Recently, Skyworth Automobile released the official map of its new model Skyworth HT-i, the new car has been pre-sold in April, and is expected to be listed on August 28, a highlight of the new car is equipped with BYD DM-i plug-in and mixing system. As bydir's first external supply of DM-i technology, Skyworth Automobile has also won public attention.
For the identity of Skyworth home appliance giant, many people admit it, but for Skyworth Automobile, a car company that does not have a strong sense of existence, the automobile circle is relatively unfamiliar. Skyworth Automobile's predecessor is Tianmei Automobile, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kaiwo New Energy Automobile Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Kaiwo New Energy"). From buses to passenger cars, from Tianmei Automobile to Skyworth Automobile, in fact, Skyworth Automobile entered the automotive field earlier than "Wei Xiaoli", and is a veritable forerunner among cross-border car manufacturers.
1
Start the second entrepreneurial journey Huang Hongsheng entered the market from commercial vehicles
In recent years, the new energy vehicle track has continued to be hot, and the Internet, mobile phones, real estate and other industries have crossed the border to build cars. In fact, as early as more than ten years ago, Huang Hongsheng, the founder of Skyworth Group and the "king of color TV", began to lay out and build cars. In December 2010, Huang Hongsheng started his second entrepreneurial journey, cross-border into the automotive industry, and established Kaiwo New Energy. Subsequently, Kaiwo New Energy acquired and reorganized Nanjing Jinlong Bus Manufacturing Co., Ltd., and shifted the focus of its car-making business from traditional minibuses to new energy buses, mainly developing and producing new energy electric light vehicles, minibuses, buses, buses and other models.
According to the data, from 2014 to 2018, the company's pure electric bus sales were 1890, 7921, 10633, 8524 and 9542, ranking the forefront of the country. In addition, Skyworth Group also established Nanjing Chuangyuan Tiandi Power Technology Co., Ltd. in 2015, focusing on rechargeable power battery packs and battery management systems, automotive wiring harnesses, high-voltage distribution boxes, motor controllers, BMS and other core automotive components. In 2018, the company's power battery shipments reached 0.76GWh, an increase of 116% year-on-year, and successfully achieved external sales in addition to supporting Kaiwo New Energy.
For the reasons for choosing the commercial vehicle field to open the road to car manufacturing, Huang Hongsheng once said that the arduous experience in the process of skyworth entrepreneurship has made him very in awe of whether the entrepreneurship can succeed, so he positioned himself as a "primary school student" in the automotive industry, from easy to difficult, first do commercial vehicles with relatively little investment, from the beginning of technology integration to gradually master the core technology, develop their own source code, control systems, motors, electronic control systems. After learning a lot of lessons, gaining an in-depth understanding of the core technology of the entire car, and having a bottom in mind about the trend of passenger cars, it will enter the passenger car field.
2
"Business transfer" performed poorly renamed Skyworth Automobile again
After accumulating a lot of experience and technology in the field of new energy buses and parts, Huang Hongsheng began to turn his attention to new energy passenger cars. In 2017, Kaiwo New Energy obtained the passenger car access qualification approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and immediately launched the Tianmei brand, opening up the strategic layout of both business and passenger. In 2019, Kaiwo New Energy established "Kuwo Zhixing Technology" and developed the Skylink intelligent network system using Skyworth's Kukai ecosystem. In October 2020, Tianmei Auto's first pure electric intermediate SUV, the Tianmei ET5, was listed, and the price after subsidy was 152,800 to 198,800 yuan. Regrettably, among the new car-making forces, Tianmei Automobile is silent and its sales are very dismal. According to data, half a year after the listing, Tianmei ET5 only sold 595 vehicles.
At present, as a new brand of cross-border car manufacturing, Skyworth Automobile only has one model of Skyworth EV6 on sale, and the sales volume is not satisfactory, and it seems to have no sense of existence under the background of many popular models. According to relevant data, the cumulative sales volume of Skyworth Automobile in 2021 is only 4088 vehicles. Entering 2022, Skyworth Automobile's average monthly sales in the first two months exceeded 1,000 vehicles, and the cumulative sales volume was 2254 vehicles. In March, Skyworth Automobile invented a new word "delivery" (that is, delivery volume + order volume), and official news shows that Skyworth Automobile's delivery volume in March was 2046 units, an increase of 101% month-on-month. Among them, 1232 vehicles were ordered at home and 814 were ordered by maritime diplomacy.
