Bragging Huawei Yu Chengdong: This year's sales target has completely failed, and chips are too expensive to sell less

Huawei Yu Chengdong, who is accustomed to bragging, admitted in a rare and down-to-earth manner that Qingjie could not complete this year's sales target.

A few days ago, Yu Chengdong said this in an interview with media person Wu Pei.

Wu Pei: "A netizen asked a particularly sharp question, Mr. Yu, the first quarter has passed, you boasted about 300,000 vehicles in Haikou (this year), and this goal has not changed? ”

Yu Chengdong: "Now in China's automotive industry, in the absence of cores and chips in global cars, it is impossible to achieve 300,000 vehicles. Because the supply is not available. We are the first year, and if we can build 100,000 or 200,000 units, it will already be a miracle."

Wu Pei: "Does this count as an excuse as you just said"?

Yu Chengdong: "This is not an excuse either. I would like to set you a high goal. Because I have just entered this field, I may not be familiar with it, nor do I know the supply situation of this industry, and when I first came in, I did not know that the entire industry lacked core to this extent. One of our chips, one or twenty yuan, was fried to 2500 yuan a piece. Nine in one car, too expensive. We can't accept this high price of buying chips, and we'd rather sell less. ”

Huawei can't achieve the goal, is it really because of the chip?

In an interview with Wu Pei, Yu Chengdong, who loves to brag, answered Wu Pei's sharp questions in a very down-to-earth manner. But apparently, in Yu Chengdong's answer, he went around himself again.

As early as 2021, the media reported that Yu Chengdong set a sales target of 300,000 vehicles for the internal team. At that time, the only model already sold on Huawei channels was the Xilis SF5 of Xiaokang shares.

On April 19, 2021, Celis Huawei Smart Select SF5 was officially launched, with a price range of 21.68-24.68 million yuan. The new model is a range extender model, equipped with HUAWEI HiCar solution and Huawei DriveONE three-in-one electric drive system. Starting from April 21 of that year, Cyrus Huawei Smart Select SF5 was simultaneously booked in the Cyrus Experience Center, the Cyrus Official APP, the Huawei Experience Store, and the Huawei Mall, and delivered in batches in May.

The data shows that throughout 2020, the annual sales of the Xilis SF5 were only 1051 units. After Huawei's blessing, in the whole year of 2021, the sales volume of this car reached 8169 units, which shows Huawei's brand appeal. In December 2021, Huawei cooperated with Xiaokang co., Ltd. to launch a new brand, AITO Q&I, the first new car being the Q&E M5. The M5 is basically the same as the Cyrus SF5 in terms of body size, especially the front and rear tracks are exactly the same. Therefore, the outside world believes that the M5 is the Selice SF5 with a new target. Sure enough, after the release of the Q&I M5, Huawei channels immediately removed the Cyrus SF5. That is, huawei channels still have only one car on sale.

Xu Zhijun, Huawei's rotating chairman, has also previously said, "China has 30 million cars per year, and there will be more in the future, even if it is only the Chinese market, it is enough to get an average income of 10,000 yuan per car per year." ”

According to Tencent's "Deep Net" report, in terms of sales share, Huawei's share with car companies has become about 10% of sales, while dealers can get 7%-8%, taking the four-wheel drive version of SF5, which costs 246,800 yuan, for example, dealers can get 19,000 yuan for each one sold. This is a very substantial benefit for Huawei's dealer channel.

Although it seems that a single car Huawei can only have a gross profit of 5,000-7,400 yuan left in the end, Huawei does not need to invest much cost, store decoration, stocking are all dealers in the investment. Moreover, the cars sold through Huawei channels will basically use Huawei's related automotive solutions, and it is easy to achieve a comprehensive profit of more than 10,000 yuan per car.

Under this "business plan", Yu Chengdong said: "It is planned to use 1,000 stores to sell cars by the end of 2022, assuming that each store can sell 30 cars per month, and monthly sales can reach 30,000 vehicles."

Yu Chengdong said in an interview with Wu Pei: "I believe that if we continue to pursue, we will be able to help the car factory that works closely with us become the first in China." In the future, it will be the first in the world. ”

From Yu Chengdong's statement, it is not difficult to see that the premise of his initial goal of completing the annual sales target of 300,000 vehicles may be: close cooperation between the depots. But as of now, in addition to Xilix, Huawei's other partners such as BAIC, GAC, Changan, etc., obviously have no willingness to cooperate with Huawei to sell cars. That is to say, Huawei's wishful thinking has failed in the short term. From this point of view, Huawei's cooperative brands do not agree with Huawei's car sales plan and plan, which is probably the key to the problem.

As we all know, the sales channel has always been a core interest of automotive brands. As early as 2016, when the Audi brand launched its second joint venture company "SAIC Audi" in China, the strongest reaction was from FAW Audi's dealers. When they learned that Audi would set up a second joint venture in China, FAW Audi dealers were deeply disturbed, believing that the establishment of Audi's new joint venture in China would inevitably cause serious and even "fatal" damage to the rights and interests of the current FAW Audi dealers. Even some FAW Audi dealers have stopped buying goods to threaten.

