Text: Zheng Driving, Tan Qing said AI editor-in-chief
"Li Shufu was still good to me, equivalent to my master, and before starting a business, he taught us a lot of grounded methods." Shen Hui, the founder of WM Motors, who helped Geely complete the acquisition of Volvo, said in an interview.
In the face of this "apprentice", in 2018, when the Reporter of Caijing and Li Shufu talked about its public welfare undertakings in Shanghai and talked about Shen Hui, the old department, Li Shufu had a sudden change in his face and waved his hand to end the conversation.
Not only that, in 2019, Geely sued four companies under WM Motor for "infringing trade secrets", saying that WM copied its models and filed a sky-high claim of 2.1 billion yuan, which shocked the industry for a while.
Time pulls back to the present.
At the beginning of each month, it is often the moment when many new forces of the head compete to show off the sales muscles, Wei Xiaoli, Zero Run, Extreme Kr and other car companies, on the first day of the New Year, they eagerly announced the sales in January, but the Lantern Festival was digested and excluded, as of press time, Weima still has not released the sales data for January this year.
This veteran of the new electric car force, to this day, can he still eat?
Sales: How long will weima's bullets fly?
The failure to actively disclose last month's sales at the beginning of this month seems to have laid a hidden worry for WM's sales in the beginning of the year. However, compared with the delusion, it seems to be a more appropriate way to find out how the vitality of WM is today from the sales of WM in the past.
Pacific Auto data shows that in 2021, WM Motor sold a total of 44,157 cars, of which WM EX5 and WM E.5 are well-deserved main forces, contributing more than 80% of WM's annual sales.
However, we look at two phenomena separately, on the one hand, ex5 and E.5, which are the main sales force of WM in 2021, have shown a certain degree of downward trend since the second half of last year.
Compared with the sales volume of 3373 in July 2021, ex5 only sold 1484 units in December; E.5 began to decline three times from 3171 sales in October last year, and sales in December were already 2227.
On the other hand, we can see from the official website of WM Motors that the EX5 and E.5 models are placed under the column of "large customer sales", and therefore, compared with opponents such as Weilai and Ideal, WM Motors' sales in the C-end market can account for the overall sales volume, and it is worth marking a question mark at present.
In addition, just like the large landslide in the delivery volume of Weilai in October last year, Weilai said that it was mainly because of the renovation and upgrading of the factory. With the official unveiling of the new M7 of WM in October last year, facing the task of mass production and listing this year, WM now objectively has the possibility of demand for factory production line reconstruction.
Under the superposition of many factors, WM's January delivery volume may not be good. However, no matter how many possibilities there are, when the official sales data is not released, as a viewer, we can only guess that weima's bullets may be worth flying for a while.
Tan Qing said that AI believes that although EX5 and E.5 are becoming less moving, and the EX6 that has tried to lead WM into the B-class SUV market will only sell 110 units in 2021, there are still two crucial bullets in WM's hands, namely WM W6 and M7.
WM W6 in 2021 annual sales of only less than 8,000, want to revitalize the WM brand is obviously not enough, but from the data is not difficult to find that its sales in the second half of the year has been steadily rising, 2022 still has room for imagination. Although the WM M7 is still not on the market, as the first product of its Master series, it is also worthy of our expectations.
After WM received 10 billion yuan of financing from the D round last year, Shen Hui said in an internal email: Has WM ever died? Did Weima come alive? Shen Hui gave the answers to no, he used the reason of "zero-sum game" to deny the former, and "the gap with Tesla is all-round" to deny the latter.
This may be just like the grain and grass are still sufficient, but it is fading the dilemma of weima in the past glory, so what are the grass gray snake lines that have long been buried in weima's script, so that weima has come to this day? We might as well analyze it further.
Genes: The Opening Strategy and Tesla's Special Path
When we analyze the success of Tesla and Wei Xiaoli today, a key factor that is likely to be mentioned is that they both entered the market from mid-to-high-end products in the early stage, gained a firm foothold and then further explored new markets.
On the other hand, Weima, but it seems that it has always been a company that opposes the new forces, in the early stage of product planning, has been wandering in the mass market, and its initial positioning seems to be more like becoming the leader of the mass new energy vehicle market.
