On March 22, Skyworth Auto released the official map of its new Skyworth HT-i model, which will open pre-sale in April and is expected to be officially launched on August 28. It is worth mentioning that the new car will be equipped with the DM-i super hybrid system provided by BYD, and the pure electric mileage will reach 200km, and the comprehensive cruising range will be 1267km.
For the identity of Skyworth home appliance giant, many people must be familiar with it, but for Skyworth Automobile, a car company with no sense of existence, I believe many people are relatively unfamiliar. In fact, Skyworth's seniority in the automotive field is earlier than "Wei Xiaoli", which is a veritable old fritter among the new forces of car manufacturing, but when it comes to influence, it does seem to be somewhat obscure.
Ten years of car building, several times changed the name
As early as 10 years ago, Huang Hongsheng, the founder of Skyworth Group, "color TV king", began his automobile career, but the starting point for him to enter the automotive field was not the passenger car market, but the commercial bus market.
In 2012, Huang Hongsheng increased the capital and reorganized Nanjing Golden Dragon, became the actual controller and beneficiary of the enterprise, and established Kaiwo Automobile. His capital injection not only turned the loss of up to 40 million yuan of Jinlong Automobile into a safe situation, but also brought Nanjing Jinlong to the forefront of the industry in the follow-up new energy bus project.
As Nanjing Golden Dragon gradually stabilized, Huang Hongsheng once again turned his attention to the passenger car market – the birth of Tianmei Automobile is the beginning of the story. In 2019, when domestic new energy vehicles were at the cusp of the storm, the struggle between new car-making forces also entered a white-hot situation, and Huang Hongsheng established "Tianmei Automobile" at this time to begin to test the new energy passenger car market.
Thanks to Kaiwo Automobile's previous technology accumulation in the field of new energy buses, It took Tianmei Automobile less than a year from the brand release to the launch of the first mass production model. Unfortunately, although Tianmei Automobile has caught up with the outlet of new energy vehicles, due to the relatively weak marketing system, the sales volume of its first mass-produced model ET5 after its listing is not ideal, so naturally there is no brand awareness.
Nowadays, more and more technology companies are joining the car-making industry, and in the case of such fierce competition, Tianmei Automobile, which is already in poor shape, feels a double pressure. It wants to find a way out for itself.
On March 26, 2021, Skyworth Group issued an announcement that Skyworth Group entered into a trademark transfer agreement with Kaiwo New Energy, agreeing to transfer the ownership and rights of the trademark to Kaiwo New Energy for 28 million yuan. In addition, Kaiwo New Energy will also permanently and freely license the trademarks used by Skyworth Automobile in some specific products under its daily business, which is now Skyworth Automobile.
In Xiao Lei's view, compared with Nanjing Golden Dragon, Kaiwo New Energy, Tianmei Automobile and Skyworth Automobile, which are also supported by Huang Hongsheng, he is obviously better at doing commercial vehicles such as buses and buses, and is not good at making passenger cars that pay more attention to detail and quality.
You know, compared with Weilai, Xiaopeng, ideal, these new car-making forces that have no previous experience in car manufacturing, Skyworth has rich experience in automobile manufacturing, technical reserves, and brand influence in the field of commercial vehicles for ten years. Logically, as long as it can develop high-quality products, it is not difficult to obtain the recognition of the market and consumers. However, the current situation of Skyworth Automobile is difficult to say.
Can BYD break the game for Skyworth Automobile?
At present, Skyworth Automobile has only one MODEL on sale, the EV6, which has only sold 6,342 units in the seven months from its launch and delivery in August 2021 to February 2022, with an average monthly sales of only 906 units. In contrast, BYD, the car company with the highest sales of new energy vehicles in the country, sold 87,473 new energy vehicles in February.
Source: Pacific Auto Network
According to such sales development, Skyworth Automobile will soon enter the "list of new car-making forces". Obviously, Skyworth Auto is in urgent need of a best-selling model that can save it from fire and water, and Skyworth HT-i, which will be launched in August this year, has exactly such a mission.
In Xiao Lei's view, this model not only needs to have reliable technology, but also needs to have a price that can persuade consumers to pay. However, mature and reliable technology is not something that Skyworth Auto can develop in a short period of time. As a result, sourcing proven technology from third-party technology vendors becomes its only option.
Skyworth Automobile's first model, the EV6, is a pure electric vehicle, so why did its second model switch to the technical route of plug-in hybridization? Xiao Lei believes that it is mainly to reduce costs. Affected by the large environmental impact of the shortage of battery raw material production capacity, BYD's blade batteries are not enough on their own, and it is even more unlikely to supply large-scale supplies for others.
In addition, the cost of power batteries is also high today. BYD has raised its price twice in a row because of the cost of power batteries. BYD itself is still like this, and Skyworth Automobile, which is ready to play the price card, is even less likely to use a pure electric vehicle technology solution that relies heavily on power batteries.
