It's getting harder and harder to build a car.
Text/Shanshan Xu
01
"Tai" is difficult
The assets of "Zotye Automobile's land use rights, buildings, turnover materials, etc." were publicly auctioned on the Alibaba auction platform at 10 o'clock on March 14. As of March 15, the Ali auction bidding page showed that "no one bid, this auction is flowing". The starting price of the second round will be reduced from about 1.365 billion yuan to 1.092 billion yuan, and will officially begin on March 23.
Short comments
The name "Zotye" may be destined to become a page in the history of the automotive industry.
At the end of last year, Zotye announced that Jiangsu Shenzhen Commercial will inject 2 billion yuan of restructuring investment funds into it. At that time, some people in the industry pointed out that "the debt is too much, it is better to buy it." I didn't think about it.
Nowadays, Zotye's value has been slashed, and the auction price of all the company's assets is only about 1 billion yuan. Thinking back to that year, with excellent imitation ability, Zotye launched the "Baoshitai" SR9 model, and the scenery was infinite for a while.
In less than a few years, the lack of independent design and core technology finally dealt a heavy blow to Zotye, and revenue and net profit plummeted. Coupled with the development of new energy vehicles in recent years, it has drawn a question mark on the future of Zotye.
Can't revitalize it? Now who can transfuse Zotye and make it come back?
In the previous bankruptcy reorganization, Zotye pointed out a route for itself to develop the new energy vehicle business. But 2 billion yuan is only a dime a dozen for the industry. Weilai CEO Li Bin once said that there is no 20 billion yuan not to build a car.
Zotye may not have realized that in order to gain a foothold in the automotive industry, it is necessary to maintain high R&D investment. The self-owned brand, which is still waiting for the second round of auction, may not be able to wait for the redeemer.
But obviously, the assets such as car-making qualifications and factories in Zotye's hands are still a piece of fragrant food. The question is, is Zotye worth 1 billion yuan under the empty shell of the soul?
02
crossroads
According to Reuters, under the increasingly stringent regulatory requirements in China and the United States, Tucson is seeking to sell its business in China in the future, and will focus on the US autonomous driving market in the future. For this news, Tucson has not yet responded to the future.
Recently, South Korean media reported that Lotte Group will dissolve its Chinese headquarters, withdraw from the Chinese market, and shift its business to Southeast Asia. If it is not resisted, resulting in great obstacles to development, who would be stupid enough to give up the big cake of the Chinese market?
But this idea was "punched in the face" by Tucson Future.
Tucson Future is a Chinese company listed on the NASDAQ in the United States. On April 15, 2021, Tucson Successfully Landed on the U.S. Stock Market, Becoming the "World's First Autonomous Driving Stock".
However, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) soon launched a series of investigations, still citing the "national security risks" specifically targeting Chinese technology companies. Under pressure, Tucson's current management has no shadow of Chinese.
Completely abandoning the Chinese market, will Tucson be free in the future?
Looking back at the TikTok incident, the United States forced ByteDance to divest its business, otherwise it would sacrifice a ban. Until now, TikTok has become the base of the United States to start a public opinion war. And autonomous driving is considered to be the key technology that determines the commanding heights of future cars, and the United States will naturally not let it go.
There is no doubt that the United States is at the forefront of supporting autonomous driving regulations and policies, which is not important for the future of Tucson, which intends to deliver commercial L4 self-driving trucks this year.
But even if Tucson now has good reasons to abandon the Chinese market in the future, once the decision is made, it means abandoning the possibilities of the future Chinese market.
Perhaps, it is easy to go out, but it will be even more difficult to come back.
03
Evergrande's Revitalization Sutra
In the latest batch of "Catalogue of Recommended Models for the Promotion and Application of New Energy Vehicles" recently released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the "Hengchi" brand pure electric passenger cars produced by Evergrande Automobile are among them. This means that Hengchi Automobile already has sales qualifications. Recently, the actual car test drive map of the car has also been exposed, and it is expected to be available soon.
The Xu family printed the car, which did not surprise the outside world. However, the downline of Hengchi 5 still attracts a lot of attention in the industry.
Xu Jiayin once used five sentences: "buy, buy and buy", "hehe", "circle circle", "big big" and "good and good" to summarize Evergrande's roadmap for changing lanes and overtaking in the automotive field.
Although this simple and rude remark caused a lot of controversy, evergrande did not interrupt the high investment in the car-making business in the faltering real estate business.
For the real estate giant, new energy vehicles may be a good recipe for its blood. The acquisition of the sales license of Hengchi 5 also represents the dawn of Evergrande's car manufacturing operation for many years.
In 2018
In June, Evergrande Health (now renamed Evergrande Automobile) announced that it would acquire 100% of hong Kong's Shiying for HK$6.746 billion, thus indirectly becoming the largest shareholder of Faraday Future (FF), holding 45% of the shares. In September, Evergrande acquired 40.96% of the shares of Guanghui Group, with the goal of promoting Evergrande's development in the fields of automobile sales and energy (in 2020, Evergrande liquidated all its shares with 14.85 billion yuan).
In 2019
In January, Evergrande Health acquired a 51% stake in swedish electric vehicle company NEVS for US$930 million; Kanai New Energy, another 1.06 billion yuan, became the largest shareholder with 58% of the shares; in the same month, Evergrande New Energy Automobile Co., Ltd. was established with a registered capital of US$2 billion. In March, Evergrande Health acquired 70% of the shares of Tate Electromechanical Co., Ltd. for 500 million yuan. In May, Evergrande signed an agreement with wheel hub motor company Protean in London to wholly acquire the latter; in June, Evergrande signed strategic cooperation agreements with the people's governments of Guangzhou And Shenyang to lay out the new energy automobile industry locally. In November, Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Global Strategic Partner Summit was held in Guangzhou. Xu Jiayin revealed that Evergrande will invest 45 billion yuan in the field of new energy vehicles in the next three years. The goal is to achieve annual production and sales of more than 1 million vehicles by 2025 and more than 5 million vehicles by 2035, and master core technologies and independent intellectual property rights.
In 2022
In January, Hengchi, a brand of Evergrande Automobile, officially announced that "the first car of Hengchi 5 rolled off the production line at the Tianjin plant 12 days earlier than originally planned."
Evergrande's car is not out of a momentary enthusiasm and impulse, which has Xu Jiayin's judgment and consideration of future trends. But whether Hengchi 5 can bring Evergrande the confidence to build cars is still difficult to say.
But to put it another way, if Evergrande changes careers to become an auto parts supplier, will it have a bigger chance?