Now we look back at the early years of competition of new forces, in addition to Weima, most of the new forces in the low-end market have been in the battlefield at that time, but Weima can survive and gradually grow, which is not unrelated to its entrepreneurial genes.
In the initial team lineup of WM Motors, from founder Shen Hui to COO Xu Huanxin, CFO Zhang Ran, Vice President of Brand Strategy Lu Bin, as well as design director Sun Zhen and product planning director Lin Shihan, all have rich traditional car company resumes and project achievements.
Different from Wei Xiaoli's initial car manufacturing OEM or the transformation of existing factories, WM Automobile personally built a factory after obtaining car-making qualifications through "backdoor" Zhongshun Automobile and Dalian Huanghai Automobile in the early days.
With the blessing of such a traditional car company veteran team, we can see that WM Motors insisted on a differentiated play with Tesla in the early days, which is actually not unreasonable.
In that year, Geely, BYD and other independent brands faced the joint ventures and imported car companies occupying the high-end market, and the successful experience was to enter from the low-end market and stand firm in their market share step by step in the market segment.
Perhaps what really makes WM brilliant is its differentiated entry from the mass market in the early stage, which reproduces the history of independent car companies challenging joint venture car companies, but Tan Qing said that AI believes that the reason why today's WM seems to be going downhill may not be unrelated to this.
Tencent Periscope mentioned in the article "New Car Crossing the Line of Life and Death" that an investor who switched to Xiaopeng Automobile had a view of Weima: lack of Internet genes.
Although WM Motors, as one of the few regular army teams in the barbaric growth period of new energy vehicles, can defeat a large number of naked swimmers of that year, as the investor said, the changes in the automobile industry have made the light contained in the early days of WM dim in recent years, and there is an inevitability of chance.
Today's market results are proving to us that both Tesla and Wei Xiaoli are very different from the traditional car companies that once were.
Tan Qing said that AI believes that in recent years, WM's market share has been gradually diluted, mainly because two hidden dangers that have long been buried in WM's genes have begun to stand out: one is being attacked by a large number of opponents from the market front and back, and the early strategic potential is gradually weakened; second, the lack of weima's intelligent moat has always been.
In terms of the market, WM relied on the EX5 model to win the single model title many times in the early stage, which is actually not too surprising. The endurance that is not shy, the intelligent blessing of Baidu APOLLO, and the price of 100,000-200,000 files are indeed fully competitive from the perspective of that year.
However, today, once BBA is willing to follow the steps in their own market, but Tesla is obviously not satisfied with this, not only its Model 3 in the past few years has carried out a number of tear-jerking price reductions, entrenched in the mass market players, Nezha, zero run and other new strong opponents are constantly exploring the price, BYD, Great Wall and other independent car companies have also been in recent years with a large number of new models to impact the ex5 relatively blue ocean mass electric vehicle market.
On the other hand, although WM is an early mass-market electric vehicle brand, it is clear that under the lack of Internet genes, it seems that it has not established its own intelligent moat for many years.
Perhaps it is precisely because of the lack of this gene that since 2017, WM has successively accepted cooperation with Baidu in autonomous driving.
Baidu's automatic driving technology supported to a certain extent to provide WM with objective product advantages in that year, but Baidu left a paper non-compete clause in that year, restricting WM's independent research and development of automatic driving technology, and also left a time bomb for it. This makes today's intelligent climbing of Weima more like dancing in shackles.
In general, on the issue of corporate genes, perhaps WM's opening strategy has laid a lot of hidden dangers for its future development, and its market positioning and product planning over the years are also exacerbating the wandering of the era of WM electrification.
Market: the positioning is still worrying, where does Weima want to return?
WM's early market positioning and product planning for EX5 is understandable, after all, it has covered WM with glory in a specific period.
However, in the automotive field, no one dares to believe the story of a trick that is fresh and eating everywhere, even with the ideal of a car to attack the city, and now the new car X01 is about to be released.
"We hope the W6 can be another blockbuster." It is not difficult to see from Shen Hui's high hopes for W6 that in the face of the INCREASINGly weak and even retrogressive EX5, WM is in urgent need of a new explosive product to carry the brand banner.
