Ranger Cars has told a story of nearly 8 years of car building, and may be officially concluded in a publicly disclosed court document.
On February 9, the Wuxing District People's Court of Huzhou City published a civil judgment entitled "First Instance Civil Order on the Dispute over the Construction Supervision Contract of Shanghai Ranger Automobile Co., Ltd. such as Zhejiang Engineering Construction Management Co., Ltd., Ranger Automobile Zhejiang Co., Ltd." on the China Judgment Documents Website.
Among them, in this judgment document, it is written that the Huzhou factory project, which was originally started in late 2018, has been unable to start normally due to financial problems; at the same time, in November 2019, after the ranger automobile carried out a substantial reduction in the registered capital, it did not inform the relevant creditors, thus depriving the creditors of the right to claim debt repayment or provide guarantees from Ranger Automobile.
It is worth mentioning that in January this year, there were media reports that Wei Jun, chairman of Ranger Motors, had been frozen for 45 million yuan of equity, and there were negative news such as arrears of employee wages, coupled with the fact that the self-built factory was rotten, the mass production was "stillborn", and under the debt, the Internet car-making company that had been born since 2015 seemed to be about to move towards the end.
"Ranger Cars has not officially declared bankruptcy for a day, and the ending may still be variable. In the follow-up, this situation is likely to be either acquired or operated by new investors. A former Ranger Cars employee said to Kung Fu Cars.
In fact, at a time when the competition for new energy vehicles in China is becoming more and more fierce, the "forerunner" of Ranger Motors has undoubtedly missed the opportunity for its own development and growth.
However, Kung Fu Automobile saw that whether it was Shanghai Ranger Automobile Co., Ltd. or its two branches in Zhejiang and Shanxi, its legal person had been replaced by Wei Jun to Wei Gong imitation. From the public information, although we cannot know the relationship between these two people, it is certain that Wei Jun seems to be able to "safely withdraw" from the series of storms involved in the Ranger car.
(1) 5 years can not build a car, what did Wei Jun do?
In July 2015, the first Ranger electric car with the concept of "Internet car" officially appeared in front of the public. In that era of entrepreneurs crazy financing, its founder Huang Xiuyuan led a team of 50 people to build the "Ranger X" in 16 months, which is known as a high-performance electric vehicle comparable to Tesla Model S.
The story behind I believe everyone knows, that follow-up was named "PPT car originator" of the conference, immediately attracted a lot of criticism, Ranger Car for a while to the moment to the point of life and death.
Fortunately, just when Ranger Motors was in turmoil, in October 2015, Wei Jun, then chairman of Xituo Industrial Group, appeared in front of Huang Xiuyuan with the attitude of "white knight", not only choosing to acquire nearly 90% of the equity of Ranger Motors, but also bringing technology and resources to Rangers.
Public information shows that wei Jun was the chairman of a company called Xituo Industrial Group before taking over ranger cars. In Wei Jun's view, Xituo's previous experience in focusing on the three major areas of bio-natural gas, power grid construction and industrial automation will be able to further empower Ranger cars, and its government customer resources accumulated over the years can also provide assistance for Ranger cars' production qualification applications.
Of course, Wei Jun's greatest interest in the Ranger also stems from his love for performance cars. It is reported that in addition to tobacco and tea, he loves performance cars the most, and he is also one of the earliest Tesla owners in Chinese mainland.
After taking over ranger cars in an all-round way, Wei Jun, in addition to re-optimizing the company's personnel structure and establishing a supply chain, also specially began to build a capital structure, declaring that it would prepare for Ranger's future IPO.
At the end of March 2018, Ranger announced the completion of a $5 billion Series B round of financing and plans to complete a $500 million or equivalent RMB financing by October 2018.
Wei Jun, who was holding billions of cash in his hand at the time, was full of confidence in the mass production of Ranger X: "This may be the largest financing provided by a single capital party by a new car manufacturer so far." He also specifically pointed out: "This money is enough for ranger X to achieve mass production." ”
In fact, Wei Jun had always stressed to the outside world at that time that it was his core job to promote the Ranger to achieve mass production within 5 years as soon as possible. However, as of 2020, when the deadline of its "five-year covenant" has reached, the outside world has not really seen a "Ranger X" that can run on the road.
As a result, all the "grand plans" that Wei Jun said earlier now seem more like one "big cake" after another for investors to see.
Whether it is announcing the construction of a super factory in Huzhou, or opening up the supply chain, to a series of high-profile plans such as follow-up financing and channel transportation management, they have disappeared with the failure of mass production.
"Looking back now, even if you build your own factory, the first batch of products should also go to OEM cooperation, so that at least mass-produced models can be listed early to verify the market." The former employee of the above-mentioned Ranger Car lamented to the Kung Fu Car.
In the employee's opinion, if the Ranger specialized in SUVs instead of cars in the early days, it might have run out very early, after all, Weilai's cars only began to be launched last year.
