Economic Observer Network reporter Pu Zhenyu "(car) the smallest need for money, I think about a few hundred million US dollars, may be able to break even, but (money) if a little more, of course, you can do more things." Huang Chendong, founder and CEO of Shanghai Qianchen Automobile Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Qianchen"), said in an exclusive interview with the Economic Observer Network and other media on March 1.
Qianchen is a domestic commercial vehicle manufacturing "new force" established in June 2020, not only developing autonomous driving technology, but also involved in vehicle manufacturing, most of the company's founding team has experience in Weilai and SAIC. Among them, Huang Chendong, who came from a technical background, was the senior vice president of Weilai, and earlier served as the deputy general manager of the new energy division of SAIC Motor.
Huang Chendong's judgment of the threshold for building a car is different from his former "comrade-in-arms" and The head of Weilai, Li Bin. At nio DAY in December 2021, Li Bin said in response to a question from a reporter from the Economic Observer Network, "The capital threshold for making cars requires reserves, a few years ago I said it was 20 billion yuan (about 3.1 billion US dollars), and now there is no 40 billion yuan (about 6.3 billion US dollars) may not be able to do it." According to Li Bin, it takes at least a few billion DOLLARs to build a car, which is not at all in the same order of magnitude as Huang Chendong's "hundreds of millions of dollars".
Of course, Li Bin's judgment is based on passenger cars, while Huang Chendong is based on commercial vehicles. In Huang Chendong's view, the transformation of the commercial vehicle industry is not as fast as passenger cars, the entire industry is not fully prepared, commercial vehicles can directly use advanced technology in the field of passenger cars, so the initial capital demand is smaller than that of passenger cars.
What made Huang Chendong make a judgment on the amount of "hundreds of millions of dollars" of car-making funds was mainly the actual situation of the former morning before he was at the helm. Compared with the new forces of passenger cars with hundreds of millions of dollars in single rounds of financing, the scale of financing in the morning was relatively small. Up to now, a total of two rounds of public financing have been completed in the morning, with a total of more than $60 million in financing, of which the B round of financing in November 2021 was about $50 million.
For the new round of financing, Huang Chendong's goal is still tens of millions of dollars. Huang Chendong said that the previous morning will be B+ round of financing this year, hoping to be completed in March, planning to raise 40 million to 60 million US dollars, the second half of the year may start C round financing.
Relying on tens of millions of dollars in financing, a lot of things were done the morning, and it took just over a year to achieve mass production deliveries, although the scale of delivery was still quite limited. "We're actually getting money right now, probably more than 80 cars, and orders for hundreds of cars (to be delivered)." Huang Chendong revealed that qianchen automobile sales this year can exceed 1,000 vehicles, and the company's breakeven point is 10,000 vehicles.
The car construction cycle was compressed from 36 months to 18 months
Like many new passenger car forces, the OEM model was also chosen in order to improve the speed of mass production and save costs. Huang Chendong said that Qianchen's foundry partner is China National Heavy Duty Truck, and Sinotruk's production capacity can meet the demand of Qianchen in the past year. In the future, after the production and sales scale of the previous morning exceeds 10,000 vehicles, it is possible to build its own production line.
The lack of self-built factories means that qianchen is still an asset-light car manufacturer at this stage. Most of the cost expenditure requirements in the morning come from research and development. Huang Chendong revealed that there are currently about 160 people in the Qianchen team, half of which are R&D personnel, and 40% of the R&D personnel are responsible for algorithms and software.
In addition to choosing OEM, the product development time was greatly reduced in order to save costs. It is understood that the development cycle of a commercial vehicle is usually about three years, that is, 30-36 months, and the previous morning was compressed by half of the time on this basis, and product development only needs 12-18 months.
"Some of the user experience is better, such as seats, screens, like these things I will spend money into the development, but for some body accessories, such as handles, these things are not the most core, I temporarily do not develop, just use existing products." In this way, the limited funds are used to focus on the focus. Huang Chendong said.
In terms of channels, Qianchen has also built online apps and offline channels. However, since commercial vehicles are oriented to B-end users, there is no need to invest heavily in setting up supermarkets in business districts with scarce land and dense crowds, as the new forces of passenger cars do. According to Huang Chendong, in several core market areas, Qianchen has its own offline service team, and in some small places, it uses the form of cooperation and contract to set up service stations.
Autonomous driving heavy trucks will be mass-produced on a large scale next year
"The automotive industry has gone from mechanical equipment powered by internal combustion engines to battery-powered electronic devices, and in this transition, the commercial vehicle industry is actually not ready, and there are many opportunities here." Huang Chendong believes that under the guidance of the "double carbon" goal, the new energy commercial vehicle market will be a blue ocean.
According to the data, as of September 2021, the number of cars in the country reached 297 million, of which 32.42 million were trucks, accounting for 10.9% of the total number of cars. However, trucks, which account for only 10.9 percent, emit more than half of all vehicle carbon dioxide emissions. As a result, the commercial vehicle industry is under more severe pressure to reduce carbon than passenger cars.
