Recently, the changes in the epidemic in Shanghai have once again faced major challenges for the automotive industry. As a member representative of the All-V Alliance of Huanqiu Automobile's "All-V Symposium", Youche Zhilian also launched online exchanges with many car companies in Shanghai, sending greetings and blessings while also further understanding how car companies respond to the epidemic crisis.
The guest invited by this issue of "All V Symposium" is Shen Hui, founder, chairman and CEO of WM Motor. As an "old auto person" with more than 20 years of experience, Shen Hui held senior positions in many internationally renowned automobile manufacturers before founding WM, and personally led the team to help Geely acquire Volvo and complete the subsequent restructuring of Volvo's global governance structure. And just recently, this seemingly meticulous car company executive has just opened a B station account (@ horse breeder Shen Hui), becoming a newcomer who loves to share, in the face of the sudden epidemic in Shanghai, what kind of insights will he share? In this issue, let's take a look at it together.
First of all, I believe everyone is very worried, as the only new force car company headquartered in Shanghai, the impact of this epidemic will definitely be very large. It is also true that according to Shen Hui, there is a team of about 1,000 people in Shanghai WM, half of which are R & D personnel, and the other half are the headquarters of sales companies and purchasing companies.
However, Shen Hui also said that WM has used all available technical means early on to form a completed online office system, including the online capabilities of factories and the online capabilities of dealerships are very strong, so from this point of view, even if the headquarters is shut down, it is OK, and the normal operation of WM has not been greatly affected. Of course, due to the epidemic prevention policy, Shen Hui, who often needs to go out to "run business", also "complained" to us that he had not traveled for two consecutive weeks, which was not too "friendly" for WM, which was in the "career upswing period".
During the interview, Shen Hui interspersed with many of his past experiences, including some of his previous experiences at BorgWarner, Gili Volvo and Fiat. As a business executive with a technical background, he has dabbled in autonomous driving, three-electric systems, electronic and electrical architecture and intelligent cockpit cockpit, and has done a lot of work, which also paved the way for his later founding of WM Motors.
Past experience tells him that blindly doing high-end does not necessarily allow the company to survive, in Shen Hui's view, the previous Jaguar Land Rover, Ferrari, Maserati are the best examples, they are difficult to escape the fate of being acquired. And even brands like Mercedes-Benz and BMW also have mainstream models like Mercedes-Benz A and BMW 3 Series, so this is also a big reason why WM Motors wants to start from the mid-market in the first place, and it is a good and popular, which is a beautiful ideal of WM.
Of course, this does not mean that WM will not launch a more high-end product positioning, in Shen Hui's view, this needs a step, the future will be announced, but from the perspective of product planning, WM will continue to pay attention to intelligent pure electricity, do their own products well, in order to improve efficiency, the ultimate goal is to become a public of intelligent pure electricity. According to Shen Hui, at the beginning of this year, WM has just completed a round of private financing, with a financing amount of more than 600 million US dollars, so in terms of funds, WM is not lacking, and he is also very confident to do what he wants to do well.
At the same time, user thinking is also one of the concepts of WM Motor operation, in Shen Hui's view, the automotive industry does not have a "winner-take-all", because a product can not make all consumers satisfied in any case, a brand wants to succeed on the one hand to recognize their own users, and then according to the needs of the target users to do, to ensure survival, and WM to face is the young family, so they pay more attention to the space and comfort of the back row. On the other hand, the brand also has to make its own characteristics to attract more users, although a car can not achieve all-round, but must be stronger than other competitors in individual aspects, which is also a success.
And for many car companies to head the chip supply shortage and raw material price increases, Shen Hui also expressed his own views, in his view, the reason why electric vehicles will increase in the near future and these two things have an inevitable connection, first of all, the demand for electric vehicles for chips is large, usually, the number of chips required for an electric vehicle is 4-5 times that of the same grade of fuel vehicles, and at this time there are very few suppliers hoarding goods, the market demand has not been met. On the other hand, due to the instability of the international situation, the price of raw materials for batteries and batteries is also rising rapidly, manufacturers will bear greater price pressure, and it is not surprising that the price of electric vehicles has risen. However, Shen Hui also said that the above problems will basically improve in the second half of this year, because the expectation of market demand is not so high, and WM is also working hard to improve efficiency, so that each kWh of electricity can drive more mileage, the same endurance consumes less, and the cost of raw materials is easier to control.
In the process of chatting, the topic inevitably talked about the residual value of second-hand electric vehicles, and Shen Hui also shared his views with us. In his view, the used car market for fuel vehicles is already very mature, while the used car market for electric vehicles has just begun, and it depends on what kind of car it is. At present, the low residual value rate of electric vehicles is mainly due to the fact that the earliest batch of electric vehicles have just entered the second-hand car market, and the battery technology and quality of electric vehicles at that time are not mature enough, so the price of a new generation of electric vehicles has been lowered. Nowadays, the total number of electric vehicles of new forces is not large, even in the large market can be ignored, even if the residual value rate is higher, it cannot change the market, so this has also caused the "chaos" of the second-hand car market, and as more models of new forces flow into the second-hand car market, the residual value rate of electric vehicles will also improve.
Due to the tight time, this interview did not last long, but from Shen Hui's mouth, the status of WM Motors is still online. Although there is still a gap between the current sales volume and the head car companies, this gap is not irreparable. Nowadays, the product matrix of WM Motors is constantly improving, and at the same time, it has more abundant funds to prepare for the war, in the future, perhaps its sales volume is not comparable to the Volkswagen in the fuel car, but the Volkswagen in the intelligent pure electricity is not so far away.
As Shen Hui said, there is no "winner-take-all" in the automotive industry, and WM may only need time.