"I don't think BMW, Mercedes-Benz are the eternal ceiling, in this new world, anyone has a chance." These words come from Ding Lei, founder, chairman and CEO of Huaren Express Gaohe Automobile.
From the beginning, he targeted the electric vehicle market of more than 600,000 yuan, which was considered a crazy move by many people. But the track that seems difficult to break through, under the leadership of Ding Lei, Gaohe Automobile has walked out of the "icebreaker" feeling from the "death squad".
As everyone knows, challenging the ceiling of Chinese luxury brands is only a small goal in Ding Lei's heart, and he thinks that he can see farther than others, and has chosen a more imaginative track - covering the smart travel of car-road-city.
What makes Ding Lei dare to build the most expensive electric car in China, and can also become the luxury pure tram sales champion? Can a single company burn out the ultimate creativity and become the fulcrum of the huge vision of "car-road-city"? On the eve of the Year of the Tiger in 2022, Senior Vice President of Autohome traveled to Talk to Ding Lei, trying to restore the true portrayal of his heart and the business logic of the entire Chinese Express.
"Ask the Boss" is a high-end dialogue column focusing on well-known entrepreneurs in the automotive industry, with the chairman and core management of Autohome interviewing the leaders of the automotive industry, discussing common problems in the industry, depicting the direction of industry transformation, and telling the mental journey of entrepreneurs. This issue is led by Zhou You, senior vice president of Autohome, in conversation with Ding Lei, founder, chairman and CEO of Huaren Express Gaohe Automobile.
Characters like "life templates": impeccable and unreal?
If the product can see the personality of the founder, then the high-end HiPhi X, priced at up to 800,000 yuan, it is easy for the outside world to think that Ding Lei is an entrepreneur who can speak eloquently and has a flamboyant personality. But hidden behind this high-profile product, he is rational and rigorous, diligent and self-disciplined in his bones.
Ding Lei, who has entered the age of flower armor, looks only in his early 40s. On weekdays, he always wears a dark gray suit with a white shirt underneath, from the corner of the coat to the hair, to the speed of speech, to the look, as if he has been ironed, meticulously. According to a number of people around Ding Lei, "He never lost his temper, not once." ”
Energetic, he has moved his bed to his latest office in a race against time. For his schedule, people around him have always felt that it is a mystery. "I received a message from Ding Lei at 1:30 a.m., and I replied at 5:30 a.m., but I didn't expect him to reply with a 'good' word in seconds."
Guo Tiefu, senior director of marketing and public communications at Gaohe Automobile, described Ding Lei as saying that he can do everything or talk.
This may have something to do with his experience and background since childhood.
When Ding Lei was a student, he often followed his fathers in the summer vacation, and in that era, when most children could only write on the small bench in the alley, Ding Lei had an "independent office" on a high-rise building to write homework, and he could look up at the panorama of the Bund in Shanghai.
From a privileged family and excellent learning, he graduated from Fudan University in 1988 with a major in solid state physics, and the people who were admitted to this major that year were even rarer than pandas.
Unlike the founders of many new car-making forces in China, Ding Lei has completely experienced the process of China's reform and opening up in the past 40 years, participated in and witnessed the era of China's automobile industry from scratch to rapid rise in the past 30 years.
He promoted Santana's domestic production, participated in the creation of Shanghai General Motors and launched more than 20 new cars during his time at the helm of Shanghai GM, with cumulative sales of nearly 4 million units in six years. According to employees at the time, during the 2008 financial crisis, GM's global CEO had to call Ding Lei almost every day to calculate whether China's sales data could break through one million to ensure that the group could not carry it.
Such a character, like a "life template", is almost unreal. This innate sense of superiority is also destined for Ding Lei to cherish his feathers extremely.
"Compared with Li Bin and Li Xiang, who dare to say it, Ding Lei suffers losses in the current Internet era." In Guo Tiefu's view, such a person will have a distance in the hearts of the public, but Ding Lei has seen life and the world more "lightly" and more "openly".
He is accustomed to walking at his own pace, just like his Scorpio characteristics, with a dim sum in his bones, but what he wants will be obtained through his own way.
In this market with mixed opinions, Ding Lei has torn a hole in the high-end luxury market.
"What is the sentence you most want to say to Gaohe users?" In the whole dialogue session, Ding Lei, who has seen the world, answers other questions like a stream, can think for a long time on this quick question and answer, and even fall into a slightly "awkward" NG recording scene on the spot.
In front of the user, Ding Lei, who is "proud and arrogant", behaves like a young teenager who has just confessed. Choked up many times, he did not expect that the user's love for the Gaohe brand has far exceeded the original expectations.