Huang Chendong said that the former morning adopts the product strategy of "light" and then "heavy", "because light trucks are easier to promote electrification and intelligence, wait until the light trucks land, and then expand to the heavy trucks, so that on the one hand, it is more in line with the rhythm of technological development, on the other hand, it is more in line with the company's growth."
At present, Qianchen has two electric light truck models, EC1 and iC1, of which EC1 is on sale, which is a 4.5-ton intelligent network pure electric light truck jointly developed by Qianchen and Sinotruk, and the iC1 is independently developed by Qianchen Automobile to support L4 automatic driving, and is scheduled to be mass-produced in the fourth quarter of this year.
Huang Chendong said that qianchen's self-driving heavy truck is under development, and it is expected to achieve a certain amount of demonstration operation in specific scenarios at the end of this year, and achieve real mass production in 2023, which can form a large-scale operation in a certain scene.
Looking at the commercial vehicle industry, not only the morning before, since the end of 2021, the entire industry has entered a climax period for the landing of autonomous driving mass production vehicles. At the end of 2021, Yinche Technology will cooperate with Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle and Sinotruk to achieve front-loading mass production of L3-level autonomous trucks, Xiaoma Zhixing's self-driving truck business plans to achieve front-loading mass production SOPs in 2023-2024, and self-driving truck technology company Tucson plans to deliver the first batch of L4-level autonomous trucks by 2024. In addition, DeepWay, a company jointly established by Baidu and Shiqiao, is expected to launch a New Energy Autonomous Driving Heavy Truck of The 1st Generation of Xingtu in 2023. The smart luxury heavy truck Xinghan H released by Geely Remote Automobile also plans to mass-produce by 2024.
Before the commercialization of autonomous driving is landed, it is essential to conduct more scenario tests. In this regard, Qianchen has obtained the L4 level automatic driving test license. According to Huang Chendong, the application scenarios of pre-morning automatic driving include two types, one is closed scenarios such as ports and mining areas, and the other is trunk logistics such as highways.
It is understood that closed scenes and trunk logistics are structured roads and are considered to be the most suitable for landing autonomous driving technology. Structured roads usually include three characteristics, one is that road signs follow uniform rules, the second is that the infrastructure is good, and the third is that traffic participants are relatively fixed and obey the rules, and there are fewer unexpected situations and abnormal conditions.
Huang Chendong said that compared with the closed scene, the difficulty of trunk logistics to achieve automatic driving is still relatively greater, "trunk logistics is point-to-point, can fix the scene, but the problem now is that the vehicle is driving on the road, if there is a problem no one to deal with, this is not OK."
Relying on passenger car technology to "reduce dimensions" commercial vehicles?
"In the commercial vehicle industry, in general, its technology is dependent on the technology of the supplier, and it does not have too many core technologies." Huang Chendong said, "We have our own technical background and a lot of experience in passenger cars, so we can transform it (into the field of commercial vehicles), which is equivalent to having the superiority of 'dimensionality reduction strike'."
Although the number of new commercial vehicle forces is not much at present, traditional commercial vehicle companies are also investing heavily in seeking electrification and intelligent transformation, and many of them have put forward very clear goals, which will be the direct opponents of the previous morning.
For example, SAIC Motor plans to account for 25% of SAIC's overseas sales of commercial vehicles, 38% of new energy sales, and 60% of the installed capacity of intelligent networks by 2025. Foton Zhilan New Energy, a subsidiary of Foton Motor, plans to take electric logistics vehicles as the main line and achieve sales of 200,000 vehicles by 2025, with a market share of 30% and sales revenue of 15 billion yuan.
Compared with traditional commercial vehicle companies, Qianchen does not have an advantage in terms of funds. Taking Foton Motor as an example, Foton Zhilan New Energy's 2025 strategy proposes to invest 6 billion yuan in research and development and testing, and 12 billion yuan in the industrial chain and marketing service system, which alone has reached the order of 20 billion yuan (about 3.1 billion US dollars).
In addition, in the control of the supply chain, Qianchen can not be compared with traditional commercial vehicle companies. "Because the size of the company is still relatively small, so now in the negotiations with the supply chain (enterprise), in fact, we are at a relatively disadvantaged position, we are more important to gradually scale the market, and we can have a better control over the supply chain after the measurement is up." Huang Chendong said.
However, in Huang Chendong's view, qianchen has its own multiple advantages. Compared with traditional commercial vehicle companies to take into account the fuel vehicle and new energy vehicle business, the morning only does new energy vehicles, resources and energy are more concentrated, and the company structure is flat, the decision-making speed is fast, in addition, the management team's understanding of intelligent networked vehicles is also more profound.
Regarding the company structure, Huang Chendong said: "We are basically a project manager responsibility system, each project has a project manager, by the project manager to promote the entire project forward, he can also go directly to my office to talk to me, we directly make decisions, direct implementation." So the whole thing from the team to the project manager to me, there are three levels of relationships, and that will be very efficient. ”
![The new commercial forces have stepped up their bids for L4 level autonomous driving the morning before[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)