Recently, Yibin Kaiyi Automobile Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Kaiyi") and Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huawei") held a comprehensive cooperation agreement signing ceremony. According to the agreement, the two sides will establish a comprehensive partnership and fully open cooperation business in the digital transformation of enterprises and the development of a new generation of intelligent and connected vehicles.
At the same time, Kaiyi Automobile will use Huawei's superior capabilities to accelerate the construction of green smart factories to focus on the development direction of new energy vehicles.
However, retrospectively, Huawei's layout of Kaiyi began as early as 2020. It is reported that since 2020, Huawei and Yibin City have signed a series of cooperation agreements in the joint construction of the intelligent terminal Hongmeng industrial ecology, vehicle-road collaboration demonstration zone, Huawei ICT Academy, Yibin city intelligent body and other aspects.
In order to build a 100-billion-level high-end equipment manufacturing industry, Yibin has introduced enterprises such as Ningde Times and Kaiyi Automobile, and has set the goal of producing and selling 500,000 vehicles, 200GWh of power batteries, and an output value of 400 billion yuan in the next 5 years.
The Ningde era is still easy to say, but the current Kaiyi cannot support Yibin's ambition of producing and selling 500,000 vehicles.
According to public information, Kaiyi Automobile was established in 2014, and at the beginning of its establishment, Kaiyi Automobile was jointly registered and established by Anhui Jiangbei Development Co., Ltd., Chery Commercial Vehicle (Anhui) Co., Ltd. and Wuhu Construction Investment Co., Ltd. It is controlled by Chery Automobile Co., Ltd.
In the nearly 4 years since its establishment, Kaiyi has not come up with a dazzling achievement. Therefore, in 2018, Chery issued an announcement that at a price of 2.494 billion yuan, the equity transfer of 51% of its brand Kaiyi Automobile was taken over by Yibin Automobile Industry Development Investment Co., Ltd. (holding 50.5% of the shares) and Sichuan Yibin Pushhi Group Co., Ltd. (holding 0.5% of the shares, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wuliangye Group), and the company name was changed to Yibin Kaiyi Automobile Co., Ltd.
Nowadays, the information on the enterprise investigation shows that Yibin Automobile Industry Development Investment, Chery and Push Group hold 50.85%, 47.82% and 1.33% of the equity of Kaiyi respectively. Backed by Chery and the Sichuan Municipal Government, Kaiyi has sufficient funds, but it still has not ushered in its own era.
It is understood that Kaiyi has been increasing the construction of channel networks, as of October 2021, Kaiyi first-level network scale has signed a total of 228, operated 195, the total scale of service outlets 406, it is expected that in 2022, Kaiyi first-level network operation is expected to reach 260.
However, at present, the official website of Kaiyi only shows Xuandu, Xuanjie, Xuanjie Pro, Xuanjie ProEV, X3, E5 EV a total of 6 models, only the first 5 models on sale, and Kaiyi X3 also belongs to the chery Tiggo 3 rebranded model, and the Xuanjie is also highly similar to chery Tiggo 5X in terms of size and other aspects, and is known in the industry as the shell version of the Tiggo 5X.
With few products and no characteristics, the sales volume of Kaiyi naturally did not improve. According to the data, Kaiyi sold a total of 20,123 vehicles in 2021, down 34.04% year-on-year, and Kaiyi's main model Xuanjie sold a total of 11,527 new cars in 2021, down 47.07% year-on-year.
New energy may become the only hope for Kaiyi to break the situation.
In addition to the new SUV models Xuanjie Pro and Xuanjie Pro EV listed last year, Lu Lihua, vice president of Yibin Kaiyi Automobile Co., Ltd. and president of Kaiyi Automobile Research Institute, has also publicly stated that in the next 3-5 years, Kaiyi will have a layout of new energy products, "In terms of products, Kaiyi will cover the three major new energy model lineups from A00-class to A0-class SUVs in the future, in addition, Kaiyi is also synchronously building a new energy platform, and kaiyi new energy will have a more perfect product array and layout planning in the future." ”
At this time, as a technology giant with rich experience in digitalization, new energy and intelligence, Huawei will bring brand and technology blessings to Kaiyi in the transformation of traditional vehicles to new energy vehicles. However, whether Huawei can help Kaiyi get out of the predicament remains to be considered by the market.