This introverted science man finally only used the three simple words of "I thank you", "I admire you", and "I love you", sincerely and cautiously expressing his feelings for users.
Water to water: is it easy to build a car?
Over the years, Ding Lei has not spoken much to the media, and the number of appearances has been countless. On the Weibo social platform, Ding Lei's most recent post is still stuck on August 11, 2020, when Gaohe's first production car will be launched.
He used the words "six roots pure, focused on the main line, not tempted" to describe himself at that time. "In the early days, we didn't want to be distracted, focus on the most important things, and concentrate on going ashore first."
Huaren Express was established in December 2017, when new car-making forces such as Weilai, Xiaopeng and Weima have successively launched their first mass production vehicles, and the delivery time has also been put on the agenda. Whether The belated Gaohe Automobile can get a piece of the pie in the new market situation is challenged.
In Ding Lei's view, the cars on the market do not have ideal products that can carry new transportation categories in the future, so Huaren Express has created a new category - from the perspective of scene definition design and software-defined cars, it is really a high-end luxury brand for the Chinese auto industry in the world.
At this moment, Ding Lei released almost all the contacts and resources in the industrial, political and economic circles for more than 30 years.
Multiple experiences also made Ding Lei appear confident about this entrepreneurship, and once regarded "building a car is an easy task." The reason is, "An experience like mine, if you're serious, even if you're a 'fool' will succeed, he is something in my profession." ”
Take supply chain construction, for example, which is a huge and complex difficulty for start-ups. After experiencing the chicken feathers of the new car, many suppliers at that time had some resistance to the new brand and were often reluctant to cooperate. But Ding Lei's experience has made Huaren Express smooth sailing from the establishment of the brand to the release of the first product, the listing to the delivery.
Chen Yudong, president of Bosch China, who has a greater influence in the industry, was the first to stand for Ding Lei.
It is reported that when Ding Lei visited Bosch, Chen Yudong gathered a number of director-level senior executives to hold a meeting, at that time he put down a sentence, "The matter of Huaren Express is as supportive as possible, you should cooperate with it, and the development will be developed." ”
Everyone knows that Bosch has a great right to speak in the industry, especially in the absence of cores in 2021, the CEOs of various car companies are "carrot squatting" at the entrance of Bosch China's Shanghai headquarters. Being able to be extra "cared for" by Bosch adds a lot of hidden advantages to Gaohe Automobile.
Mutual trust is the foundation, and under the leadership of Ding Lei, Huaren Express has also attracted a group of like-minded people. "We hope that through the development of the company, the young generation of Chinese engineers will stand on our shoulders and create a platform that can stand on the world stage, which is a small flame in our hearts." Ding Lei said with a determined look.
As for when the little flame in Ding Lei's heart was ignited? This goes back to a relationship between Ding Lei and Tesla.
In 2014, Ding Lei, who was then the head of the management committee of Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, almost contributed to Tesla's landing in China.
"At that time, the basic plan to introduce Tesla to Shanghai Pudong was done, I also inspected all its supply chains, and all the senior executives of Tesla above the senior vice president level have been to Shanghai, and I have talked to them." When Ding Lei recalled this experience, he could clearly feel his excitement, but there was a hint of regret in his excitement.
After about a year of contact between the two sides, Tesla's official reply to Ding Lei was that because Tesla was in the development stage at that time, in addition to sales, it would not consider expanding in China. If you want to build a factory in China, it will be five years later.
Although the cooperation was not completed, it is a pity, but Tesla's subversion of traditional technology has taken root in Ding Lei's heart.
An intellectual, who had been nourished by the history of the past 40 years, broke out of the original institutional life. After that, the world has known that Tesla Shanghai Lingang Super Factory landed 5 years later, and The Chinese Express led by Ding Lei won the battle in early 2021.
"This can be said to be a reincarnation, and the development of the industry will not happen until a certain stage." Ding Lei said while supporting his glasses, "Today, Gaohe can achieve such an achievement, I think it is also the result of natural success." ”
Nightly "nightclub": car building kung fu outside the car?
Although Ding Lei is not leaky in his style of behavior, he is still a person who loves to toss and adventure in his bones, which complements the "works" he has created.
Gaohe clearly positioned the brand as "China's most high-end electric vehicle brand", with the connotation of technology luxury. When Ding Lei unveiled The Gaohe HiPhi 1, The first mass-produced stereotyped car of Gaohe Automobile, the futuristic design and playful electric wing extension door won enough attention from users.
However, there are also various doubts such as "PPT car building, painting big cakes, and circle money" that follow. To this day, many people do not understand, why Gaohe can "swim ashore in one breath"?