Then, whether the channel cooperation with Huawei will harm the interests of the cooperative brands' own dealers is a problem that Huawei partners such as BAIC, Changan, and GAC have to consider. Obviously, the core reason why Xilix of Xiaokang Shares is willing to cooperate with Huawei to sell cars is that Xilis is not a mainstream brand at all, and its original sense of existence in the passenger car and new energy vehicle market is extremely low.

According to the data released by Huawei at the end of January this year, the cumulative number of Huawei Hicars has reached 10 million+, involving 34 platforms and 112 models/products. But obviously, among Huawei's many partners, few partners finally choose to cooperate with Huawei to sell cars.

Of course, among the major brands cooperated with Huawei, in addition to the corresponding models of BAIC Jihu, the corresponding models of Changan Avita and GAC Aian brands have not been listed, which is also an important reason why Huawei has not completed its annual sales target.

Rely on asking the world a brand, can it be relied upon?

In this way, in the case that Huawei does not personally build cars, the only brand involved in "Huawei selling cars" is Jinkang Cyris.

According to the Production and Sales Express report of Xiaokang Co., Ltd. in March 2022, the data of its brand Xilis was disclosed for the first time. The production and sales of intelligent new energy vehicles in March were 3465 units and 3160 units, respectively, an increase of 1667.86% and 1310.71% year-on-year. In view of the poor sales of the SF5 in the past and the news of discontinuation of production, the industry speculated that the production and sales of the M5 model exceeded 3,000 units in March, and the AITO M5 only delivered 409 units in the first two months of this year, and the cumulative sales of the Inquisitive M5 in the first quarter may not exceed 4,000 vehicles.

This is basically consistent with the data disclosed by Yu Chengdong to the media. Yu Chengdong said in an interview with Wu Pei that in March, the M5 has delivered more than 3,000 vehicles, and it is expected that it may reach 5,000 vehicles in April, as long as the sales of aito M5 are gradually going up, and later to the time of sales in 10,000 or 20,000 months, the M5 will sell 300,000 vehicles a year.

Yu Chengdong's hypothesis looks quite beautiful, but the actual situation may once again surprise Yu Chengdong, a layman.

Judging from the development process of several major new car-making forces, so far, the annual sales of the three major new car-making forces of Weilai, Ideal and Xiaopeng have not reached 100,000 vehicles. Among them, in addition to only one model of ideal car on sale, Weilai and Xiaopeng have a number of models on sale. Taking Tesla as an example, it only completed its annual sales target of more than 300,000 vehicles in 2019, and this year has been exactly 16 years since the establishment of Tesla Motors.

From the perspective of production capacity, last year, the "Economic Half Hour" column of CCTV financial channel visited The Liangjiang Intelligent Factory in Chongqing, and Zhang Zhengyuan, chief marketing officer of Cyrus, said at that time: The annual production capacity of the factory is 100,000 units. In January this year, at the M5 production guarantee pledge meeting held by Xilis Chongqing Liangjiang Plant, the goal to be achieved by the entire factory from top to bottom was to produce 10,000 new cars in the first quarter. In other words, even if everything goes well, Cyrus will not be able to produce 300,000 M5s for consumers.

In addition, according to the relevant national regulations on the management of investment in the automobile industry, the new production capacity is strictly controlled before the old production capacity is achieved.

According to Tiger Sniff, the product quality problem is another obstacle in front of Huawei's annual sales target of 300,000 vehicles. Take the last model SF5 that Huawei and Xilix cooperated on. According to media reports, "Huawei's safety and durability standards for the three-power part far exceed the national standard." Taking the durability test as an example, Huawei proposed that the durability test must reach a high temperature environment of 105 ° C, and the durability time is more than 2500 hours, while the durability test of the Jinkang factory used to only reach 500 hours at room temperature.

The result is obvious, after the SF5 finished product came out, the quality control completely failed to meet Huawei's requirements. According to a post from a person who claimed to be a supplier of M5 accessories from Xilis and AITO, Huawei sent a team of nearly 300 people to Xilis in a rage to intervene in total quality control. But in the end, Huawei abandoned the Cyrus SF5.

Taking Tesla as an example, in early 2021, Tesla CEO Musk's remarks in response to the uneven quality of the Model 3 caused an uproar in the industry. Musk suggested, "Buy Tesla at the beginning of [production], or wait until the production stabilization stage to buy it, this is the best time for vehicle quality." [Because] in the capacity climb phase, (while ensuring quality) is very difficult."

So, the M5, which comes from the same platform as Cyris, or even the same model, can really change the previous ills of Cyrus SF5 in product quality? I'm afraid it's hard.

Therefore, for Huawei, it is more realistic to complete the goal of 100,000 units per year as soon as possible, rather than the unrealistic or even unsurpassable goal of 300,000 vehicles.

Write at the end:

As Yu Chengdong said, the bulls that have been bragged in the past have basically been realized. Today, Yu Chengdong has copied the bull he bragged about in the past at huawei to Huawei's automobile business, and may eventually be able to achieve it. But if Yu Chengdong and his auto business unit can figure out some basic facts of the automotive industry as soon as possible before completing the above goals, it may be able to help Huawei's auto business take fewer detours.