Many people who pay attention to the new forces of car-making may not have thought that zero running can survive until now.
From 3,000 to 4,000 vehicles sold in 2021 to more than 10,000 vehicles sold in March 2022, Zero Run surprised those in the industry who usually did not like to answer it. Recently, Zero Run also took the lead in releasing the mass-produced CTC battery chassis integration technology in China, becoming the second car company in the world to announce mass production battery chassis integration technology after Tesla.
As a once inconspicuous new force of second-line car manufacturing, zero running seems to be suddenly enough. Similar to the second-tier new forces such as Nezha and Weima, Zero Run also took the low-end route at the beginning of the brand, and currently with T03 and C11 products, Zero Run occupies a place in the new energy market.
However, as a company without any automobile production background, Zero Run has faced many setbacks in terms of sales channels, production capacity, and quality control. What is more worrying is that this new force, which has been in the game for six years, is still in a tense situation of continuous expansion of losses.
Therefore, this seemingly successful rise of zero running is actually not as beautiful as it seems on the surface, and even the life and death line has not been crossed.
01 Sales exceeded 10,000, and word of mouth was embarrassing
In terms of sales in March, among the 10,059 sales of zero-run, the mini car zero-run T03 priced at 73,900-89,900 yuan sold 5,853 units, which ranked about fifth and sixth in the 5-100,000 micro car market, competing with Hongguang MINI EV, Nezha V, Changan Ben E-STAR, Chery Ant and other products.
In addition, the compact SUV zero-run C11 of 179,800 yuan to 229,800 yuan sold 4,201 units, ranking about ninth among the competitors at the same price.
In the entire first quarter, T03 sold 13767 units, C11 sold 7791 vehicles, the results seem to be remarkable, but relying on low-cost mini-cars to support the main body of sales, for a new force, is not a very proud achievement.
It is slightly worth affirming that the sales of C11 listed in September last year are continuing to break through upwards, from the initial monthly sales of a few hundred vehicles, climbing to a monthly sales of 4,000 vehicles, and the proportion of brand sales in March reached 41.76%, which may benefit from the steady rise in zero-run production capacity, which means that the situation of zero-running relying on low-cost entry models has begun to ease.
But at the same time, as C11 deliveries climbed, complaints about C11s in the circle of riders began to occur intensively since April.
Some car owners said that since mentioning C11, they are either going to repair the car or on the way to repair the car. The machine was changed twice, the tire pressure monitoring was changed once, the interior fittings were changed once, the door panels... Almost the whole car was broken at 360 degrees; and the owner said that after two weeks of picking up the car, he ran to the 4S shop to repair it 4 times and did not repair it. The problem that arises is also a variety of abnormal noises and leaks similar to the aforementioned cars...
Prior to this, T03 with a price of about 70,000 yuan, more than 400 kilometers of endurance, as well as the same level of models rare L2 driver assistance system and other configurations, and at the same time to force channels, in one year to expand the number of stores three times, successfully opened up the market sales.
Like zero-run T03, although C11 seems to have improved its price positioning, it still takes the route of low-price and high-quality, and zero-run is called "500,000-level expectations, less than 200,000 can be achieved" As for why it can be so cheap, zero-run emphasizes that it is because of full-stack self-development. From high-power motors, automatic driving chips, to vehicle controllers, body controllers, door controllers, Bluetooth key controllers, power MCUs, battery BMS, ADAS controllers, vehicle machine instruments and other subsystems, all of which are independent technologies from Zero Run and Dahua.
It can be seen that in order to gain a firm foothold in the market, Zero Run does strive to give consumers more, but today's embarrassing situation is that sales have gone up, and brand reputation has also been intensively hit. Judging from such market feedback, it is very doubtful whether the follow-up zero-run sales can continue to maintain a high level of 10,000 vehicles.
02 Full stack self-research, is it really reliable?
As for the new CTC battery chassis integration technology, it is indeed a scientific idea in the long run. The integrated design of the battery, chassis and car body effectively reduces the number of parts by reducing the redundant structure, and while improving the space utilization rate and system specific energy, the body and battery structure complement each other, so that the battery impact resistance and body torsional stiffness are greatly improved.
Tesla first unveiled CTC battery technology as early as 2020's "Tesla Battery Day" and called the technology "the ultimate manufacturing method for all electric vehicles in the future."
Although the technology is good, but the early landing cost (production line transformation) is a huge problem, and CTC technology will use the enhanced version of the electronic control system and battery pack shell material, which will inevitably bring about another aspect of the cost increase, especially for zero runs such as monthly sales is only barely more than 10,000 car companies, if you want to mass-produce CTC technology models, it is inevitable to face a difficult growth period of buying a car at a loss.
In addition, the high degree of integration and modularization means that once the bump is damaged, the maintenance cost will rise greatly, which will drive up the premium of new energy vehicles.
For Tesla, everyone may still be acceptable, but for brands such as Zero Run, which are mainly low-end brands, the high maintenance costs are likely to deter consumers. Coupled with the extremely uncontrollable level of quality control such as zero running, it is still unknown whether CTC will really help reduce costs and increase sales.
It is worth mentioning that the 4680 battery technology announced by Tesla two years ago has been put on the car, and the CTC technology announced at the same time has not yet achieved mass production, what is Musk waiting for? This is a question worth thinking about.
Not only CTC, zero running in the field of automatic driving also adhere to self-research, as early as 2020 released the first domestic AI autopilot chip Lingxin 01 jointly developed with Dahua Shares, Zhu Jiangming said that Lingxin 01 reached 8.4 TOPS in computing power, can top other people's twenty or thirty T.
