ding Lei believes that it is not high, from the hardware point of view, Gaohe Automobile and Porsche are the same, but the price is only one-third of it, at the same time, Gaohe's designers are also BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Bugatti, CTO Mark is jaguar Land Rover's SVO head, the design and development of the level of people is the same. In addition, the software intelligence is far more intelligent than Porsche. If you compare with Porsche, it is more than 2.5 million. After the launch of the flagship models HiPhiX and HiPhiZ, Ding Lei revealed in the CCTV dialogue column that the third mass production car of Huaren Express will be a product for the public. At that time, Tesla also launched the Model X and Model S, which cost nearly one million dollars, and the Roadster, which cost more than one million dollars, which made Tesla successfully establish its identity as a luxury electric vehicle, and then launched the Model 3 to seize the mass market. According to the sales data released by China Automobile Center, in the monthly sales list of more than 500,000 luxury brand electric vehicles, Gaohe HiPhiX sold 641 vehicles in September, surpassing Porsche Taycan's 585 vehicles and becoming the monthly sales champion of the luxury brand electric vehicle market of more than 500,000 yuan. From July to December 2021, Gaohe Automobile sold 3,724 units, which was the champion of more than 500,000 luxury brand electric vehicles in the second half of the year, and dominated the market of luxury brand electric vehicles of more than 500,000 levels. At present, models priced at more than 500,000 yuan also include: Tesla Model X guidance price is between 772,900 yuan and 1 million yuan; Mercedes-Benz EQC price is about 500,000 yuan. Neither Mercedes-Benz nor Tesla has made a bigger sales breakthrough in this price range.
According to its own disclosure, in 2021, since the opening of deliveries in mid-May, in only 7 months, the cumulative delivery volume of Gaohe HiPhiX has exceeded 4,200 vehicles, according to the number of new car traffic insurance purchases, BYD sales of 525,800, Tesla 322,500, Xiaopeng 96,600, ideal 91,300, Weilai 90,800. Gaohe's data can only be said to be inconspicuous last year, but because the price is far more than the mass production models of other new car-making brands, The sales of Gaohe Automobile have easily approached 3 billion yuan, which is not a small amount.
From the perspective of the national new energy passenger car price structure, the sales volume in the past two years has shown a "dumbbell type" structure, that is, the sales volume is mainly concentrated in A00/A0 class models and B/C class models with more than 250,000 yuan, accounting for 30% and 31% of sales in January-November 2021, which is much higher than the mature fuel vehicle market (22% and 21% respectively), while the proportion of the 100,000-200,000 yuan range is only 31%, far less than 50% of the mature fuel vehicle market. Entering 2022, each price range is expected to achieve full growth, among which, the price range at both ends of the high and low ends may continue to perform excellently, bringing continuous increments. With the next advancement, the sales of Gaohe products will continue to increase on the basis of the increase in models.
Not bad money is also going public
Financing has always been the "lifeblood" of the new car-making forces. Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile, has a famous saying: "20 billion yuan is the threshold for building a car." "However, since its establishment in 2017, There have been few financing moves exposed by Huaren Express, but it seems to have never been bad for money."
Founder Ding Lei once said at the beginning of the establishment of Huaren Express, "We will not open the absorption channel for private funds for the time being." I wouldn't have done it without adequate funding. I can't accept it, I may run out of money halfway through, and I have to look for money everywhere to continue the model. ”
Different from the thirst for capital of other new car companies, Ding Lei does not seem to care, and even some resistance. He said that Huaren Express has original capital from the United States, as well as government investment, and there is no plan to start social private placement for the time being, and there will be no A, B, C and D rounds of investment. Public information such as enterprise investigation shows that the source of funds for "car building" of Huaren Express, in addition to the original funds of Ding Lei and others, also includes industrial funds from Yancheng City and Yueda Group, and last year an insurance investment institution was added. Among them, The Gaohe Yancheng plant was transformed from the Dongfeng Yueda Kia factory, which has produced Models such as Maxima, Cerato and Xiu'er, and Yueda Group holds 20% of the shares in the factory. According to industry estimates, the total investment of this intelligent factory, which is fully invested and built in accordance with Industry 4.0 standards and has an annual production capacity of 50,000 vehicles per shift, is at least more than 2 billion yuan. So why does The Chinese Express, which is not bad for money, go public? Although Huaren Express has strong original capital, the technology iteration of new energy vehicles is too fast, making the importance of capital more prominent, whether it is a traditional car company or a new car-making force, it is necessary to ensure the sustainable development of the automobile business through continuous investment and research and development. In addition to capital requirements, listing is undoubtedly an important watershed for the new forces of car manufacturing, starting in 2020, some companies with relatively strong strength have already entered the door of the "New York Stock Exchange" with their advantage of "running fast", such as Wei Xiaoli, and the second echelon of new forces significantly opened the gap. If the enterprises in the second echelon do not want to lose their sense of existence, they must immediately make a "big move", in addition to The Chinese Express, United New Energy, WM Motors, Zero-run Cars, and Nezha have all reported listing news. Gaohe has its own strong car-making genes, has the strength to impact the high-end market and occupy a place in the industry, whether it can be recognized by the capital market and investors, but also depends on whether it can maintain good sales data in the future.