Aiways cars, "fire"

Shentucar original

Trainee Author | Liu Dandan

Edit | dawn

Aichi "fire", literally "fire".

On the morning of April 5, Aiways Automobile announced on the official Weibo that the background of aiways automotive system received a thermal runaway alarm message of an Aiways U5 during charging.

The "thermal runaway" in the announcement, that is, the spontaneous combustion of the vehicle. This accident that occurs on electric vehicles from time to time can trigger a discussion on the whole network every time and stir the tense nerves of countless consumers. But what is interesting is that the spontaneous combustion of Aichi has not been fermented on the public opinion side, and as of press time, there are only 20 comments under the official micro-announcement of Aichi.

Even such a major event as spontaneous combustion cannot attract people's attention, which also reflects the dismal status quo of Aichi from the side. However, it is not strange that consumers do not pay attention to it, founded in 2017, Aiways, when the highest domestic monthly sales, is only a three-digit level, which really belongs to the "invisible person" of the automobile market.

Aiways Automobile, this and "Wei Xiaoli" front and rear feet appeared, and even counted as the first batch of new car-making brand in China, after this "fire", can it continue to stand?

Spontaneous combustion also does not burn attention

According to public reports, on the morning of April 5, in the electric vehicle charging station next to Birch Forest Road in Chengdu's Jinjiang District, an electric vehicle spontaneously combusted, and the fire quickly engulfed the vehicle, but fortunately did not cause casualties.

Source / Network

Subsequently, the vehicle was confirmed to be Aiways U5, and Aiways Automobile also issued an announcement on the official micro-micro in response that it had formed a joint investigation team with the technical experts and service teams of relevant partners to actively cooperate with relevant departments to investigate the cause of the accident and deal with the follow-up process. No further disclosure has been made at this time.

New energy vehicles fire, spontaneous combustion, explosion, for everyone, is no longer a new topic. From Tesla, Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng, Weima, etc. in the new car brands, to the traditional car brands Geely, Changan, BYD, BAIC, etc., there have been spontaneous combustion incidents in vehicles.

The causes of accidents known to be investigated are diverse, ranging from accidents and accidents to battery quality or car design. However, the survey report full of professional terms is too obscure for ordinary consumers, and in everyone's mind, "spontaneous combustion" is almost equal to "product unsafe".

Although the results of the investigation into the Aichi spontaneous combustion accident have not yet come out, most of the comments in the comment area under the relevant information on Weibo are voices of doubt.

Source / Weibo

Aichi is mired in controversy, but this is not the first time it has faced such a situation.

In December 2019, the European E-NCAP released the crash test results, showing that aiways U5, the first mass-produced intermediate intelligent pure electric SUV under Aiways, only received a Samsung safety evaluation in the collision.

As an authoritative third-party safety certification body in the European Union, the European E-NCAP is the highest rating of five stars, and its tests are mainly tested from four dimensions: occupant protection, child protection, pedestrian protection and safety systems. The AIWAYS U5 scored 73% for adult occupants, 70% for child occupants, 45% for disadvantaged road users (VRU) and 55% for safety assists.

Zhang Xiang, dean of the New Energy Vehicle Technology Research Institute of Jiangxi New Energy Technology Vocational College and an automobile analyst, told Shentu: "The pedestrian protection score of 45% is a very poor result, which shows that car companies have insufficient investment or insufficient level in this area when developing products; 55% safety assistance means that AIWAYS' function in this aspect is a weakness of its products and plays little role in crash testing." Overall, Samsung is not a good score. ”

In this test, MG HS and MG EZS, which are also domestic brands, have received five-star evaluations. Compared with these two products, Aichi is slightly inferior.

What is more interesting is that at the level of communication, AIWAYS has always emphasized its own Ashkenazi genes, and the Shangrao super smart factory jointly built with Siemens of Germany is externally declared to be a "physical + digital" super smart factory built with the German Industry 4.0 standard. In the official website of AIWAYS Automobile, "super steel cage body five-star + safety protection" and "intelligent driving active safety protection" have also been its selling points.

This huge discrepancy between official publicity and test scores casts a layer of security doubts on the Aichi U5 from the start.

Perhaps for this reason, in the more than two years since the listing of the Aichi U5, the enthusiasm of domestic consumers for Aichi is not high. Baidu index shows that in the past six months, the highest search index of AIWAYS is the day of spontaneous combustion, baidu index is 1516, the overall daily average is 515, and the overall daily average of WEILAI is 3043.

