The world only knows ali Daniel Zhang, but does not know Daniel Zhang Nezha.
If we say that we want to award a "leapfrog award" from the new forces of car-making, then this award is none other than Nezha.
In the winter of 2018, Nezha delivered the first car. In the following three years, deliveries quickly went from 10,000 to 15,000 to 70,000 vehicles. Last year, Nezha had three months of delivery, squeezed into the first three of the new car-making forces, and left three footprints in the first echelon that could not be ignored. In the end, the annual delivery volume of 2021 ranked fourth after "Xiao WeiLi", and showed its potential as a dark horse with a year-on-year growth of 361.7%.
(Image source: Financial Associated Press)
Among the new car-making forces, Nezha's situation was once very embarrassing, and it was not a company that was generally optimistic.
At the beginning of its establishment, Nezha chose a B-end road far away from the C-end market and avoided head-to-head confrontation with the first echelon of "Wei Xiaoli" car-making. CEO Daniel Zhang also relied on his glorious resume to quickly bring Nezha into the second echelon.
However, in the field of "burning money" new energy vehicles, Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal have successively gained respite through listing, and the leader of the second echelon and Weima have also reported IPOs.
But Nezha, who was in the second echelon and kept his eyes on the first echelon, seemed to be very silent before this year.
The day before yesterday, "Late Post" exclusively learned that Nezha's parent company, Hezhong New Energy Vehicle, has completed a D+++ round of financing of more than 2 billion yuan and plans to start listing in Hong Kong this year, and the specific listing issues are subject to the company's official announcement.
The financing of 2 billion yuan, in the field of new energy vehicles that burns money, does not sound like an obvious advantage. Weima, which is also in the second echelon, will raise a one-time financing of 10 billion yuan in the D round alone in 2020.
But on the other hand, with the addition of this 2 billion yuan, Nezha's current total financing amount is more than 14 billion yuan, equivalent to the total financing of Weilai at the end of 2017, as the strongest "gold absorbing beast" in the new car-making forces, when Weilai has not yet begun to deliver mass production vehicles.
Whether it is from the beginning of the B-side market positioning, or the pace of development, Nezha is walking on a different road.
This road is difficult to walk, but it also has a smell of "my life is up to me".
Daniel Zhang B-side policy
Daniel Zhang is the co-founder and CEO of Nezha Automobile, and his joining is of great significance to Nezha Automobile.
Daniel Zhang graduated from the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University, and before Nezha, he accumulated more than ten years of experience in channel construction, marketing, after-sales service and brand promotion in BEIQI Foton, Chery Automobile and BAIC BJEV.
Chery New Energy's annual sales reached 100,000 vehicles, won the global new energy electric vehicle sales champion, and once became the industry veteran of the "double champion" of production and sales, all of which are inseparable from the operation of Daniel Zhang.
After more than ten years of exploration, Daniel Zhang summed up a way to help new energy vehicles expand rapidly, that is, "sinking market + market for time".
Therefore, from the first day of the birth of the brand, Nezha Automobile embarked on a road different from that of car companies such as "Wei Xiaoli".
Away from the fiercely competitive C-end track and avoiding head-on fights with the first echelon members, Nezha has won himself a space for independent growth and development.
Compared with the average selling price of 440,000 yuan of Weilai, Nezha focuses on low-end models, and the main model is even less than 100,000 yuan, and most of the vehicles are sold to B-end market customers such as shared travel, online ride-hailing, enterprises and institutions.
After joining Nezha, Daniel Zhang quickly laid sales channels in third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities, and quickly sank through cars going to the countryside and enterprise cooperation.
For example, local governments such as Wutong in Zhejiang, Yichun in Jiangxi, nanning in Guangxi, are all important customers of Nezha, from official purchase of cars to group purchases of enterprises and institutions, real money and silver have shown great support for Nezha Automobile.
The way of "exchanging price for volume" helps Nezha sink rapidly in the B-end market. In the eyes of Daniel Zhang, the sinking market is the "one acre and three points of land" that Nezha relies on to survive in the fiercely competitive new forces of car-making.
In January this year, Nezha Automobile once again surpassed Weilai with a sales volume of 11,000 yuan, ranking behind Xiaopeng and Ideal. This is the eighth consecutive month of month-on-month growth in Nezha, with deliveries exceeding 10,000 units for the third consecutive month. With the label of cost performance, Nezha has killed a bloody road from the chaotic world.
"Countryside surrounds the city"
"In fact, our team is holding its breath. No one was optimistic about us since the day of our establishment, and no one was optimistic about us before this year. This year Daniel Zhang said in an interview with a financial auto reporter.
Nezha Automobile's office is located in Hongqiao, Shanghai, and from this office building, you can overlook Green Valley Plaza and the traffic below. Tesla, Ideal, Weilai, Xiaopeng these models can be seen everywhere in Shanghai, the city, for the time being, does not belong to Nezha.
2022 is the fourth year that Daniel Zhang has joined Nezha Automobile.
In four years, the company has grown from 600 employees to 6,000, from Nezha N01, Nezha V to Nezha U Pro, relying on 60,000-150,000 pricing, gradually gaining a foothold in the low-end market.