"Secondly, (Ranger X) itself has a higher model positioning, resulting in a long development cycle and high cost, and also brings a lot of pressure to the later financing, missing a lot of opportunities, and in 19 years, the market is not optimistic about the new forces, and many decisions are conservative." He continued.
(2) A ranger who is frequently prosecuted, wei jun can "retreat from the whole body"?
Judging from Wei Jun's previous entrepreneurial experience, he should be a person with excellent business acumen.
The media publicly reported that as early as when he was in junior high school, Wei Jun began to follow his father to start modifying motorcycles to sell; he learned to read stocks in high school, and earned the first pot of gold for himself before college.
Later, Wei Jun, a graduate of Nankai University, joined Tsinghua Unigroup and, as the youngest member of the team, in less than a year, he achieved the first ownership rate in the southern Beijing market.
Later, Wei Jun single-handedly founded Xituo, and by 2015, the company's turnover had exceeded 500 million.
To this end, before the Ranger, we can see that Wei Jun's career can be described as smooth sailing, and he is also a career maniac who is keen on entrepreneurship.
In the process of operating Ranger cars, we can also see that this entrepreneur who has never had experience in automobile manufacturing before, the "ambition" continues to expand.
This can be seen in the Huzhou Gigafactory project, which has a total investment of 11.5 billion yuan. At that time, Weijun not only planned to build the Huzhou factory into a ranger car intelligent manufacturing base, but also a theme tourism destination for the world. It is reported that this project was still one of the major industrial projects in Zhejiang Province at that time.
In addition, Wei Jun has also carried out a "financial innovation" approach to new companies such as Ranger, introducing supply chain finance into the supplier system of Ranger Motors in an attempt to dispel suppliers' doubts about new companies such as Ranger.
According to media reports at the time, Ranger would first mortgage the future production car to supply chain finance, which would pay part of the payment to the supplier in advance. Subsequently, the supplier produces and delivers parts in response to the needs of ranger cars. Finally, ranger pays the final payment as soon as the product is accepted.
"The most important thing in working with suppliers is to build trust. Trust is not illusory, but to bring tangible benefits to all partners. Wei Jun said at that time.
However, the xia car that has been "difficult to give birth" to later is obviously the "bane" who took the lead in breaking this trust.
According to the above-mentioned former employee of Ranger Motors to Kung Fu Motors, there are also many internal statements about why Rangers have raised billions of dollars and cannot achieve mass production. "It is said that some of them did not spend it later, and they were returned to investors, because part of the financing was for mass production, but there was no mass production, so the funds were returned."
Today, there are numerous reports that Ranger Motors has been sued by suppliers for arrears of payments. Moreover, in 2020 and 2021, the Wuxing District People's Court of Huzhou City, which accepted these lawsuits, could not even directly serve legal documents on the defendant's Ranger Car side, and could only convey the information of these cases to Ranger Cars by announcing them for 60 days.
Kung Fu Auto also saw that in the Dispute disclosed by the court on February 9 that the Huzhou factory could not start work due to arrears, Ranger Motors was also absent from the trial.
What makes these prosecutors even more helpless is that Ranger Motors' "quiet" capital reduction and change of legal person in January 2020 have made it more difficult for them to collect debts.
The verdict reads: "... In this case, Ranger Automobile Zhejiang Co., Ltd.'s debt to the plaintiff had been formed before the capital reduction, and Ranger Automobile Zhejiang Co., Ltd., knowing that the plaintiff was its creditor, only published the capital reduction announcement in the newspaper, failed to provide evidence to prove that the plaintiff was notified of the capital reduction, and its capital reduction violated the above provisions, causing the plaintiff to lose the right to require the debtor to repay the debt or provide security. ”
In January 2020, Wei Jun stepped down as the legal representative of Shanghai Ranger Automobile Co., Ltd., the parent company of Ranger Motors, and was replaced by Wei Gongfang.
Kung Fu Auto noted that although there is no information to point out the relationship between the two people, Wei Gong seems to be a bit "standing up" at this time. Because after 2020, the successive lawsuits and related punishment regulations of Ranger Motors have fallen on the new legal person. Wei Jun, on the other hand, was only frozen 45 million shares.
"Wei Jun's ability and vision are still good, as far as I know, he is still in the industry." The above-mentioned former employee said this about Kung Fu Auto.
(3) Kung Fu shooting
In fact, there are not a few companies like Ranger Cars that burn out billions or even tens of billions of dollars and still can't build a car.
It is only when we take Wei Jun, the "white knight" of the Ranger car at that time, as the perspective, to re-examine the rise and fall of the Ranger car, or more can arouse the "awe" of a large number of cross-border car manufacturers to the automotive industry.
Although we still seem to be unable to draw a definitive conclusion as to whether the Ranger car has reached the end, it is certain that such a "story" is no longer needed on the track of China's new energy vehicles.