Editor: Yuan Xie Peach
【New Zhiyuan Guide】The fire of layoffs and cost reduction has now spread to the new forces of car manufacturing? Xiaopeng is said to have laid off two rounds of employees, and the ideal rumor is about to start, and even the executives of Weilai are jumping ship.
Are the new car-making forces having a hard time?
Some time ago, the Internet giants used the layoff "big sickle" to harvest one stubble after another of high-paying dreams.
Nowadays, the fire of layoffs has reached the field of new energy vehicles.
Layoffs of new car-making forces: Xiaopeng has laid off employees for two rounds, and the ideal has also followed?
Not to mention other start-up companies that spin up and disappear and PPT car manufacturing, the three "Li Xiaowei" in the new car-making forces will also start laying off employees in 2022
Recently, some netizens broke the news on the pulse of workplace social software: Ideal Auto will lay off 15% of employees in the second quarter of 2022, using the last-place elimination system.
According to the netizen revealed: "The layoff plan has been written into the OKR of founder Li Xiang, and the company is currently taking stock of labor costs and working hours, and from next month, everyone's working hours will be sorted from high to bottom, and who ranks last is directly eliminated."
The highest praise for this is shown above: "Ordering of working hours... Obviously let the rest roll up."
Some pulse netizens broke the news, saying that the reason for the layoffs of the ideal car was that "the boss manpower review found that there were too many P7 and P8".
In the same topic of the pulse, in addition to the ideal car, Xiaopeng was also exposed to the news of layoffs, and some Xiaopeng automobile employees said under the topic that Xiaopeng had carried out two rounds of layoffs years later.
According to the content of the news, the layoff ratio of some departments of Xiaopeng Automobile is as high as 30%-50%.
For Xiaopeng's layoffs, a large number of Xiaopeng Automobile employees confirmed the authenticity under the topic.
In early March 2022, Ideal Auto's owner Li Xiang posted a Weibo post praising Ideal Auto's OKR system achievements.
But now, combined with the rumors of layoffs, this microblog has also been given a new interpretation: Li thinks that this is letting go.
Many people are wondering why the new car-making forces, which have not been short of money, have actually begun to join the layoff team.
Some pulse netizens believe that at present, the new forces of car manufacturing are still in the stage of burning money, every car sold is in the upside down money, high research and development costs and labor costs must be "internal brakes".
However, in 2020, when the new crown has just arrived, there is a veteran who serves in the new car-making forces, which is also in line with the present:
"Unemployment has hit a new high, economic development is difficult, under this premise, it is not objective to say that the departure of new car-making forces is not objective, and everyone knows that it is very painful now."
Executives are also unstable
In addition to the ordinary workers to be optimized, the executives with teams in the head enterprises of the new car-making forces are now also unstable.
According to the Observer Network reported on April 7, 2022, Zhang Jianyong, assistant vice president of autonomous driving (AVP) of NIO, will leave his job in the near future to end his 7-year career in NIO.
The Observer Network asked Weilai Automobile for verification for this reason. Weilai officials have not yet responded, but some employees privately revealed, "(Zhang Jianyong) is still in the current state of employment, but the internal official announcement has been made, and a plenary meeting has been held."
In the second half of 2022, there is news that Zhang Jianyong will leave, but Weilai CEO Li Bin denies it.
The reasons for Zhang Jianyong's departure are various.
Some people said that Zhang Jian participated in the new car computing chip entrepreneurial project, and Weilai was also interested in investing, and the two may maintain a cooperative relationship in the future.
There are also people who feel that the business of the Shanghai systems engineering team led by Zhang Jianyong feels that the business is squeezed and there is a resource conflict with the Beijing algorithm team. Some employees have jumped to other car companies.
With the departure of Zhang Jianyong, the R&D team of nearly 400 people under his rule will also face adjustments. According to the observation network report, the hardware-related business of Zhang Jianyong's team will enter the White Sword team, the operation business will be temporarily independent, and the rest of the business will be integrated into the shanghai automatic driving algorithm team.
"Li Xiaowei" is still losing money to sell cars
At the beginning of 2022, the last year's financial reports of Xiaopeng, Weilai and Ideal, the three head companies of the new car-making forces, were released one after another. In 2021, "Li Xiaowei" will enter mass production, with an annual delivery volume of nearly 100,000 vehicles.
However, the increase in sales still did not make the new car-making force Yusanjia turn a profit. In 2021, "Li Xiaowei" is still a net loss.
Xiaopeng Automobile had the highest delivery volume, but its net loss was also the highest among the three, with a net loss of 4.863 billion yuan, an increase of 78.0% over the previous year. "Net loss of nearly $50,000 per car sold" became the most commonly used headline for related articles.
NIO began to contract losses: the net loss in 2021 was 4.016 billion, down 24.3% from the previous year.
Ideal Auto's net loss was 321 million yuan, the lowest amount of loss, but it increased by 112% year-on-year.
From the perspective of financial report data, while revenue and gross profit have increased, the net losses of the three new forces have expanded, which is the growth of research and development expenses and sales, general and administrative expenses.
In the vernacular, the general trend of new car-making forces burning money for sales and "selling cars at a loss" has not really changed. No matter how strong the financing ability is, it cannot hide the reality that the new car-making forces do not make money.
The supply chain crisis affects the delivery capacity of "Li Xiaowei"
Due to the supply chain crisis caused by major factors such as the new crown, the current vehicle order delivery capacity of "Li Xiaowei" is limited due to the supply of parts.