"Different from the car sea tactics of some traditional car companies. Relying on one station to stabilize one station, and then using another or several cars to explore new markets, is a more common way of playing by new forces at present. Auto industry analyst Liu Wei (pseudonym) told us, "This is actually a bit like a game of grabbing a parking space, no matter how you play, but at least you have to grab a parking space to not get out." ”
"Tesla's Model S or Roadster, its biggest contribution is actually to help Model 3 build an exclusive parking space." A technology pioneer car company with a million-dollar price suddenly launched a car with a price of 200,000 gears, which was undoubtedly a devastating blow to other competitors. ”
As he said, we look at the "car grab" battle of zero-run cars that have approached the sales of 10,000 clubs in January this year, but in fact, contrary to Weima, the early development of zero-run was not smooth.
The first S01 of the zero-run car, the price of 10.99-14.99 million after subsidies, is destined to show its skills in the sinking market, but the sneaky body, coupe shape, and the pioneering futurism of the design are incompatible with the sinking market.
The result is not surprising, in 2019, the zero-run S01 only sold about 1,000 units in the whole year, and the dismal sales volume was mainly because of the separation between its market, price and product positioning.
However, the rapid adjustment of the strategy of zero run seems to be an important factor in its ability to start today to impact the new forces' monthly sales of 10,000 clubs. After successfully seizing the market for micro-electric vehicles, the zero-run T03 undoubtedly occupies a parking space for its brand in the new power market, and the T03 accounts for nearly 90% of the sales of zero-run cars in 2021.
We cannot deny that zero-run only relies on a mini car to have follow-up development risks in many aspects such as profitability and technical moats, but being able to occupy its first parking space in the market is often the foundation for the continued development of new forces.
Therefore, the "first parking space" is the top priority of the new forces.
Let's look at WM, as mentioned earlier, the W6 and M7 models are expected to become two bullets to help them turn over. Then for WM, the biggest challenge today is obvious, that is, how to ensure that the W6 and M7, which have high hopes, can keep the EX5's current precarious "parking space".
Let's look at the product layout of WM, the current highest price of WM EX6 has reached 279,900, and the highest price of WM W6 has reached 259,800.
WM's upcoming M7, although the price has not yet been announced, but the first product of the Master series, 32 sensors, three lidars, 1016TOPS hashrate NVIDIA chips, etc., are destined to be priced not too low.
It is not difficult to find that after ex5, WM's product planning in recent years has been committed to entering the mid-range market. In particular, the upcoming M7 seems to be hoping to seize the market share of some Tesla Model 3, Xiaopeng P7, and even THE ET5 models that Weilai has released.
Tan Qing said that AI believes that WM's continuous exploration of product planning will gradually dilute the market advantages accumulated by EX5 to a certain extent.
After all, EX5 has laid a foundation for WM, but also for the brand's market positioning made a preliminary division, with the growth of EX5 today more and more sluggish, if the future W6, M7 and other models can not complete the new mission, then WM's road may become narrower and narrower.
Just like in the supermarket field, once Yonghui made initial achievements in the mass market, constantly explored new markets with super species, and after the blind expansion ushered in a big rout, its current stock price has fallen from a high of nearly 11 yuan in 2020 to less than 4 yuan today.
However, from an optimistic point of view, Tianyancha APP information shows that in the fourth quarter of last year, WM Motors completed two rounds of financing of D+ and D++ in succession, plus the 10 billion YUAN D round of financing in 2020, these three rounds of financing have provided nearly 13 billion yuan of capital reserves for WM, not only that, WM also began to put the IPO on the agenda last year, and the rest of the grain should be sufficient.
Perhaps this year, for competitors such as Tesla, Xiaopeng and Weilai, whose sales are still solid and at the top, it is not a big problem to add another enemy to the crowded subdivision track.
But the biggest difference at present is that he has not yet found his own "parking space", and under many unpredictable market and industry trends, there is only one battle in the future.
Write at the end:
To use a less appropriate metaphor, if the growth of Weima is like the three-act structure of a script, then with the passage of time, we seem to be getting closer and closer to the junction of the script and the curtain of Weima, and a large number of grass gray snake lines buried by the previous entrepreneurial genes and market positioning have struck it with their teeth and claws.
For the audience in front of the curtain, tired of watching too many Hollywood-style endings, perhaps everyone is looking forward to seeing the scene of Weima, which can usher in an O'Henry-like reversal.
However, in the face of the surging attacks of various players, can the veteran Weima still use the M7 that will come out to kill a dawn?
The answer can only be left to time and the market.