The author | gold is not changed
Looking back at 2021, the new energy automobile industry ushered in explosive growth, with annual sales of 3.545 million units, an increase of 159.52% year-on-year.
However, the industry as a whole is also facing a series of challenges, such as rising raw material and logistics costs, and shortage of chip supply.
Car companies are in this ups and downs of the market, crisis and opportunity coexist, we see some people left behind, some people against the trend.
Those who are left behind have their own reasons, and those who break through have similar methods.
Buffett once said this to sum up his investment philosophy:
Life is like a snowball, it's important to find enough snow and long enough slopes.
Those car companies that can currently gain a firm foothold in the shock cycle and even break through the lead have the ability to "snowball".
01
In 2020, Beiqi Blue Valley, the "first stock of China's new energy vehicles", experienced unprecedented difficulties.
Last March's annual report also mentioned:
The new crown epidemic, subsidy decline, fuel vehicle price reduction led to fierce market competition and the company's continuous investment in research and development, resulting in huge losses.
At that time, some people expressed doubts without paying attention to the specific reasons:
This company doesn't seem to work?
A year later, Beiqi Blue Valley responded to everyone's doubts with the results.
On March 25, Beiqi Blue Valley released its 2021 annual financial report, and the data showed:
The company achieved operating income of 8.697 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 65% year-on-year. Cash flow was as high as 5 billion, an increase of 175% year-on-year. Gross profit margin increased significantly from -28.8% in the previous period to nearly 1%.
The most intuitive feeling of these numbers for old gold is:
Beiqi Blue Valley operation shows obvious signs of recovery.
Behind the recovery, it is precisely because it has the ability to "snowball".
In Buffett's investment philosophy of "long slope wet snow", "snow wet" represents high income, and "slope length" means that the income appreciation time is long. Snowballing is an act of compound interest investment.
Projected onto Beiqi Blue Valley, the "snowball" represents sustainable development and growth. It also needs enough wet snow and long enough slopes.
The wet enough snow here is the core competitiveness of Beiqi Blue Valley:
Continuous innovation, and constantly improve the ability to integrate the system.
According to the financial report, Beiqi Blue Valley's research and development expenses in 2021 will be 1.208 billion yuan, an increase of 24.14% year-on-year. R&D investment is expected to double this year to cope with more intense market competition in the next two years.
In the second half of last year, the second phase of the Beiqi Blue Valley Test Center was put into use.
It is understood that the entire test center cost 2.051 billion yuan
At present, it is the world's largest and technologically advanced comprehensive R&D and verification center for electric vehicles and core components.
Among them, the laboratory jointly built with Mercedes-Benz, all equipment imported from Germany, belongs to the world's highest standard battery laboratory.
In the process of rapid development of new energy, test resources have become the winning and losing hand of various car companies.
The investment and completion of the Beiqi Blue Valley Test Center will undoubtedly become its new competitive point.
In addition, beiqi Blue Valley set an additional 5.5 billion yuan in May, all of which was also used to develop the "new four modernization" technology.
In the past year, Beiqi Blue Valley has focused on building a research and development system covering three electrics, new materials and intelligent technologies.
In terms of Sandian, a number of core technologies have achieved innovation and breakthroughs.
Motor efficiency, recovery efficiency and battery energy density have been significantly improved.
The battery electronic control realizes thermal runaway early warning, thermal runaway suppression and tens of thousands of milliseconds of electronic control function safety control.
To sum up:
High integration, high safety, high energy efficiency.
The further improvement of the research and development system has made Beiqi Blue Valley a teacher
At the beginning of last year, Beiqi Blue Valley independently developed and based on the BE21 platform of electronic and electrical architecture, architecture chassis technology and other related intellectual property rights, began to go abroad to empower international car companies.
This is the first time that the mainland automotive industry has exported technology to developed countries.
If you want to create a high-end intelligent electric vehicle, it is not enough to rely on the innovation of the car company itself, it also needs a strong system integration ability.
In recent years, Beiqi Blue Valley has achieved in-depth strategic cooperation with technology giants such as Huawei, Baidu, Magna and CATL through multi-party operations.
