Written | Cold Zelin
Edit the | Wang Pan
Around the turn of the millennium, the domestic automotive industry has promoted the rapid growth of the entire Chinese automotive market for more than 20 years through the replacement of technology through the market and the establishment of a large number of joint ventures.
Joint ventures and cooperation are the main themes of this era.
After 2010, due to the guidance of national policies and the need for energy structure adjustment, a large number of funds and talents began to pour into the new energy car industry, although they also experienced pain and chaos, but fortunately, they finally completed their start.
A number of new energy car companies led by Wei Xiaoli came into being, and at the same time, they also continued to promote the turn of traditional car companies. However, in the stage of rapid growth of new energy, the historical legacy system of joint venture has not disappeared with the change of power model and business model, but unlike the previous Sino-foreign joint ventures, it has now become a cooperation between traditional car companies and Internet companies, and cooperation between old forces and new forces.
NIO has joined hands with Changan and GAC to establish a joint venture to establish Changan NIO and GAC NIO, and SAIC and Ali, Geely and Baidu have jointly established two brands, Zhiji Automobile and Jidu Automobile. In addition, there are cases of in-depth cooperation, such as Baidu and WM, Huawei and Jihu, Xilisi, and AITO.
But so far, these new brands with golden spoons have not shown a bright performance, and even less than most of the new forces of waist car manufacturing. The sales volume that has been completed in mass production is not good, and the unfinished mass production is also mixed and questioned, which makes people wonder whether the new car 1+1 can be greater than 2?
One side is fanatical, the other side is deserted
In the early morning of November 7, 2021, EDG, a Chinese LPL team in Iceland, defeated the DK team in the LCK division 3:2. For a time, "We are champions" swept the live broadcast room and social media, and the cheers also echoed in the community, colleges and universities and streets.
The peak popularity peak during the B station S11 event reached 500 million, and the popularity of EDG on almost every platform of Zhihu, Weibo, Douyin, and Kuaishou was difficult to dissipate for a long time. And this is an excellent exposure opportunity for brands.
In fact, a number of wealthy car companies have long bet on their own optimistic teams, BMW sponsored FPX, T1, C9, G2, Lynk & Co sponsored LNG, Audi chose TES, and behind the champion team EDG, is a brand that most people have never heard of - Co-creation.
The brand is so "niche", its first production model, the Cochuang 007, has been on the market for nearly two years, and the total sales volume is only 1013 units. After EDG won the championship, its new model Z03 under the name of "champion car" did usher in a wave of peaks, but when the heat faded, sales fell sharply, from 1500+ to 145 units in only one month.
How does such dismal sales support the car company's participation in the "game of the rich"?
According to the enterprise investigation of equity penetration, the largest shareholder of Hechuang Automobile is "Guangdong Zhutou Intelligent Technology Investment Co., Ltd.", and the actual controller is Zhu Yihang, who is also the founder of the EDG Club. Zhu Yihang's father is the founder of Hopson Chuangzhan Group, and his family ranks 312th in the 2021 Hurun Global Rich List.
However, Hechuang Automobile was not actually created by Zhu Yihang, formerly known as GAC Weilai, and was jointly invested in 2018 by the two companies of Weilai and GAC, each accounting for 45% of the shares. At the beginning of 2021, Guangzhou Zhutou Intelligent Technology Investment Co., Ltd. entered the market through a strategic investment of 1.923 billion yuan and became its largest shareholder.
The new forces, state-owned enterprises, real estate families, and brands that have entered the market successively have not stirred up a single drop of water in the new energy market.
In the same situation, the brands also have Polar Fox and Xilisi, all of which have been famous for a while because of Huawei's "blessing", but in stark contrast to the actual sales, Xilis sold about 8,000 units last year, and Polar Fox delivered only 4993 units in the whole year.
At the same time, with the release of AiTO, a new brand of Cooperation with Xilix, sales of Xilis SF5 have dropped rapidly from 1,089 units in December last year to 2 units in January this year.