Referring to Aichi, a consumer who had gone to the experience center to see the real car said to Shentu: "There is no memory point, the product is too poorly made." ”

Got up early and rushed to a late set

As one of the earliest batch of new car manufacturers in China, AIWAYS is not an unfavorable start. On the contrary, in the early days of the brand, there were not a few people who were optimistic about Aichi.

In October 2016, Fu Qianglian, former president and CEO of Volvo Cars (China) Sales Co., Ltd., together with Tencent and others, jointly funded the establishment of a company called AIWAYS Yiwei, and announced a total investment of 13.3 billion yuan. In February 2017, AIWAYS Washi Was born.

In addition to winning the favor of Tencent at the beginning of the capital circle, in the automotive circle, AIWAYS has also attracted many executives of traditional car companies to join. Gu Feng, former CFO of SAIC Motor, Roland Gumpert, the "father of Audi quattro", and Cai Jianjun, a tough general responsible for marketing in many car companies, have all taken up new positions. It is precisely for this reason that AIWAYS was once regarded as a representative of the senior executives of traditional car companies.

After the completion of the team formation, after more than a year of consultation, in August 2019, AIWAYS Automobile, Jiangling Group and Changan Automobile reached a tripartite cooperation to reorganize Jiangling Holdings, and AIWAYS officially obtained the qualification of automobile manufacturing. Before obtaining the car-making qualification, AIWAYS' first product, AIWAYS U5, was officially released, and 4 months after the qualification arrived, AIWAYS U5 was officially listed in Wanning, Hainan.

On the beach in Shimei Bay, Aiways Not only announced the delivery of the market, but also announced the performance of AIWAYS in overseas markets: the AIWAYS U5 has obtained the EU model type certification, and the first batch of AIWAYS U5 sold to Europe has been completed in St. Gallen, Switzerland, Munich, Germany, Ingolstadt and other places.

The domestic and EU markets were delivered at the same time, which once made Aichi a star enterprise at that time. But the car is not on paper, the mass production and delivery of the new car is just a warm-up before the race, and the real exam is judged by the consumer.

Source / @AIWAYS Auto

A reality that cannot be ignored in 2019 is that in the price range of more than 250,000, Tesla Model 3 has achieved domestic and ideal ONE listing, with a range of more than 650 kilometers and an L3 level of automatic driving function, the Xiaopeng P7 has opened the reservation, and the Two models of Weilai ES8 and ES6 have been mass-produced and delivered; in the 150,000 yuan range, zero-run S01 and Xiaopeng G3 have been delivered for about a year. In contrast, the Aichi U5, which has a price range of 197,900-292,100 yuan and a range of 503 kilometers after subsidies, does not have much of a bright spot.

For the Aichi U5, Aichi has high hopes internally. Aiways Automobile's goal for 2020 is to become the head of the new brand and the first place in the sales volume of the new car manufacturing force. However, according to data from the Association, aiways' sales in the Chinese market in 2020 will be 2,600 units, while the highest sales volume among new car manufacturers has reached 43,700 units.

In order to complete the sales target, at the end of 2020, AIWAYS was exposed to the implementation of the "executives with goods full marketing" program, which triggered many discussions from the outside world. However, even if all employees start selling cars, it has little effect on AIWAYS. According to Sohu data, aiways sold a total of 2698 vehicles in China in 2021; from January to February 2022, AIWAYS sold a total of 239 vehicles.

In the overseas markets that AIWAYS insists on, the latest data released by AIWAYS shows that as of January 20, 2022, AIWAYS has exported a total of 2,783 units, of which 1,676 units were exported in 2021; as of March 16, AIWAYS Auto's business has expanded to 15 countries around the world.

For the overseas layout of Aichi, Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the All-China Passenger Transport Association, affirmed Aichi's thinking, and he said to Shentu: "Export is a very good practice, and the main household models like Aichi may have a certain space for development in the European market." ”

However, in Zhang Xiang's view, Aichi has not opened the European market at present. "Aiways has exported more than 2,000 vehicles in total, and the transportation costs behind this, the funds needed for the construction and maintenance of the after-sales network are not small, and Aiways should sell one at a loss overseas."

"There are many reasons for the dismal sales, compared with the head companies like Wei Xiaoli, Aiways is more like a traditional car company." Around the sales situation of AIWAYS at home and abroad, Zhang Xiang told Shentu that at the product level, AIWAYS U5 performed decently in terms of automatic driving and mileage, lacked core technology and memory points, and failed to stand out in the 200,000-level market.