According to skyworth automobile's planning, in 2022, the company will double its efforts in domestic and foreign channels to achieve annual sales of 30,000 vehicles and cumulative sales of more than 4.5 billion yuan. At the same time, vehicles with a driving range of 600km were delivered in batches in the first quarter, and Skyworth Intelligent Hybrid models with a mileage of 1200km were delivered in batches in the third quarter, and the modeling development work was completed for the ce11 project of high-end models in the future.
Judging from the current sales completion in the first quarter, even if the "order volume" is all counted, Skyworth Automobile has only completed 14.3% of the annual sales target, and it is possible to achieve the annual sales target by completing the sales volume of 25,700 vehicles in the next three quarters. Under the influence of adverse factors such as repeated domestic epidemics, rising raw material costs, and chip shortages, it is very difficult to achieve sales targets.
3
Home appliance companies are keen to build cars, but there are very few successful people
Skyworth is not the only home appliance company that is keen on car manufacturing, the history of home appliance companies can be traced back to 1997, and the first to carry the banner of car manufacturing is Chunlan Group. In 1997, Chunlan Group spent 720 million yuan to acquire Nanjing Dongfeng Motor Company and establish Chunlan Automobile. Between 2002 and 2004, Chunlan's "heavy truck" once entered the top five in the same industry in China. Driven by Chunlan Group, the car-making boom of home appliance companies reached a peak in 2003 and 2004. However, after 2004, the mid-duty truck market began to decline, and major truck manufacturers turned to developing heavy-duty truck products. In 2008, Chunlan Group abandoned Chunlan Trucks, which was seriously loss-making, and left the car-making industry.
In July 2003, Oaks signed an agreement with Shenyang Agricultural Machinery Group to invest 40 million yuan to acquire 95% of the equity of Shenyang Shuangma Automobile Co., Ltd., thereby obtaining the production license of SUVs and pickup trucks and officially entering the automotive industry. In less than a year, Oaks withdrew from the automobile manufacturing industry due to poor production and sales, frequent quality problems and other reasons.
Since 2003, Midea Group has successively acquired Yunnan Bus Factory, Yunnan Aerospace Shenzhou Automobile and Hunan Sanxiang Bus Group, entered the field of commercial vehicles, and built two new production bases in Kunming and Changsha, once realizing the manufacturing capacity of 10,000 buses and special chassis. However, in 2008, due to poor management and insufficient control of the entire automotive industry chain, Midea Group announced the suspension of car-making projects. Among them, the production base of Midea Sanxiang Bus Company was taken over by the Changsha Municipal Government of Hunan Province for 108 million yuan, and the Changsha Automobile Production Base of Midea was taken over by BYD for 108 million yuan, and midea group failed to build cars for the first time.
After the failure of the first car manufacturing, midea group did not give up entering the field of car manufacturing, but changed its strategic direction from vehicle manufacturing to auto parts manufacturing, mainly laying out auto parts products with motors, electronic controls and compressors as the core. In 2016, midea group began to develop electric compressors for automotive, and became the first manufacturer in the world to introduce rotary lobe compressors to the automotive sector. In 2018, Midea Group began to lay out automotive main drive motors, automotive air-conditioning compressors and other industries, and in 2018 and 2019, it successively established Guangdong Welling Auto Parts Co., Ltd. and Anhui Welling Auto Parts Company, and operated under the "Welling" brand to enter the field of auto parts manufacturing. In 2020, Midea Group also acquired Hekang New Energy, trying to fully penetrate in the manufacturing of core components of new energy vehicles and fuel cell systems.
