Recently, the news of Yundu Automobile's related "suspension of production", "capital chain breakage" and "withdrawal of major shareholders" has once again been paid attention to by the media. The last time was in 2019, after a round of shareholder replacement and re-injection, this new car manufacturer, which was the fastest to obtain "production qualifications", restarted in August 2020, issued a bold statement that "in 2025, it will rank among the top three domestic pure electric car brands".
Although the Chinese people will not care whether the above rhetoric is "boosting morale" or "self-deception", in less than 2 years after the new shareholders re-injected capital, when the capital chain is broken again, a question that must be answered appears, where is the problem of Yundu? Is the problem it faces also a common problem faced by many new Chinese car-making forces?
The product is not on the right track
A senior auto industry expert who did not want to be named told Travel Finance that the cautious attitude of the product development of new car manufacturers determines the fate of enterprise development, and the problem of Yundu Automobile is because its "product is not on the right road" and has not won market opportunities.
According to the introduction, the reason why the new car manufacturers led by Tesla, Xiaopeng, etc. can be quickly recognized by the market is that their products are positive research and development, that is, in the early stage of development and demonstration, they are designed according to market demand.
When restarting in 2020, Yundu's new management directly shouted that new products will definitely appear in 2021, which also proves that Yundu's attitude towards new products does not hold a serious and cautious "positive research and development" attitude, or it adopts "reverse research and development" in a conservative manner, otherwise how can it develop new products in one year?
In the early stage of the development of China's automobile industry, especially before 2010, the development of China's local automobile enterprises did adopt the idea of "reverse research and development", quickly learning and imitating the mature product design and technology of mature foreign car companies, and achieved rapid growth.
However, the past experience is to build on the era of fuel vehicles in which the supply of Chinese automobiles is in short supply, when the development of China's automobile market is not mature, and the technology of foreign products is relatively mature. At present, the development of China's automobile market has matured, the market has changed from a seller's market to a buyer's market, and there are many products available for consumers to choose; secondly, with the relatively mature fuel vehicle technology, electric vehicle technology is still in development, if the company's product research and development is not positive research and development, but also the old road to learn from other people's products, a misjudgment is easy to make the capital chain fragile new car enterprises into the wrong way.
Therefore, the above experts hope that China's new car manufacturers must design products according to market demand, learn lessons from the development of Yundu, and reduce misjudgment.
Yundu's past and present lives
In December 2015, Fujian Automobile Industry Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Fuqi Group", wholly owned by Fujian State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission), Putian State-owned Assets Investment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Putian State Investment", wholly owned by Putian State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission), Liu Xinwen and Haiyuan Composite (a Fujian listed company) established Yundu Automobile in accordance with the investment ratios of 39%, 34.44%, 15.56% and 11%, and the registered capital of the new company was 900 million yuan.
At that time, China was at a time when new car-making forces were surging up. Yundu is relying on the shareholder's state-owned asset background and executive technology background, so that Yundu New Energy has developed rapidly in the early days of its establishment - two years to obtain production qualifications, three years to put into production of two models, in 2018 is to nearly 10,000 vehicles of production and sales scale to stand out. After a short period of glory, the development momentum of Yundu New Energy has taken a sharp turn for the worse. Entering 2019, the monthly sales level of Yundu New Energy has dropped to three digits, and the departure of senior executives has continued, the capital chain has been broken, and rumors of suspension of production have been reported from time to time.
In May 2020, Yundu Automobile ushered in a restructuring, and the four major shareholders changed, first Fuqi Group withdrew its shares, and its shareholding was undertaken by Putian SDIC and the new funder Fujian Longtou Industry Equity Investment Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership) (hereinafter referred to as "Fujian Longtou Fund"),followed by Liu Xinwen, director and CEO, who withdrew due to physical discomfort and was undertaken by Zhuhai Yucheng Investment Center (Limited Partnership), and shareholders carried out a new round of capital injection, about 700 million yuan.
It was learned from Tianyancha that behind the Fujian leading fund is CITIC Trust Co., Ltd., Fujian Industrial Equity Investment Fund Co., Ltd., etc.; while Zhuhai Yucheng is directly held by Lin Mi, 51% owned by Shenzhen Qianhai Shutian Investment Management Partnership (Limited Partnership) (hereinafter referred to as "Shenzhen Zentian"), and the executive partner is Lin Mi, while Shenzhen Zentian is wholly owned by Wang Wei and Wang Mingwang, the actual controllers of Xinwanda Electronics Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xinwanda").