At present, there are more than 70 world-class supply chains, and a high-quality circle of friends covering the ecology of the intelligent car industry chain has been initially built.
From technology, manufacturing to supply chain, Beiqi Blue Valley requires itself with international top standards, and its core competitiveness has been enhanced in high standards again and again.
Beiqi Blue Valley also has "wetter snow"
But this is not enough, the snowball wants to roll bigger and bigger, but also needs a long enough slope, that is:
Comprehensive competitiveness.
While continuously consolidating its core competitiveness, Beiqi Blue Valley has begun to build a comprehensive competitiveness:
Products, channels, brands.
Core competitiveness can make a company survive, and comprehensive competitiveness can make it live well.
02
Baiqi, once topped the domestic new energy vehicle sales championship for 7 consecutive years, is also a generation of hegemons.
For various reasons, Beiqi Blue Valley suffered Waterloo in 2020.
Liu Yu, chairman of Beiqi Blue Valley, said:
We lost seven consecutive titles, but we lost only the crown, and the ability we have accumulated over 11 years has not been lost. Today is the low, but also the turning point.
As he said. At present, Beiqi Blue Valley has ushered in a turning point, with the brand Jihu, BAIC has opened the road to rejuvenation.
On October 24, 2020, The first mass-produced pure electric SUV under The Fox was launched.
Named Polar Fox Alpha T, from a visual point of view, the overall style presents a sense of technology that is simple and simple, light and flexible.
The designer of this car is Walter de Silva.
Old Jin checked the past resume of this foreigner, who personally operated many models such as Bugatti and Audi.
Alpha T also has Magna's global luxury manufacturing technology support, the only pure electric adaptive all-terrain four-wheel drive system in China, with 4.6 seconds acceleration of 100 kilometers, with three driving modes of snow, mud and sand.
At the beginning of the listing, it attracted a lot of people's attention, and some people were curious:
Heck, can BAIC still build such a car?
Six months later, the Polar Fox Alpha S appeared at the Shanghai Auto Show.
The appearance is cool, the body is designed with upper steel and lower aluminum, with a large hatchback space, intelligent driving and excellent NVH brought by the luxury car driving texture.
Luxury electric cars have, Alpha S has. Luxury electric cars do not have, Alpha S also has.
For example, its ultra-long battery life.
Buying new energy vehicles, everyone's biggest pain point:
How far does a charge run?
Autohome once held a real mileage measurement program for new energy vehicles, in which 15 new energy vehicles participated, such as Mercedes-Benz EQC, BMW ix3, Tesla Model Y and other powerful models participated.
In the end, the Polar Fox Alpha S had the longest range, reaching 679.4km. The mileage retention rate is about 96%, which is the No.1 mileage retention rate of domestic vehicles.
The god of the First World War can be called the ceiling of real endurance.
On October 19 last year, the Polar Fox Alpha S also won two awards for its innovative use of battery & body safety and new materials:
"2021 China Top Ten Body Award" and "2021 China Top Ten Body Best Material Award".
Nowadays, Polar Fox Alpha S and Alpha T work together to impact the high-end market of new energy vehicles.
According to the financial report, the new HI version of the Polar Fox Alpha S cooperated by Beiqi Blue Valley and Huawei has been tested internally at the end of 2021.
This indicates that the long-awaited king fried products are finally coming.
Counting the highlights of the new HI version of the Polar Fox Alpha S, you can find a number of industry "firsts":
The first mass-produced Huawei ADS intelligent driving model. The first high-end pure power production sedan equipped with Huawei's smart cockpit- Hongmeng car machine OS. The first 750V high voltage platform super electric product.
With the launch of the new HI version of Alpha S, Beiqi Blue Valley has more confidence.
But whether a car can sell well is not something that the product can do.
Beiqi Blue Valley has been secretive about the sales disclosure of the Polar Fox for a long time.
The amount of water a barrel can hold does not depend on the longest plank, but on the shortest one.
Products, brands, and channels are all wooden boards of Beiqi Blue Valley.
Relative to the product, the channel and brand are the shortcomings of Beiqi Blue Valley, and these two "wooden boards" also determine the sales trend of the car to a large extent.