The release of the Q&I M5 will also make the Polar Fox, which has been silent for nearly a year, once again be pushed to the forefront, when the Polar Fox Alpha S hi version gained a huge voice by publicizing huawei's Hongmeng system, automatic driving system and the "three-piece set" of Huawei channels.
However, the Alpha S hi version has "jumped tickets" many times since the small-scale internal delivery at the end of last year, and as of press time, it has not been delivered, and at the end of January, the only new alpha S HI version of the new car in the country entered Huawei's first direct store in Beijing Yintai, and it has not been rolled out on a large scale of offline channels, and its claimed first car equipped with the Hongmeng system has also become a phantom.
Momentum, for most 1 + 1 brands is not difficult, such as the "novice protection period" can generally more or less inherit a certain amount of traffic from the parent company, but when the bustle can not be sustained, then the remaining cold is inevitably lamentable.
Each has its own abacus
In fact, today's joint ventures or cooperation between new and old forces can still be seen as market-for-technology. Squeezed out of foreign capital, the domestic traditional OEMs have not been liberated, except for BYD, which is buried in its own work, it seems that none of them can fight at the moment.
The reason is that the former joint venture brand is facing a completely untapped market, and the three major pieces of fuel vehicles are barriers built by foreign capital, which also makes the independent three geely, BYD and Great Wall unable to surpass the joint venture brand in terms of sales.
In the current new energy market, BYD and Ningde era have squeezed into the world's first echelon; the drive motor has independently developed products to meet the needs of new energy vehicles, such as BYD and Huayu Electric, which are used in the whole series of DM-i and Feifan ER6 flat motor. Although there is a gap with the global echelon in terms of peak speed, power density and efficiency as a whole, some technologies are also acquired through independent research and development and acquisition.
In terms of shipments, the Chinese market currently provides a solid guarantee for the development of domestic brands and upstream and downstream industries, and in 2021, China's new energy vehicle sales volume will reach 2.9398 million, ranking first, accounting for 45% of the global new energy passenger car market share.
Therefore, in the high-growth market with a lower threshold than in the era of fuel vehicles, why do car companies choose to join hands to build brands? Behind this, each has its own abacus.
As early as the beginning of the establishment of Changan Weilai, a sentence of Zhu Huarong, president of Chang'an, pointed out the appeal of traditional OEMs: "Instead of exploring alone, it is better to find a knowledgeable partner." ”
In 2018, Weilai, which has not yet experienced the "darkest moment", established Changan Weilai and GAC Weilai with Changan and GAC Weilai respectively, and adopted the same approach in the equity structure, that is, the traditional OEMs and WEILAI each held 45% of the shares, and the other 10% was held by the senior management team.
At first glance, it seems to reflect the meaning of equal cooperation, but when you think about it, there is also the meaning of mutual restraint.
Among the two companies, GAC Weilai moved more quickly, quickly releasing the first concept car and the HYCAN co-creation brand just one year after its establishment, while Changan Weilai released its first model nearly 3 years after its establishment.
In today's view, the speed of the two joint ventures is different, and it depends more on the traditional OEM side.
GAC established GAC New Energy (later renamed Aeon) before cooperating with NIO, so it was able to quickly launch new models based on the existing GEP2.0 platform. The first production car, the HYCAN007, is produced in the same motor, battery and AION LX, and is produced in line with GAC New Energy.
For gac new energy, which is just starting out, it can actually effectively improve capacity utilization, reduce costs, and learn the operating model of the new forces.
At that time, Hechuang 007 was delivered by NIO Center in some cities, and also enjoyed WEILA's one-click power-up service and energy supply system. For Weilai, the power exchange mode and user thinking implemented in the early days also need a large number of cases to verify.
However, when there is a conflict of interest between the respective brands and the "co-creation" brand, cooperation may become a constraint.