Qin Lihong, co-founder of Weilai, once said, "I don't count the delivery targets this year, the supply chain has the final say, and how much to pay for the production."
Xiaopeng Motors has also said that there are problems in order delivery in 2021, and a key factor is that many of the models in the order are models that use lithium iron phosphate batteries, but they cannot be delivered due to the limited production capacity of suppliers.
Xiaopeng Automobile's official apology notice said: "Due to the impact of the epidemic, the industry is facing an extreme shortage of supply of major components including lithium iron phosphate batteries, which has also brought great uncertainty to the production of Xiaopeng P5 460 models, resulting in the timely delivery of 460 model orders within the expected delivery cycle, for which we apologize."
Shen Yanan, co-founder and president of Ideal Automobile, also said on the conference call that more suitable suppliers should be found to improve production flexibility.
The most significant is the chip, china's domestic high-computing power intelligent car chip has been in a state of shortage.
As a result, Xiaopeng Motors had to launch the Xiaopeng P7 model with a radar-less and radar-less solution to ensure stable delivery.
However, there is an unabated lack of cores, so that xiaopeng P5 models also have to launch a core shortage delivery program. Consumers who choose this option will be compensated by giving XPLIOT3.0/3.5 assisted driving software worth 25,000 yuan.
Chip shortages are not just affected by Xiaopeng. Since August 2021, ideal cars have also reported the news of insufficient core production capacity.
In September 2021, Ideal Auto confirmed this news by launching the "Less Millimeter Wave Radar Delivery Program" for this purpose. In order to guide consumers to accept the plan, Ideal Auto announced that it will give the owner of the choice 3 radar a lifetime warranty and 10,000 ideal points, if the user does not choose the 3 radar model, it will be necessary to wait until December to mention the full version of the 5 radar model.
In the half moon, the Weilai model had two fatal impacts in a row, and the auxiliary driving function was in danger
In addition to these enterprise-level worries, the new car-making power products that customers have in hand are also quite hanging.
At more than 5:00 a.m. on July 30, 2021, on Lingang Avenue in Shanghai's Pudong New Area, a black WEILAI EC6 ignited a fire after hitting the isolated stone pier, killing the owner of the car.
According to the obituary, at 2 p.m. on August 12, 2021, Lin Wenqin, founder of Shangshan Ruoshui Investment Management Company, founder of Yitong Tianxia Catering Management Company, and founder of Meiyihao Brand Management Company, drove a WEILAI ES8 car to enable automatic driving function (NOP pilot status), and unfortunately died in a traffic accident in the Hanjiang section of Shenhai Expressway, tragically passing away at the age of 31.
In half a month, Weilai's car has produced two crashes that killed the owner, and the details of the accident at the end of July 2021 are unknown, but the details of the accident in August 2021 are people can't help but ponder.
People familiar with the matter said that at the time of the incident, the Weilai ES8 driven by Lin Wenqin was indeed in a NOP open state. "This is confirmation from the NIO staff. The reason why this point is emphasized in the obituary is also to remind the majority of riders to use the NOP pilot function cautiously."
According to Zhang Bo, general manager of Weilai Xiamen Regional Company, and the police who handled the accident personally confirmed to securities daily that the highway administration vehicle that was rear-ended at that time was undergoing ice cream collection operations, and the owner used the NOP pilot auxiliary function.
As a result, the core cause of the accident is that Weilai's NOP system cannot recognize slow or stationary objects in front of it, from ice cream cones to garbage trucks.
What is the new car-making force now?
Some people say that in 2022, the new forces of car manufacturing will be opened head-on!
All along, the "Big Brother of the United States" Tesla can be described as a lot of money. Similarly, a group of new domestic car-making forces represented by Xiaopeng, Ideal, and Weilai have also ushered in rapid development.
At the beginning of the new year in 2022, the top three of "Wei Xiaoli" continued to sell more than 10,000 per month, and the sales volume of 2021 was approaching the 100,000 mark.
In fact, as early as 2014/2015, many "new forces" appeared, but most of them ended in PPT car manufacturing.
In 2021, Lei Jun made a desperate bet, officially announced that Xiaomi joined the car, and will invest 10 billion US dollars in the next ten years. The addition of Millet has set off a wave of new energy car-making hot air.
Image source: Network
Not only that, looking back at 2021, Baidu, Tencent, and Huawei have reported that they want to join the car-making array. To say that there are many volumes, just look at so many companies announcing the construction of cars, you can perceive one or two.
In 2022, the sales positions of these new car-making forces have changed and changed, directly killing a dark horse Nezha car.
Sales of new car-making forces in the first quarter of 2022
In March alone, Nezha Automobile and Zero Run Car have entered the first echelon. Nezha Automobile became the second place in the sales list of new car-making forces.
In March, NIO delivered 9,985 vehicles, ranking 5th. Weilai's performance is somewhat puzzling, not only the monthly sales have not broken through 10,000, the year-on-year growth rate is also very slow, and even zero runs have broken through 10,000 for the first time.
It seems that the new car-making force "Wei Xiaoli" is really not having a good time. Are there any challenges you are currently facing?
According to reports, at present, they have encountered some difficulties in delivery, and the delivery cycle is constantly lengthened. Although Xiaopeng's delivery volume ranks first, it has been complained by many car owners because of the delay in delivery.
At the end of the day, delivery is a problem in the supply chain, caused by limited supply of parts.
In addition, its research and development road is also facing difficulties. Take chips, for example, high-power chips have been in short supply.
Despite the challenges, there are also unlimited opportunities for new energy vehicles in the future.
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