On February 25, at the media tasting meeting of the Self-Touring Home brand, its first model, the "Self-Touring Home NV", was officially unveiled.
And the first time you heard the name of this brand, it was last year - December 15, 2021, Li Yinan, the founder of Xiaoniu Electric Vehicle, announced that he had entered the car manufacturing game, so another name was added to the roster of new car-making forces: NIUTRON (self-traveler).
From the establishment of the brand to the release of the real car is only 72 days apart, in just over two months to be able to release a new car, so efficient is indeed impressive. But in the matter of building cars, "fast" must be a good thing?
What is the novelty of the design?
For the self-traveler NV, many people, including the author, feel: Isn't this front face the stitching monster of the Land Rover Defender and the Ford Reema?
And some netizens' vomiting is even sharper:
Coming to the side, although the designer consciously creates a hard off-road style, the square shape, the black anti-friction plate, the large size of the rim and other details are all in force, but the small ground clearance and excess foot pedals make the body shape appear to be dragging and bulky.
The C-pillar lamp strips of many media books are highly similar to the design of the Mavericks on electric bicycles before. As a model that mainly attacks the high-end electric vehicle market, but it has to be associated with an electric bicycle of several thousand yuan, is this design too cheap?
Overall, the self-touring NV lacks novelty in the design and has strong traces of reference.
What are the highlights of the core technology?
According to the official claim of Ziyoujia, it has set up a research and development center in Shanghai, and has set up a research and development team of nearly 1,000 people, and has an intelligent manufacturing base with an overall production capacity of 180,000 vehicles in Changzhou.
But what is puzzling is that at present, there are no technical propaganda slogans similar to BYD blade batteries, WEILAI lidar, Xiaopeng assisted driving and other technical slogans in the propaganda caliber of Self-Traveler.
At present, the only technical certainty of the Self-Touring NV is that it will adopt a dual strategy of extender and pure electric on the chassis architecture.
However, as a new car-making force entering the market in 2021, there are many mature products on the chassis on the market, and ziyoujia can continue to take the ism on the chassis.
For the current new car-making forces, you can always find a unique highlight in its software and hardware, but as far as the information currently public is concerned, there are no technical highlights since the Youjia NV.
Is there sufficient working capital?
At present, Niu Innovation Energy, the parent company of the Youjia brand, has reached a scale of about US$500 million (3 billion yuan) in the Series A financing.
Compared with Xiaopeng's Series A of US$84 million, ideal Series A of US$113 million (calculated at 2016 exchange rates) and Nezha US$181 million (calculated at 2017 exchange rates), Niu Chuangxin Energy's current Series A financing capabilities are excellent among the new forces.
But Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile, has said that there is no 20 billion (RMB) not to build a car.
For the automotive industry, which is born with "heavy assets" attributes, the current investment scale of 3.1 billion yuan in Niu Chuangxin Energy is far from enough for the entire entrepreneurial cycle, and whether it can be successfully refinanced in the later stage is still an unknown.
Moreover, for the current Niu Innovation Energy, its production and manufacturing base in Changzhou was originally part of Mahayana Automobile, and the production line transformation of the original base will also generate huge expenses.
How much of the current 3.1 billion can be spent on key projects such as product design, technology research and development, road testing, etc., we do not know.
In summary, in the matter of car building, the 3.1 billion yuan on hand of Niu Chuangxin Energy is not worth mentioning at all.
Can a new car be delivered on schedule?
At a time when lithium ore prices are high, chip supply is tight, and Eastern Europe is at war, the supply chain of the new energy market in 2022 is still tightening as a whole.
At the end of 2021, when the Self-Youjia brand was released, Li Yinan was very confident about the listing and delivery of Self-Youjia: the Self-Traveling NV will be listed at the Beijing Auto Show in April, and the first deliveries will be completed in September.
It can be said that the current situation is unexpected by anyone, but is it only external factors that affect the completion of delivery from the tourer?
Generally speaking, in the normal new car listing process, after completing the approval of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and entering the new car catalog of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, if the situation is smooth and there are no accidents, it generally takes 6 months to 1 year to carry out endurance testing and mass production before delivery.
As far as the current public information is concerned, there are no road test spy photos on the network about the self-touring home, and the self-touring NV has not yet entered the new car directory of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Now it seems that the original scheduled delivery time of Youjia NV is just a publicity strategy, and the current work progress cannot catch up with the delivery in September.
Conclusion: The rapid release of the product must have a favorable side for the new catch-up of the self-traveler.
However, since Youjia is a "car-making white" who has just entered the industry, in the absence of brand reputation, technology accumulation, sales channels and other industry experience, the first product needs to be polished and precipitated, in order to surprise consumers in this market that has long been "aesthetic fatigue".
Finally, I advise Mr. Li Yinan: "You can't just use engineering thinking from A to B to build a car, in addition to fast, you also need to pay more attention." ”