At the marketing level, the leaders and brand awareness of Aichi are not as good as the other three, and most of aiways' experience stores are opened in relatively remote places, which is behind the problem of marketing investment and playing style. In the overseas market, there are traditional car companies such as Volkswagen and Renault, and the European market is also fiercely competitive, and as a Chinese brand, AIWAYS wants to achieve Localized Adaptive Design in Europe itself is a problem.

In a backwater battle, the chairman position was exchanged for financing

The product has no memory point, consumers do not buy it, domestic and foreign sales do not go up, and the company's bad prospects cannot attract new investment. Car manufacturing is a capital-intensive war, before relying on car sales to obtain positive cash flow, new car brands can only rely on financing to survive, and Aichi is not rich in terms of funds.

Since 2020, AIWAYS has been exposed one after another in arrears of employee year-end bonuses, supplier payments, and the departure of executive vice president Cai Jianjun, CEO Gu Feng and many other senior executives. On various social apps, there are not a few complaints about the 15 salaries of AIWAYS employees, and many bloggers use words such as "be sure to think twice" and "don't come" to advise everyone to be cautious about AIWAYS offers.

Source / Pulse

In terms of product release, the listing date of AIWAYS' second product, U6, has also been repeatedly postponed from the fourth quarter of 2021 and has not yet been listed. In such a dilemma, what AIWAYS needs most is capital injection.

Tianyancha shows that since 2016, AIWAYS Has experienced 8 rounds of financing, of which Didi Chuxing and Ningde Era have appeared in recent rounds, but the amount of these two rounds of financing has not been disclosed. Some people believe that investing in AIWAYS is more like the "wide net" behavior of Didi Chuxing and the Ningde era.

Source / Sky Eye Check

The capital party that really wants to revitalize Aichi is Chen Xuanlin and its Dongbai Group, since the end of 2017, Chen Xuanlin has participated in many rounds of financing for Aichi, and in January this year, Chen Xuanlin once again injected capital into Aichi. However, with the arrival of the latest round of hundreds of millions of dollars in financing, AIWAYS ushered in a major change of management. According to the latest information on the official website of AIWAYS Automobile, founder Fu Qiang was transferred from chairman to president of the company, Chen Xuanlin, a post-80s investor, served as the new chairman of the company, and Zhang Yang, former vice president of the auto industry development of Weilai, served as CEO.

For this personnel change, the outside world believes that it is a manifestation of the dissatisfaction of investors with the status quo of Aichi. Fu Qiang responded: "Chen Xuanlin has rich experience in investment and operation in the automotive industry, and AIWAYS Automobile and its founder team have repeatedly invited Mr. Chen Xuanlin to deeply participate in the company's equity investment and daily operations. At present, it has been nearly 3 months since the adjustment of the top management, and when Shentu asked aiways about the latest main direction of the three senior executives from Aiways Automobile, the answer was that "the information that has not been released to the public has not yet been released."

However, the new round of financing seems to be beginning to take effect, and Shentu learned from Aiways Automobile that Aiways has made more progress in overseas markets recently, and the second model will land in the European market within 6 years. In AIWAYS' expectations, U6 will help Aichi achieve its sales target of over 10,000 in the European market.

Whether the U6 listing will bring improvement to Aiways will take time to verify. But in Zhang Xiang's view: "The biggest problem of AIWAYS is that it has missed the best development period. He believes that in 2020, when U5 fails to open the market, the best way is to quickly launch U6, and AIWAYS is indeed ready to do so, but perhaps limited by funds, the U6 listing date has been postponed until this year.

"During the absence of U6, The pattern of China's new energy market has initially taken shape, with Brands such as Tesla, Wei Xiaoli and Nezha leading the way, and xiaomi and Jidu ready to go, and how AICHI can stand out needs to be rethought." Zhang Xiang pointed out that at the capital level outside the product, the entry of investors and the replacement of the chairman can already be seen as a battle against the water, if Aichi still can not improve, there may not be a new capital to Aichi to continue life, leaving Aichi with few opportunities.

What is the future of Aichi, and let the bullets fly a little longer, but the competition in the new energy track is increasing day by day, coupled with the impact of spontaneous combustion, the future of Aichi is uncertain.

*The caption image is from @AIWAYS Auto.