Unlike those car companies that failed to gain market recognition, had to be delisted, Gaohe HiPhi X has maintained steady growth since it began mass production deliveries in May 2021, even surpassing the Porsche Taycan. In January 2022, The HiPhi X officially completed the important milestone of the 5,000th vehicle off the production line.
BMW's global designers once organized a group to come to the Gaohe booth at the auto show, and the sentence he left at that time made the entire Gaohe team excited - "This electric door, this headlight, it's crazy." If in the BMW Group, such an idea will be erased in the early stages, and I did not expect that there is a brand in China that can land it. ”
Just like Ding Lei's label of "beating yourself in the last second", Gaohe got rid of the old way of defining the car from hardware functions such as wheelbase, car height, acceleration, power, and mileage. "At the product definition stage, I told the team that we were going to make a product that could evolve and define the design in terms of scenarios."
"In the past, when I was CEO, I sold more than 4 million cars, but the real communication with users began in 2021." Ding Lei couldn't help but sigh, "I've built a car for most of my life, and I actually built a car outside the car." ”
The car is no longer a simple engineering product, but more of a combination of machinery, electronics, Internet, artificial intelligence, communications and so on.
Unlike dealers in the past who sold cars as commodities, Ding Lei's greater feeling now is to share his works with users, and at the same time, he needs to co-create brands with users.
It is reported that Every night at seven o'clock in the evening, Huaren Express has a must-have project - "nightclub", that is, a director-level management meeting, specifically to solve various problems raised by users. At this point, the team is tormented, but also thankful that users can make so many suggestions.
As Ding Lei said, Gaohe's positioning is exploration, freedom and creation. "When HiPhi X left the factory, there were only 10 coffee shows, and this year we have created many new scenes with users, such as mobile cafes, brides driving, etc., and now it has become 30 coffee shows, and each scene will continue to evolve in the future."
As for why car owners continue to create energy, and Gaohe can really land these ideas? This is inseparable from Gaohe's H-SOA superbody electrical and electronic architecture, of which 307 actuators can be redefined, which makes the opportunity for users to create scenarios mature.
In fact, each actuator needs 1-2 chips behind the support, the amount of chips alone, Gaohe each production of a car is equivalent to 4-5 sets of friends, 10 sets of traditional cars.
If it were not for the "lack of core tide" affecting the delivery cycle of Gaohe Automobile, the report card of Gaohe in 2021 may be more eye-catching.
For the monthly sales of more than 500 units, Ding Lei often said, "1 1 carat diamond is worth much more than 2 half carat diamonds", the average price of Gaohe's car is 700,000 yuan, if converted into 70,000 yuan of cars, it is equivalent to selling more than 5,000 units per month.
However, for the results in 2021, Ding Lei modestly said that "further efforts are needed to achieve initial results." At present, the price of more than 500,000 cars, the market ownership is about 1.2 million units, if 30% of the users are converted into electric vehicles, it will be nearly 400,000 units, in the face of such a large market, Gaohe should also achieve better results.
In fact, Gaohe's product strategy is very similar to Tesla's.
Similar to Tesla Model X and Model S, Gaohe has also launched a dual flagship strategy, and the second production car, The HiPhi Z, will officially begin deliveries in the fourth quarter of this year.
『HiPhi Z》
Ding Lei introduced that unlike the market segment where HiPhi X is located, HiPhi Z is built for a group of people who have a burning vision for the future in their hearts and at the same time represent their own pursuit. This is similar to the car that can travel through time in Ding Lei's favorite movie, "Back to the Future".
This is the first step in the strategy of Gaohe Automobile, and Ding Lei understands in his heart that in order to gain a firm foothold in the market, he must launch a model that can run volume in the follow-up, and continue to return blood to the brand.
"If we establish the high-end brand image through HiPhiX and HiPhiZ, the third model will be lowered to the high-end range of 300,000-500,000 yuan, then we may soon reach the scale of 10,000 units per month." Ding Lei revealed.
"The main purpose of sinking is to provide users with suitable products, rather than just looking at the price, but to consider what products users need in this market segment and this affordability."
The market will see that even if Gaohe initially cuts into an unmanned track, but finally in the price range and model positioning, it will gradually intersect, and a stirring battle will quietly come. Can Gaohe's follow-up products find their own differentiation and gradually penetrate the market?
Take one step and look at three steps: Why is China Express "not bad money"?
It is said that where the pattern of an enterprise and the helmsman is, the ceiling of the enterprise is where it is.
In fact, Gaohe Automobile is just a pawn of the entire Chinese Express, and Ding Lei, who likes to play Go, has placed a larger chess game in the smart city and smart transportation.