However, some industry experts questioned this: "No one has used this chip, has not been verified by the market, has neither contrast nor reference, and is very strong on what basis." People familiar with the research and development of zero-run cars revealed: "The products and technologies of zero-run cars are developed by themselves, and many places are still done according to non-car products: because the products of security can be used no matter how they are, they can not be done in accordance with strict compliance requirements, so the product definitions that everyone understands are not the same." ”
In July 2021, Zhu Jiangming also said that he would surpass Tesla in the field of autonomous driving within 3 years. Nowadays, when friends have launched their own self-developed pilot system, C11 still only provides basic functions such as ACC adaptive cruise, AEB automatic emergency braking system, FCW forward collision warning, etc., and the follow-up OTA has only added LCC lane center assist, hand-away from the steering wheel warning and other painless L2-level functions.
In fact, Zhu Jiangming himself knows that the research and development investment of chips is huge and it is extremely difficult to see returns in the short term, so zero running currently does not have a research and development plan for the next generation of high-computing chips, so Zhu Jiangming said that in the future, zero running under the L4 automatic driving framework will purchase chips and conduct full-stack self-research on the algorithm.
Two years ago, Lingxin 01 was similar to today's CTC, and Zero Run always showed an unbelievable confidence in self-developed technology at the beginning. However, when it comes to the stage of technical mass production implementation, it shows obvious contrasts of caution. In this way, it is inevitable that people will have a slight doubt about the reliability of the self-developed technology of zero running.
03 Selling a car with a loss of 60,000, zero running has not yet crossed the line of life and death
From the crazy heap configuration of T03 and C11, to the release of Lingxin 01, CTC technology and other technologies, it can be seen that zero run is indeed very hard to give consumers more, trying to make everyone remember themselves through the route of low price and high matching.
In a sense, this product strategy is useful, it uses the advantages of Dahua in the field of security to achieve the self-development of many electronic devices. First of all, the market occupied by the mini car market made consumers remember themselves, and in the compact SUV market, it also attracted a wave of consumers with huge configuration stacks.
For brands such as Zero Run, which have no car manufacturing background and no technical accumulation, it is indeed a helpless move to cut from low-end products. However, for an automobile company, the low-end product strategy of small profits and high sales is not a long-term solution after all.
Compared with the setbacks in basic business capabilities such as quality control, production capacity, and service, what is more worrying is that since the first model was launched in early 2019, Zero Run is still in a state of loss expansion.
According to the previous prospectus of Zero Run to Hong Kong for listing, from 2019 to 2021, the Zero Run Auto Camp recorded 117 million yuan, 631 million yuan and 3.132 billion yuan, ushering in a significant improvement in 2021. In the past three years, the company's gross profit margin recorded -95.7%, -50.6%, -44.3%, respectively, although it has narrowed, but it is still far from the positive gross profit margin.
In addition, the prospectus also shows that from 2019 to 2021, zero run has been in a state of continuous expansion of losses, and the company's adjusted net losses were 810 million yuan, 935 million yuan and 2.629 billion yuan, respectively; a total loss of 4.374 billion yuan.
According to the sales volume of 43,748 zero-run vehicles in 2021, the average loss per car sold is about 60,000 yuan. In the current environment where new energy subsidies are about to end and raw material prices continue to rise, zero runs continue to rely on low-priced models, which means that zero runs will sell more and lose more, further expanding the bottomless pit of losses.
Although Zero Run said in the prospectus that it "mainly focuses on China's mid-to-high-end mainstream new energy vehicle market with prices ranging from RMB150,000 to RMB300,000", according to the revenue of 3.132 billion yuan and the sales volume of 43,748 vehicles in 2021, the current zero-run bicycle revenue is only 72,000 yuan.
In addition, in terms of R&D investment, the expenditure of Zero Run in the three-year period from 2019 to 2021 was 358 million yuan, 289 million yuan and 740 million yuan, respectively, totaling nearly 1.4 billion yuan. In contrast, Wei Xiaoli's ideal of least funding has reached 1.169 billion yuan three years ago, and now it has reached 3.286 billion yuan. Zero running everything must mention the full stack of self-research, but the real fall on the fund is pitiful. Although not more money is a certain technology strong, but it has to be admitted that for new energy vehicles, technology is burned with money.
There are many configurations given by zero running, and there are many technologies that claim to be self-developed, but the brand is not blown out by mouth, but it is built with money and user reputation, and consumer-recognized products and landable technologies have the opportunity to be recognized by the capital market.
In the 150,000-300,000 high-end mainstream market with zero running targets, there are currently many independent brands such as Xiaopeng, Nezha, BYD, GAC Aean and so on, competing, consumer choices are so much, why can zero run shine?
From the second half of last year to obtain production qualifications to the listing of the new car C11 and now the release of CTC technology, we can indeed see that Zero Run is really building cars.
However, for new cars, it is not enough to be sincere, but also requires accurate brand strategy and the ability to react quickly.
The current zero run is far from crossing the life and death line, in this fiercely competitive new energy vehicle market, zero run must reverse the low-cost and high-quality "self-harm" product strategy as soon as possible, and invest more money in the field of research and development. Otherwise, even the most sincere car companies will eventually be dragged down by losses.
In this situation where the penetration rate of new energy vehicles continues to rise, the situation between car companies has begun to become more and more devious and changeable. There are zero runs such as latecomers to overtake, there are also leaders like Weima who collapse, but everything is not a foregone conclusion, zero runs can only be said to be standing on the cusp of the wave at this moment, and it is still unknown where the next second will be swept by the tide. Only let the terminal market and the capital market witness the victory and defeat step by step.