In May 2020, Hechuang 007 officially opened for delivery, but at that time, GAC New Energy's plant only had a production capacity of 100,000, and its Aian brand already had Eian S, LX, V and a model that was about to be launched, and the production capacity was stretched.
Liao Bing, former CEO of GAC Weilai, revealed in an interview at the time that from May to August, gac motor's new energy plant only produced nearly 400 Hechuang 007s.
The other major shareholder of GAC Weilai, Weilai, is facing a serious financial crisis in 2019 and 2020, and it is also unable to lend a helping hand.
At the beginning of the following year, Liao Bing left GAC Weilai to start Free Automobile, and mentioned in a media interview, "The capital structure of GAC Weilai determines that it will have great constraints in all aspects." The resources given by shareholders do not allow the company to be satisfied. ”
After Changan Weilai and GAC Weilai, there will be no new and old OEMs joint venture cases in the new energy market, but the cooperation between the Internet and OEMs will begin to deepen after 2020.
Internet entry
"Whether from the perspective of sales or the current capital market, 2020 is the first year of smart cars, just like the opening of the smartphone era in 2010." This is the first paragraph he Xiaopeng wrote on social platforms in 2020.
This year, Weilai released the NOP pilot assistance, Xiaopeng's future sales force P7 began to deliver, but also for its intelligent label of a model, and Tesla's market value has surpassed BMW, Volkswagen, Toyota ranked first in the world, at the end of the year its total market value was once equivalent to three Toyotas.
At this time, Internet companies specializing in software and traditional car companies began to sit still, first SAIC and Ali set up Zhiji Automobile, Baidu, which never built cars, also joined hands with Geely to establish Jidu Automobile, after which Huawei successively threw out two models of Cyrlis SF5 and Polar Fox Alpha S hi edition, and announced cooperation with GAC Weilai and Avita (formerly known as Changan Weilai).
In fact, such a cooperation logic is also very simple, the traditional OEMs are insufficient in software capabilities, and they want to quickly make up for the shortcomings in the case of higher and higher intelligent car purchase decisions, and cooperation with Internet companies is obviously the best solution.
Tencent a car network project leader told Photon Planet that in the future, traditional car companies want to develop in the long run, they must change, and pure OEM will only become a foundry of Weilai and Xiaomi.
For Internet companies, they are not interested in building cars, but they are more concerned about the car machine as the third traffic entrance after the PC and mobile phones.
In 2018, bat three gathered in the internet of vehicle networking business, first Ali upgraded the previous YunOS to AliOS, after tencent TAI, Baidu DueerOS flocked to the same track, bat three bet on the same track, enough to show the importance of car traffic.
The logic of BAT's three "getting on the car" is also very simple, in addition to strong software capabilities, the ecology built for many years is another insurmountable moat. Although the interaction logic between the car machine and the mobile terminal is still different, it is much faster than building an ecology exclusive to the car machine from 0.
Time to 2022, both BA companies have stood on the front desk to join the car-making army, only Tencent is willing to "hide" behind the scenes.
In fact, as early as 2015, Ali invested in the establishment of Zebra Network through the Internet Automobile Fund jointly launched with SAIC, and the roewe RX5, the first Internet model created by the two companies, was also a great success, selling about 100,000 vehicles in three months.
At this time, AliOS came to a crossroads, Yu car companies said that they were of course unwilling to let go of the sweetness, and Yu technology companies said that expanding influence and increasing partners is the vision. Although Zebra Network denied that there was a game between the capital side, after Zebra joined hands with DPCA, the Zebra Zhixing system did usher in a year of update stagnation.
In the same situation is Baidu.
In 2013, Baidu launched related technology research and development, and in 2017 launched the Apollo autonomous driving open platform, which is the earliest enterprise in China to develop automatic driving. The advantages of technology and data accumulation are obvious, but the disadvantages are also obvious, and more cooperation is less landing. The only WM W6 that landed on the end of the car company was not competitive enough, with sales of 761 and 415 vehicles in January and February this year, respectively.