In 2018, Huaren Express took the lead in proposing the "three wisdoms" strategy. In Ding Lei's view, the broader and more subversive industrial prospects are based on intelligent electric vehicles, gradually moving towards the layout and operation of smart transportation, and further building smart cities through interconnection to achieve a cleaner, more efficient and comfortable travel life in the future.
This idea, at that time to the outside world's first impression still has too many "can't understand" component.
Whether it is a traditional car company or a new car-making force, most of them propose to transform from automobile manufacturers to mobile travel service providers, and are committed to creating future-oriented intelligent cars, mainly focusing on bicycle intelligence. At present, those actively participating in the construction of smart cities are technology giants such as Ali and Tencent, and there are few auto companies.
When people take autonomous driving as the ultimate goal, they often ignore a question: install a sufficient number of lidar and higher performance chips on the car, and automatic driving will really arrive? In Ding Lei's view, this belongs to "building a car behind closed doors"
"Without vehicle-to-road coordination, I wouldn't trust myself to autopilot." When many car executives believe that vehicle-road collaboration is a pseudo-proposition, Ding Lei clearly gave his attitude and systematically wanted to open up the links between traffic and the city.
In addition to the vehicle itself, the synergy between the car and the road, the synergy between the car and the city, and the extended data flow and IoT opportunities should be considered.
This is indeed a forward-looking business story, and it is not something that a company can accomplish independently. Ding Lei believes that a great ideal should actually be placed in a time and space perspective, if placed in the perspective of 200 years, the future city should not be "car road city" open. Although this business cannot be done by a single enterprise, can a company coordinate the resources of the whole society to promote such a concept.
Ding Lei believes that the synergy of roads and cars is very easy to commercialize, "We are not going to build cities and roads, nor are we going to build equipment hardware, what we are doing is software integration, using technology to coordinate cars, roads and cities, through these three originally very isolated units." ”
For example, Huaren Express has created a smart road in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, which can simulate various scenarios of autonomous vehicle-road collaboration, and other brand automobile industries can also drive on this road in the future, but to meet the communication consistency between vehicles, these vehicles can be equipped with Huaren Express's OBU on-board communication terminal to achieve the V2X function of the vehicle.
In the "Smart Transportation" link, the HVP automatic off-line system of Huaren Express passed the acceptance of the "MEC+C-V2X Fusion Test Bed Project" in July 2021. Through the vehicle-road collaborative automatic driving technology independently developed by Gaohe Automobile, the project realizes the automatic dis-production line and automatic parking of production line vehicles for the first time in the world, and the vehicle is automatically driven from the production line to the designated shipping area after the production line is launched, and can realize intelligent parking lots such as unmanned warehouse removal and unmanned car pick-up.
"The biggest obstacle now is that the national standards and norms have not yet come out." Ding Lei said frankly. Vehicle-road collaboration requires different industries to be in step, and there are many difficulties in actual operation, and different industries and enterprises are competing to be standard setters, involving the right to speak game.
In fact, the road taken by The Chinese Express led by Ding Lei is an extremely lonely track, which requires a bottomless pit of huge investment costs, whether in terms of funds, talents, supply chains, and sales, it is many times more complex than the Internet industry.
The outside world once lamented that Ding Lei single-handedly laid the label of "not bad money" for Chinese Express. These are inseparable from the investors standing behind Ding Lei, including informal and non-public capital raising by local governments, state-owned assets and even central enterprises. In addition, Ding Lei also blamed it on the housekeeping skills of Huaren Express - to alleviate basic consumption through efficient business management.
In the short term, Huaren Express will not fall into a financial crisis, but in the long run, once the speed of burning money, the speed of capital investment and output do not match, the grand strategy of Huaren Express will be difficult to sustain.
Ding Lei also responded positively to the possibility of listing: "Huaren Express does not avoid the capital market, but we do not list for the sake of listing, but hope to follow the laws of business. ”
"Any business must have a systematic plan, can not say that while doing, while looking for money, so that the mentality and action will go." In the whole interview session, Ding Lei was still more confident about the topic of funds and financing.
Write at the end:
On the day of the video recording, the Shanghai Operation Center of Huaren Express at No. 1339 Wanfang Road was officially opened. A small house number also hides Ding Lei's intention to build a car, No. 1339 represents "one life three, three life nine, nine life all things", just like the entire ecological pattern of Chinese Express. This is Ding Lei's lucky number to coordinate with the local government to "ask" for it.
With the vision of "China's super luxury car dream" and "changing the future travel of mankind", can the "one" represented by Gaohe Automobile slowly grow into "Zhilu" and "Zhicheng" like Ding Lei's vision, and finally form a big ecology, which is endless?
As a long-termist, Ding Lei believes that no one will give an answer, and only by extending the time can we get a definite answer in an uncertain world.