However, through this financial report, Lao Jin found that these shortcomings began to be slowly filled.
03
As of the end of February, Jihu Automobile has opened 92 stores. It is planned to build 150 by the end of June, reaching 186 throughout the year.
By 2025, Jihu is expected to cover more than 100 cities and more than 380 outlets of marketing service network size.
Behind the sales of automobiles, the most critical thing is the channel competition.
The Polar Fox started late, and now it can only accelerate desperately and catch up.
Not only stores, but also Jihu exclusive supercharge stations, mobile overcharge service vehicles, and battery power maintenance service centers have blossomed across the country.
Up to now, 1114 certified charging stations covering 22 cities have been put into operation.
Only enough offline network can reassure customers and awareness will go up.
Shop channels, shop charging/maintenance service outlets, is hard work, tired work, but this is also the only way for Ji fox to grow up.
Beiqi Blue Valley actively promotes offline experience services such as car terminals, charging piles, and charging services, and at the same time, online services have not slackened in the slightest.
In today's intelligent automobile, the iterative speed of OTA upgrade has become an important criterion for measuring the research and development strength of car companies.
In more than a year, Polar Fox has completed 7 OTA upgrades, an average of less than 2 months.
A total of 92 new and optimized upgrades have been completed, and in terms of function realization and user demand solutions, Jihu has demonstrated its research and development strength and sincerity.
At present, the high-end intelligent electric vehicle track where Jihu is located, there are more and more new "old" players, and the competition is fierce.
It is crucial to let more people know and be willing to know about this brand.
Wang Qiufeng, president of Jihu, said:
2021 is the first full year of the Jihu brand, and it will not pay too much attention to sales data, and will seek to enhance brand awareness and reputation.
In the annual report, we can also see baic's emphasis on the Jihu brand and the degree of resource investment.
In 2021, Polar Fox launched an immersive driving experience camp event:
Polar Fox Action.
Set plot, art, food, mission in one, in the way of test drive experience to let users personally feel the charm of Jihu products.
The time span is more than 3 months, and it is spread across 9 major cities in China.
According to statistics, the total number of people attending the event was 4761, 92 units were ordered/ordered on the spot, and the sales conversion rate was 3.84%.
Judging from the results, from the planning, implementation and finale of the Polar Fox Action, the Marketing Team of Extreme Fox, headed by Wang Qiufeng, still spent a lot of thought.
In addition to the Polar Fox Action, integrated marketing such as Ice Under the City, MountainTop Coffee, and Polar Fox Planet Street Party is also in full swing.
In the past year, the recognition of the BAIC Jihu brand has been greatly improved.
Building a brand is hard, and building a successful brand is even harder.
So what?
As the Polar Fox brand said slogan:
Born to break the boundary, why not.
04
In the past two years, in order to adapt to market changes, Beiqi Blue Valley has carried out a large knife and axe reform.
Liu Yu was appointed as the chairman of the board, Dai Kangwei as the general manager, and Fan Jingtao as the deputy general manager, establishing a new leadership team known for technology and marketing.
At the end of last year, BAIC also set up a team of 700 people. It is used to dig deeper into user needs and provide better services and products.
Each sector of Beiqi Blue Valley has also begun to simulate the operation body, forming a closed loop of cost in all development activities. Let all employees have a sense of cost, own the concept of cost and cost.
It can be seen that since losing the crown of new energy sales, Beiqi Blue Valley has held its breath in its heart.
Next, BAIC will continue to focus on the high-end market and use the Jihu brand to drive the overall competitiveness of the Baiqi Blue Valley market.
At the annual report performance meeting, executives said that the annual sales of all models of Jihu strive to reach 40,000 units, and the overall annual sales of Beiqi Blue Valley reach 100,000 units, thus smoothly accelerating the speed on the new energy track.
After laying the long slope, BAIC BJEV is estimated to accelerate the snowball.
This company reminds Old Jin of a line:
Three years, I waited three years, just to wait for an opportunity, I'm not trying to prove how great I am, I just want to tell people that what I lost, I will definitely get it back.