After "Wei Xiaoli", the second echelon of China's new car-making forces has also repeatedly reported the news of listing. Last week, zero-running cars took the lead in handing out their watches to the Stock Exchange.
Although, in terms of sales in 2021, zero-run cars have ranked fifth in the world's pure electric vehicle companies and fourth in China, but with micro-cars below 100,000 yuan to support sales, making this ranking appear to be not high in gold content.
From the low-end model to the market, is the user willing to pay for the company's mid-to-high-end model? The success or failure of the C11, which has been launched by zero-run cars and the C01 that will be launched this year, is crucial.
Bleeding listing
Last week, zero-run cars submitted a table to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to seize the fourth listing seat of China's new energy car-making forces.
In 2014 and 2015, China's new energy vehicles were in the ascendant, and the Internet car-making forces were eager to move, and "Wei Xiaoli" was established during this period.
China and global security giant Dahua Co., Ltd., and the company's main founders Fu Liquan, Zhu Jiangming, etc., jointly funded the establishment of zero-run cars, cross-border into the field of new energy vehicles.
As we all know, building a car is equivalent to burning money. Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile, has publicly said that 20 billion is the threshold for car manufacturing; Xiaopeng Automobile He Xiaopeng also once exclaimed, in the past to see others build cars, think 10 billion is very exaggerated, really to do it after they did it, only to find that 20 billion is not enough to spend.
As the head of the new domestic car-making force, "Wei Xiaoli" has exceeded the 90,000-vehicle mark in 2021, but it cannot change the fate of loss. Even the ideal of operating at low cost still had a net loss of 322 million yuan in the past fiscal year, double that of the previous year.
Therefore, major new energy vehicle companies have rushed to the capital market for financing to continue their lives.
In 2018, NIO came out on top and took the lead in listing on the New York Stock Exchange. 2020 and 2021 are the big years of the listing of new energy car manufacturing forces, Xiaopeng and Ideal have landed on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, and soon after, they have completed the secondary listing on the Stock Exchange.
There is no accident that the zero-run car in the second echelon of new energy vehicles is still too far from profitability.
From 2019 to 2021, the company's operating income was 117 million yuan, 616 million yuan and 3.059 billion yuan, respectively; the net profit attributable to the mother was -901 million yuan, -1.10 billion yuan and -2.846 billion yuan, and it is expected to continue to lose money in 2022.
The company continued to make huge losses, and the holes were mainly filled by financing in the primary market.
According to the prospectus, since January 2018, the company has received 8 rounds of financing from Sequoia, Shanghai Electric, CICC and other institutions, with a total of nearly 12 billion yuan.
As of the end of 2021, the company has 4.338 billion yuan in cash and cash equivalents, of which 1.376 billion yuan is restricted cash, and it is urgent to continue blood transfusions through public listing.
Low-priced micro-cars support sales
Although it was founded at the same time as Wei Xiaoli, whether it is the delivery of vehicles or the brand image, there is still a big gap between zero running and them.
Weilai Automobile has successively released EC6, ES8, ES6 and other models, the high-end brand image has been basically established; the ideal is the main program increase, relying only on the ideal ONE single model, delivery and revenue have repeatedly reached new highs; Xiaopeng's youthfulness has captured a number of young users, and a variety of models cover a price band of more than 150,000 yuan.
When it comes to zero-run cars, what can users think of?
In the prospectus, Zero-Run Auto emphasizes that global self-development and vertical integration capabilities are the advantages that distinguish the company from other emerging electric vehicle companies in China.
However, from 2019 to 2021, the research and development expenses of zero-run cars were 358 million yuan, 289 million yuan and 740 million yuan, respectively, almost only a fraction of the head car-making forces, and the proportion of research and development expenses in each period of total revenue decreased significantly year by year, 306.4%, 45.8% and 23.6% respectively.
According to Frost & Sullivan data, zero-run cars are the fifth largest pure electric vehicle company in the world and the fourth largest pure electric vehicle company in China in terms of total sales volume in 2021.
So, what does the sales of zero-run cars rely on to support it?
In July 2019, the company's first mass-produced model, the S01, began to be delivered, which is a smart electric coupe, and is priced at 129,900 yuan to 149,900 yuan after subsidies.
Judging by the delivery data, the S01 was not a success. By the end of 2021, a total of 2,708 units of the model had been delivered. Among them, Q4 2019 delivered the most, with 561 vehicles, and only 51 vehicles were delivered in Q4 of 2021.
It was this car that made the company's reputation collapse.
In 2020, the first 200 owners of S01 collectively defended their rights, accusing the model of faulty braking system, power system, vehicle engine system and control system. Zero-run cars respond with "products that meet national quality standards, and most of the problems raised by users are accidental, not safety quality problems".
Subsequently, in April 2020, the company launched the electric micro-car T03, which was priced at 68,900 yuan to 84,900 yuan after subsidies. Due to the relatively low price, the sales situation of zero-run T03 is gratifying.
In 2021, the delivery volume of Q3 and Q4, T03 exceeded 10,000, with a total of 39,100 vehicles delivered.
However, this micro car is obviously not enough to support the ambitions of the high-end of the zero-run car.
How to realize the dream of mid-to-high-end?
In terms of sales in 2021, China is already the world's largest passenger car market, with more than 20 million passenger cars sold worldwide, and more than 20 million contributed by China.
This year, China sold 3.3 million new energy vehicles, 2.5 times that of the European market and 5 times that of the Us market, and also ranked first in the world.
According to agency data, the penetration rate of China's new energy vehicles in the passenger car market has increased from 2.4% in 2017 to 16.0% in 2021, and is expected to reach 50.3% in 2026. Models priced at 150,000 to 300,000 yuan will become the largest and fastest growing segment of China's new energy vehicle market by the end of 2023, accounting for 49.1% of total sales by 2026.
Although the S01 failed to test the waters, the zero-run car still cannot give up the mid-to-high-end market.
In October 2021, the zero-run C11 began to be delivered, which is a medium-sized SUV that sells for 159,800 yuan to 199,800 yuan after subsidies. Deliveries of Q3 and Q4 in 2021 were 253 and 3,712 units, respectively, and the number of orders for this model was 22,500 units at the end of 2021.
Zero-run cars said in the prospectus that in the future, it plans to launch 1-3 models per year, and 8 new models will be launched by the end of 2025, covering various sizes of cars, SUVs and MPVs.
The company plans to launch a medium-sized smart pure electric sedan C01 in the second quarter of this year. The model is built on the same platform as the C11, with a length of more than 5 meters and a battery range of about 700 kilometers, and will be delivered in the third quarter.
These long-term plans require tens of billions of dollars as a backing.
At the beginning, as a layman in the automotive industry, Zhu Jiangming broke into the field of new energy vehicles, and even once shouted out the bold words of catching up with Tesla in the field of assisted driving for 3 years, and also set a small goal for zero-run cars to reach sales of 500,000 vehicles by 2025.
From the current point of view, zero running can only try to surpass Nezha first, and further break into the first camp, and the dream will not be empty talk.