Lin Mi's three major mistakes
In May 2020, Lin Mi became the CEO of Yundu, and invited Fu Zhenxing, former vice president of LeTV Automobile, to join as CTO, and Dr. Zhan Wenwen joined as senior vice president. At the restart conference held in August of the same year, Lin Mi announced in a high-profile manner that Xinyundu had "completed the optimization of the manufacturing system from system reconstruction, team building, innovative layout to manufacturing system" in three months. That is, Yundu New Energy has built a new marketing team and R&D team, and set up a cutting-edge technology R&D and creative design center in Shanghai, and a marketing and intelligent networking center in Shenzhen.
At this time, Lin Mi is full of confidence in the future development of Yundu Automobile, and he said in an interview with the media that the restructured Yundu Automobile has the favorable development conditions at the right time and place, and is confident that by 2025, it will achieve the sales target of 300,000 vehicles and achieve the goal of ranking among the top three domestic pure electric car brands.
Looking back, Lin Mi at this time only saw the future development prospects of China's new energy automobile industry, but the expectations for Yundu Automobile were too high, and the expression on the Internet was that standing on the earth and wanting to pick up the stars in the sky, it could only be said that the heart was too big, but the arm was too short.
First of all, Lin Mi was too optimistic about the development of Yundu Automobile at that time. According to his expression to the media, Yundu Automobile wants to achieve 300,000 sales in 2025, not on the basis of the company's less than 5,000 vehicles in 2019, or on the basis of nearly 10,000 vehicles in 2018 (official: 9300 vehicles, number of insurance: 6101 vehicles), of course, it can have such achievements in 2018, which means that Yundu was indeed at the forefront of China's new car manufacturers at that time.
However, after obtaining a rare two-star low score from Yundu π3 in the C-NCAP crash test, Yundu's vehicle safety was widely questioned, and when the company defaulted on suppliers, employee wages, broken capital chains, and shareholders did not inject new capital, Yundu's product research and development was interrupted, while Lin Mi was ready to continuously launch A00-class, A0-class, A+-class hatchbacks, sedans, SUVs, crossovers and logistics models within 5 years. It can be seen that Lin Mi's product planning at that time was not combined with the actual development of the company.
Secondly, Lin Mi saw the development potential of the 100,000 to 150,000 yuan level electric vehicle market, but ignored the impact of scale effect on the industry, in 2020, the 100,000 to 150,000 yuan electric vehicle market in the Chinese market has not yet formed, but in 2021, there are products such as Qin PLUS, Yuan PLUS, Destroyer 05, Nezha V, Zero Run T03 and other products in the Chinese market, and the Pure Electric Edition of Qin PLUS even has a situation of monthly sales of more than 10,000 yuan in the fourth quarter of 2021; on the contrary, Yundu Yundu's new energy vehicle products , whether it is in the model size, mileage, degree of intelligence, or in the workmanship, quality and brand, are far behind the competitors.
At the same time, the development of China's electric vehicle market has also exceeded Lin Mi's estimates, according to Lin Mi's estimates, by 2025, the scale of China's pure electric vehicles is 3 million, but in fact, according to the data of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, by 2021, China's pure electric vehicle sales will reach 2.91 million, and the cost advantage brought by the scale of electric vehicles has made more Chinese consumers willing to accept electric vehicles.
Third, for the restructured Yundu, Lin Mi did not achieve efficient management, which can be seen from the company's business distribution, the company's headquarters and factory in Fujian, but product development and design in Shanghai, while the marketing and intelligent network center was placed in Shenzhen.
Indeed, for Lin Mi, whose home is in Shenzhen, such a layout facilitates his management of the company. However, for the cloud in entrepreneurship, such a layout not only increases office expenses, but also makes the management team too scattered, losing the thinking of concentrating on doing big things, which greatly reduces work efficiency and is not conducive to creating corporate culture.
Therefore, when Lin Mi's judgment of the market is wrong, the team efficiency is not high, and the product development ignores the market demand, it is reasonable that Yundu's capital chain will have problems again...