Another major appliance giant, Gree Electric Appliances, also has a special love for the car-making business. In 2016, Gree Electric Appliances had planned to acquire Yinlong New Energy Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yinlong New Energy") for 13 billion yuan, and after being opposed by the shareholders of Gree, Dong Mingzhu, chairman of Gree Electric Appliances, invested in Yinlong New Energy in his personal name and became the second largest shareholder of Yinlong New Energy through multiple capital increases, which paved the way for Gree Electric Appliances to acquire Yinlong New Energy. On August 31, 2021, Gree Electric Appliances issued an announcement that it would auction 30.47% of the equity of Yinlong New Energy for 1.828 billion yuan. At the same time, Dong Mingzhu entrusted the voting rights corresponding to the 17.46% equity of Yinlong New Energy to the company. As a result, Gree Electric Controls 47.93% of the voting rights of Yinlong New Energy, making it its own subsidiary. In November 2021, Yinlong New Energy Co., Ltd. changed its name to "Gree Titanium New Energy Co., Ltd." (hereinafter referred to as "Gree Titanium New Energy").
In addition, Haier, Changhong, Hisense and TCL are also involved in the car-making business in their own ways. However, compared with the Internet industry cross-border car manufacturing has appeared a number of enterprises in the sales performance of the enterprise, home appliance companies have not yet achieved particularly outstanding results in car manufacturing cases. Take the development of gree titanium new energy as an example, its market share in the new energy bus market is not high, in 2021 Gree titanium new energy sold a total of 1854 buses, the share in the market is not more than 5%.
4
The introduction of BYD DM-i Skyworth Automobile or the final battle
Skyworth Automobile's first model EV6 sold poorly, and many people in the industry attributed the reason to the fact that there were no bright spots in the design and no core technical advantages.
After equipping with BYD's DM-i plug-in and mixing system, can Skyworth Automobile's sales usher in a turnaround? In this regard, Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the National Passenger Car Market Information Joint Association, said in an interview with the "China Automobile News" reporter that BYD's DM-i plug-in and mixing system market recognition and attention are very high, and whether Skyworth HT-i can achieve a sales breakthrough depends on whether its pricing has advantages. In addition, the current BYD's own DM-i models have a relatively long delivery cycle, and if Skyworth HT-i can be quickly introduced to the market, it will also attract some users.
At present, the domestic new energy vehicle track is becoming increasingly crowded and the field competition is fierce, both foreign brands Tesla and domestic car-making new forces "five tigers" Weilai, Xiaopeng, Ideal, Nezha, zero run to seize the market, and major traditional car companies are struggling to catch up, and in the future, Baidu, Xiaomi, Evergrande products to participate in the competition.
It is worth mentioning that the Midea Group, which is also in the home appliance industry, deliberately avoided the vehicle track that had suffered defeats in the field of entering the car manufacturing field and chose the new energy auto parts track. Chen Jintao, general manager of Midea Welling Auto Parts, said in an interview with the media: "Midea will use its accumulation in the home appliance industry to do horizontal expansion, aim at the bullseye of new energy vehicles, and focus on providing automotive core components for car companies." He explained that the track is crowded in the field of new energy vehicle manufacturing, but the proportion of Chinese-funded suppliers of key core components is relatively low. Midea's core underlying technology advantages extend to the subdivision of new energy vehicle manufacturing.
As a cross-border car manufacturer of home appliance companies, where are the advantages of Skyworth Automobile? According to the official introduction, skyworth group has been established 34 years ago, with 300 million product users, skyworth cool open system users 110 million households, ranking first in the domestic OTT industry, its derivative development of cool open system, has all covered skyworth automobile. Skylink system can share Skylink Cool Open 410 million users and user data, is a truly highly integrated people, cars, home intelligent cockpit system, support software and hardware system real-time remote upgrade iteration.
Huang Hongsheng said: "The core is still our technology, quality and supply chain management is strong. The background of manufacturing makes our advantages in car building more prominent. Skyworth brand has 300 million smart home users, 30,000 retail terminals, in China and even the global transformation and upgrading to the era of electric vehicles, Skyworth Automobile's advantages will be fully demonstrated. ”
"As the only seedling of home appliance companies in the new energy passenger car track, Skyworth Automobile is under the attack of many competitors, and its future development is indeed facing great pressure." However, compared with the cross-border car manufacturing of Internet companies, home appliance companies have more advantages in manufacturing capacity and innovation ability, and in the case of new energy vehicle market capacity is still large enough and rapid development, Skyworth Automobile still has its own development space and market potential. Cui Dongshu said.
Text: Zhang Yu Editor: Guo Chen Layout: Zhao Fangting