Along with this, the outside world has never stopped questioning, Daniel Zhang said, "Everyone thinks that you from people, funds, to past experience, behind the shareholders, which one is not enough to have signs of success, the card is not good enough." ”
Since the second half of last year, Nezha's sales have increased several times, and heavy investors have successively entered the market, and Nezha has become a dark horse running out of the new car-making forces.
But at the same time, Nezha's disadvantages are also obvious: the intelligent force is late, and the first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen basically cannot see Nezha's figure.
This is related to Daniel Zhang's previous positioning of Nezha, who once said that "Nezha cars do not make toys for the rich, but only cars that ordinary people can afford." This sentence is like a double-edged sword, while creating sales due to cost performance, it also makes Nezha labeled as "low price".
And because of its low price, Nezha car is even more questioned.
Shen Hui, the founder of WM Motors, said bluntly that "less than 100,000 can only be called electric vehicles, not intelligent electric vehicles." In addition to the high battery price, for smart electric vehicles, the realization of intelligence should be supported by a high reliability perception and execution system on the hardware, coupled with "software + computing power + data processing", which means high research and development costs.
He Xiaopeng of Xiaopeng Motors also believes that 150,000 yuan is the entry-level price of smart cars, and the pricing range of mainstream models is generally concentrated between 200,000 and 300,000.
For Nezha, if you adhere to the low-end route, copy the old road of BAIC BJEV, exchange price for volume, and profits cannot go up, it is a big disadvantage for the later research and development and production.
If you go to the high-end, you can expand the territory, break the label, and improve the revenue capacity.
In fact, Nezha, which is widely considered to be "not doing luxury cars", the B-end travel market with concentrated sales paths, and the fourth- and fifth-tier cities, has begun to overthrow itself.
Regarding this fact, Nezha came up with a set of data to fight back: as of the end of November last year, Nezha Automobile's C-end private users accounted for more than 91%, and the B-end travel market accounted for less than 9%; in terms of sales market, first-tier and new first-tier cities accounted for 44%, and second-tier cities and below accounted for 56%.
This change stems from Nezha's "going to the city" plan from last year.
At the end of last year, Nezha Automobile launched the Nezha S at the Guangzhou Auto Show, which was the first clarion call aimed at the high-end market.
From the configuration of Nezha S, the endurance is 1100KM, equipped with L4 level automatic driving, Daniel Zhang obviously wants to compete with Xiaopeng's P7.
At present, the pricing of this model has not been announced, but the positioning of "not doing luxury cars" has been overturned by Nezha himself.
Starting from Nezha S to being completely recognized by the high-end market, Nezha still has a long way to go.
There is not much time left for Nezha's car
From the second half of 2021, Nezha's monthly sales frequently appear in the top three of the new car-making forces, Daniel Zhang face the most questions: How far is Nezha Automobile from the first echelon of the new car-making forces?
Daniel Zhang is very sober about this, he said, "There is no point in briefly surpassing, and Nezha's user group is more popular, according to this logic, only 3 times the ideal can be said to be stronger than him." ”
The pricing of Nezha car is generally about 100,000 yuan, and the price of the ideal car is generally about 300,000, and the statement of 3 times the sales volume comes from the 3 times difference between the two pricing.
That is to say, although Nezha has squeezed into the first echelon in terms of sales, there is still a big gap in profits.
The launch of Nezha S also shows that simply walking volume is not the story that Daniel Zhang wants to tell.
In the first half of last year, Nezha joined hands with 360 to jointly conquer the new energy market, and 360's endorsement can not only increase brand awareness and win a large number of potential consumers, but also help Nezha attract investment.
The investment of the NINGDE era in the second half of last year, as well as the 2 billion yuan investment of Shenzhen Venture Capital and CRRC Capital in the first two days, are proof of this. With the blessing of the world's largest battery supplier Ningde Era, Nezha has gained a lot of trust in the safety of new energy vehicles.
But none of these cooperations can bring substantial help to Nezha Automobile.
Daniel Zhang want Nezha Automobile to be profitable, only to achieve a breakthrough in technology, and then further broaden the market and go to the high-end, which undoubtedly requires a large and continuous capital investment.
At present, the total financing amount of Nezha is only 14 billion yuan, which is thin even if it is placed in the second echelon. It should be known that WM Motors, which also belongs to the second echelon, has now raised more than 20 billion yuan.
In the eyes of the outside world, the urgent need for Nezha Automobile to land in the capital market has been extremely obvious.
But the road to going public is not so easy. In January last year, WM Motor submitted an application for listing on the Science and Technology Innovation Board to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, but the listing process has been shelved so far due to insufficient scientific and technological content and low proportion of R&D investment.
This problem also exists in the current Nezha. After all, hard power needs to be smashed out with money, for example, in the past three years, the investment in autonomous driving research and development has approached 10 billion.
As the leader of Nezha, Daniel Zhang has a very clear understanding of this, "If it can't sell 500,000 sales in 2025, it may be eliminated." If you do, you'll get tickets to this qualifier. ”
Successful listing in the short term, although it can pull Nezha with poor hematopoietic ability, but whether the listing can guarantee the sales of 500,000 yuan, but also marked a big question mark.
Whether Nezha, a dark horse selling, can break into the qualifiers will take time to test. But Daniel Zhang knew that there was not much time left for Nezha's car.
Author: Wu Xin