Among the 87,473 new energy vehicles sold by BYD in February, the sales of plug-in hybrid models reached 44,300, accounting for half of BYD's new energy vehicle sales. Among the 44,300 plug-in hybrid models, dm-i is indispensable.
In terms of comprehensive cost of use, product price and technological maturity, BYD's DM-i super hybrid technology has been called the industry's first-class level. From the perspective of manufacturers, DM-i's cost control capabilities are beyond the reach of other brands. The reliability and cost advantages of DM-i are the main reasons why Skyworth Automobile chose it as the HT-i power system.
In Xiao Lei's view, the use of BYD DM-i technology can indeed make up for skyworth automobile's shortcomings in the field of hybrid, but BYD cannot save skyworth automobile. Xiao Lei can even say without exaggeration that after using DM-i technology, BYD will become the natural enemy of Skyworth Automobile.
You know, the power system is the core part of a car, and Skyworth Automobile uses BYD's power system, which means that it will lose its core competitiveness to compete with BYD in this regard. If consumers are really buying cars for DM-i technology, then why don't they just buy authentic BYD cars?
Xiao Lei believes that with a reliable power system, skyworth Automobile's primary task is to go out of a completely different path from BYD and avoid overlapping with BYD's product positioning.
Although the interior, price, positioning, and body size of Skyworth HT-i, which can affect the future direction of Skyworth Automobile, have not been released so far, Xiao Lei can predict that this new car will either be more cost-effective than BYD's similar models, or more intelligent than BYD models, and there is no other way.
Skyworth Auto is BYD's "Cyrus"?
For BYD will "supply" it is proud of the DM-i super hybrid technology, Xiao Lei is not surprised at all. It should be known that according to BYD when Qin PLUS was listed, Qin PLUS DM-i will go straight into the price range of fuel cars, and DM-i will completely subvert the user's cognition of plug-in and mixed models. In simple terms, the significance of DM-i's existence is to subvert the traditional fuel vehicle market.
Today, DM-i has basically subverted BYD's traditional fuel vehicles, and indeed subverted consumers' cognition of plug-in models, but it is still a long way from the ultimate mission of subverting traditional fuel vehicles. Of course, subverting traditional fuel vehicles with DM-i technology cannot be completed by BYD a car company.
It can be seen that if it wants to subvert the traditional fuel vehicle through DM-i, BYD must find more partners. In Xiao Lei's view, the reason why the unknown Skyworth Automobile will become the first customer of the new energy automobile giant BYD to supply DM-i to the outside world is the same as the famous Huawei to find Jinkang Cyrus and make it Huawei's golden signboard in the automotive field.
In fact, Huawei, which "resolutely does not build cars, only to build cars for car companies" has certain similarities with BYD, which has been committed to breaking the closed-loop ecology and opening up to the outside world in recent years. The former is a supplier of automotive technology, while the latter is spinning off a highly self-developed vehicle manufacturing technology, hoping to transform itself into a technology supplier that "can sell anything except Wang Chuanfu".
Interestingly, the dilemma faced by Huawei and BYD also has some similarities. Although Huawei and BYD both want to become automotive technology suppliers, they are equally strong in both technology and strength, resulting in most mature car companies being jealous of them.
On June 30, 2021, Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Motor, said bluntly at sachinel's 2020 annual shareholders' meeting: "It is unacceptable for SAIC to cooperate with third-party companies such as Huawei for autonomous driving. It's like having a company that provides us with a holistic solution, so that it becomes the soul and SAIC becomes the body. For such a result, SAIC is unacceptable and must take the soul into its own hands. ”
In the era of intelligent cars, automatic driving is the core content of the new four modernizations of automobiles. Relying heavily on autonomous driving technology provided by third-party companies such as Huawei means that it will be subject to people in core technology, which is indeed like losing its soul.
The new four modernizations of automobiles include automatic driving and also include new energy. Therefore, the core technology of new energy vehicles is equally important for new energy vehicle companies. If a car company even relies heavily on third-party technology suppliers for supply, then it has also lost its soul.
In Xiao Lei's view, for a mature car company, the three electric technologies of new energy vehicles and the autonomous driving technology of smart cars are indispensable, and car companies lose them just like the West loses Jerusalem. Therefore, whether it is Huawei or BYD, their choice is only relatively less mature car companies such as Jinkang Cilis and Skyworth Automobile.
Of course, whether it is Huawei or BYD, their purpose will certainly not be just to develop "immature" customers such as Xilis and Skyworth Automobile. Since Skyworth HT-i is the first non-BYD model equipped with DM-i super hybrid system, this means that BYD DM-i will be supplied to more car companies in the future.
In addition, DM-i is only one of the many technologies that BYD can supply to the outside world, in the main businesses such as foundry and vehicle manufacturing have increased revenue and profits, and the new energy vehicle environment is not good, the external output including chips, power batteries, and power systems may become another profit trump card of BYD that breaks the closed-loop ecology.
Note: The material for this article comes from the Internet