Baidu has also explored cooperation with Xiaopeng and Ideal, while "stuffing money" while asking for the use of Apollo autonomous driving technology, but it is still rejected.
Relatively speaking, Tencent, which is more competitive in entertainment and social networking, does not need to be too anxious. From QQ to WeChat, Tencent relies on social chains to extend to a series of fields such as games and entertainment.
Other applications may evolve on the car side, but WeChat has always been a trump card for Tencent. A person in charge of Tencent's car federation told Photon Planet that it is impossible for users to reconstruct the entire social relationship chain because of the hours in the car.
At the current user end, the demand for WeChat is also very strong.
Another industry insider revealed to Photon Planet that the Changan CS75 equipped with WeChat sold very hot after listing, and once had a tendency to catch up with Haval H6, and the Great Wall also quickly found Tencent after seeing this situation, hoping that WeChat would get on the car.
"As soon as SAIC Ali met, he won countless victories in the world."
"It is unacceptable for SAIC to cooperate with a third-party company like Huawei to drive autonomously."
From the beauty of the beginning of the acquaintance with the technology company to the "soul theory", perhaps the power of the technology company at the end of the car engine has made the traditional main engine factory feel a lot of pressure, and the concept change of Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Group, has only taken 5 years.
Huawei, which also does not build cars, because most of the channels are not self-operated, needs to balance the interests between car companies and dealers, which is particularly important in the context of inorganic sales. If it cannot bring revenue to dealers, but cause inventory and occupy too much in-store area, then it is also a blow to Huawei's subsequent car sales business.
We see that Huawei strategically "abandoned" this brand after the poor sales of Xilis and began to build a new brand, while Jihu's sales last year were also poor, has it been strategically abandoned?
Under homogenization, there is no "new" meaning
It is not difficult to find that the homogenization of new energy vehicles is becoming more and more serious, not only the function, appearance, business model, and even marketing strategy are also similar. Countless back waves poured into this track, stepping on the experience of the predecessors exchanged for blood and tears to embark on their own car-making roads.
In fact, we put forward a similar point of view in last year's manuscript """Fork" a Wei Xiaoli, thanks to the mature domestic supply chain system, the main engine factory can quickly integrate a new energy vehicle according to the different programs and parts of different suppliers, but the homogenization of the current new energy market is becoming more and more serious, and the car is becoming more and more like a mobile phone.
OEMs can "lend" platforms and production lines to latecomers to reduce costs and improve efficiency, and technology companies open systems to expand influence and maximize benefits.
Jidu Automobile is based on the Geely SEA vast architecture, which took only 6 months from its establishment to entering the SIMUCar road test stage, and Zhiji based on the pure electric chassis built by SAIC in 2016, from the completion of the company registration to the delivery to begin in April this year.
But in the current new energy market, the most feared is still flat.
It is not difficult to find that whether it is transformation or new, as long as new energy models are launched, most car companies must create a concept to tell stories for the capital market and consumers. It seems increasingly common to choose a well-known model, pick out one of these features, and then let his car overtake him.
The reason is that the current new energy vehicle companies are unable to achieve self-hematopoiesis. Taking Wei Xiaoli as an example, last year the three together sold 280,000 cars, and the total financial loss was as high as 98 billion.
Therefore, although Zhiji has the support of SAIC in hardware and Ali support in software, L9 does not show enough differentiation, and some are just modifiers that are constantly dismantled and restructured, and the only impressive thing is the "rough" cloaked in blockchain.
At this time, we look back at the original expenses of Weilai, and it seems that they were really spent on the "right way". I don't know if Li Bin anticipated the serious homogenization situation in advance, and established a moat for Weilai with a higher threshold than technology and hardware early on.
He Xiaopeng said earlier the drawbacks of "cross-border and strategic in-depth cooperation", in the high-speed growth, new and old alternating market, 1 + 1 is not necessarily greater than 2.