At the beginning of each year, it is a summary of the results of the past year by various enterprises, just like the students' final exams, the good results are naturally full of scenery, and the poor results can only be full of sorrows. Such as ideal, Xiaopeng, Weilai three new energy vehicle companies, although the establishment time is not long, but in 2021 also handed over nearly 100,000 vehicles to answer the questionnaire. In contrast, the sales of some established car companies can be said to be miserable.
For example, Lifan Motors, the annual sales volume in 2021 is only 3810 units, and what is more surprising is that this data has increased by as much as 285% year-on-year, so it can be seen how dismal Lifan's sales in these two years have been. As a veteran car company that has entered the automobile market since 2003, Lifan once sold 180,000 units a year, although it was not as good as Geely and Changan, but it was also a piece of the market. However, looking at the development path of Lifan and the development of the domestic automobile market, such a result seems reasonable.
Embarked on the road of imitation, with annual sales of 180,000 units
Lifan Automobile was born from Lifan motorcycle, and when the domestic economy was just moving towards recovery, the Lifan motorcycle founded by Yin Mingshan made a good reputation in the industry. Its pioneering development of 100ml four-stroke engine and 100ml electric starting engine has become a major milestone in the domestic motorcycle industry, so when Lifan enters the automotive industry, many Lifan motorcycle consumers are looking forward to it.
But even now, it is still not easy to build a car in China. In order to obtain the vehicle manufacturing qualification, Lifan acquired the Chongqing Special Automobile Manufacturing Plant. Since then, just like the production of motorcycles, Lifan has chosen the road of independent research and development, and after a year of cooperation with two design institutes in Shanghai, the first Lifan 520 has successfully rolled off the production line, but neither Lifan 520 nor Lifan 620 has been able to open up Lifan's automobile market. When the sales of the Lifan 520 were only 2600 units, Zotye next door had achieved sales of more than 10,000 a year.
Looking at the dismal sales, Yin Mingshan turned his strategy around and launched the Lifan 320 known as the "Chinese version of BMW MINI" in 2009, and this model alone, Lifan got a monthly sales of 7,000 vehicles. Since then, Toyota Vios, Corolla, Highlander and other models can also see their shadows on Lifan's various models. In 2012, Lifan's overall sales have exceeded 180,000 units, and the sales volume exported to Russia has reached 20,000 units.
Due to the "fraudulent compensation" sales fell sharply, the annual loss was 4.6 billion
To say why many car companies have thundered or even gone bankrupt in recent years, one of the reasons is excessive imitation, and another reason is the development of new energy vehicles. Over the years, China has made great efforts to develop new energy vehicles and introduced many subsidy policies, at the same time, barbaric development and fraudulent compensation have also followed.
In the second year of Tesla's entry into China, Lifan launched six new energy vehicles, but there are 4 low-speed electric vehicles in these six cars, and the old man we usually see is not good, the reason why Lifan will launch so many models, the biggest driving force is undoubtedly the state's financial subsidies, but soon Lifan was disqualified because the actual number of production and the number of declarations did not match, and the next year its paper sales data of new energy vehicles fell by 62%.
In the new energy vehicle, which is the outlet of many enterprises to follow, Lifan can be said to have lost a mess. And in the years of development, Lifan has not accumulated too much technology, and the quality of traditional fuel vehicles is also criticized. Since 2012, Lifan Motors has sold more than 100,000 units for five consecutive years, but in 2018, consumers can no longer stand the quality problems of Lifan Motors, and in 2018 and 2019, Lifan's sales have plummeted, with 58,200 units and 13,200 units, respectively, while the loss is as high as 4.692 billion yuan.
The subsidiary sold itself ideally, and Geely became the controlling shareholder
Years of wrong decisions and huge mistakes between the moments have plunged Lifan, a company with more than ten years of car manufacturing history, into a huge financial crisis. Some people even broke out that Yin Mingshan's son Yin Xidi sold his favorite Bugatti Veyron to fill in the hole. However, although the price of this luxury car is as high as tens of millions, it is still not enough to make up for the holes in the sail, and if you want to survive, Yin Mingshan wants to sell more than just these playthings.
For example, in 2018, Lifan sold its subsidiary to Ideal for 650 million yuan, of course, this is not because the subsidiary has many advanced technologies, but because it has the ideal and most needs to build cars. Perhaps Yin Mingshan did not expect that he had scratched his head in order to build a car, and now he was selling a car to make a realization in order to repay his debt.
In addition to the subsidiary's sell-out, Lifan also sold its passenger car production base for 3.32 billion yuan. And since then, Geely's investment enterprises have become the controlling shareholders of Lifan, and the CEO of Geely Technology Group has served as the chairman of Lifan, which also means that Geely has entered the main sail. In this way, the original Lifan has been dismembered through the sale of various assets.
But even with the support of Jili now, it still takes time for Lifan to turn over the salted fish. Not long ago, Lifan announced this year's production and sales, respectively, 329 and 1902 vehicles, such a dismal data, and the newly established new energy vehicle companies must be out of line. With Lifan's previous reputation, if Geely does not help, Presumably few consumers will choose this brand in the future.