Salary cuts, lack of money, store closures! WM Motor "lives hang in the balance", Shen Hui is also unable to return to the sky?

Three years ago, two bigwigs, Wang Xing of Meituan and Shen Hui of WM Motor, had a "gamble".

At that time, in the face of the booming new energy vehicle market, Wang Xing asserted that in the basic pattern of Chinese car companies in the future, there would be no position for WM Motor in the top three new forces of car manufacturing; Shen Hui, who was not convinced, responded in the air: "If WM's sales in 2020 enter the top three of the new forces of car manufacturing, Wang Xing will send him a Meituan takeaway; Instead, he was willing to give Wang Xing a car. ”

Unexpectedly, in just 3 years, Wang Xing's prediction has come true - the current WM Motor has not only fallen out of the top three of the new forces in car manufacturing, but also fell into business difficulties, almost disappearing in the ranking of new forces in car manufacturing; Looking at Shen Hui, who was once full of spirit, he is now full of gray hair, and even has to run around for the survival of WM Motor, which is embarrassing.

As the first echelon of the new forces that used to make cars, WM Motor was originally the most "champion" new energy vehicle company, whether it was background, capital or team, it was far ahead of "Wei Xiaoli"; Why did WM Motor change from an industry leader to a "crane tail" in just a few years? And as a veteran of the industry, how did Shen Hui play a good hand?

Veterans enter the game and fight the most "rich" battles

Among the new forces of car manufacturing, WM Motor is undoubtedly a relatively unique existence.

When most car companies are still worried about how to find funds, WM Motor no longer has such troubles. According to Tianyan inspection data, since the first financing in August 2016 to June 2022, WM Motor has completed a total of 12 financings, with a cumulative financing amount of more than 30 billion yuan, far exceeding NIO, Lili and Xiaopeng in the same period.

So, why does WM Motor have such strong financing capabilities? Behind this, it is inseparable from the influence of founder Shen Hui.

Perhaps many people have not heard the name Shen Hui, but in the automotive circle, this is a big man.

According to reports, Shen Hui's bachelor's degree in engineering mechanics from South China University of Technology, and his master's degree in structural engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, has a deep academic background and a very high professional level.

In addition to high education, Shen Hui's experience is more eye-catching. Shen Hui was the president of BorgWarner Group China, the highest position that can be achieved in China; After joining Geely Automobile, Shen Hui also led the team to complete the "snake swallowing" event that shocked the automotive industry - the acquisition of giant Volvo and responsible for restructuring Volvo's global governance structure.

At the end of 2014, Shen Hui, who had become vice president of Geely Holding Group and senior vice president and chairman of Volvo in China, chose to resign and start a business, first acquiring an electric vehicle company in Germany, and then naming it "WM", a homonym of the German world champion "Weltmeister", and officially entered the domestic new energy automobile industry in 2015.

As an industry veteran, Shen Hui's entrepreneurship has been favored by many industry bosses and capital. For example, Guo Guangchang of Fosun Group, after knowing that he was going to start a business, immediately took a private plane to WM's Chengdu R&D Center to investigate, and then gave a letter of intent to invest, while Baidu, Sequoia Fund, Tencent Investment and other leading VCs are all early investors of WM Motor.

With strong capital blessing, WM Motor also became the most "champion" car company at that time. According to statistics, in 2019, WM Motor's sales volume ranked second only to NIO, and the first echelon of the industry's recognized new car-making forces at that time was also NIO, Xiaopeng and WM, and ideal cars were only the second echelon.

However, people did not expect that such a new energy vehicle company that lacks neither funds nor contacts will slowly fall behind after 2020, and now it is still in deep business difficulties and has come to the edge of "life and death".

Build new energy vehicles, but follow the "traditional" old road

The so-called new energy vehicles, in addition to new technologies, more importantly, have new operational thinking.

Like the founders of "Wei Xiaoli", all of them have the background of Internet giants, are well versed in the way of Internet operations, and are extremely good at brand building and marketing promotion; But for Shen Hui, who was 45 years old at the time and had been staying in a traditional car factory, basic Internet practices such as brand building and marketing promotion were not his areas of expertise.

Building new energy vehicles is taking the "old road" of traditional car companies, which is probably the main reason why WM Motor fell behind.

For example, in terms of dealership model, many new automakers led by "Wei Xiaoli" have adopted the direct store model, which can give greater play to the company's sales strategy and quickly improve the brand image; However, WM Motor still adopts the dealer model that most independent brands use, which is enough to prove that WM Motor lacks "new thinking".

Of course, there is no denying that the dealer model also has advantages - it can quickly roll out the channel. According to statistics, by the end of 2021, WM had a total of 621 partner stores, compared with only 357 Xpeng Motors in the same period; However, the dealer model obviously has more drawbacks, such as inconvenient price adjustment, which is not conducive to improving brand image; In 2022, as WM Motor fell into the predicament of the capital chain, a group of dealers were collectively "anti-water", and WM Motor was hit hard.

In addition to the distribution model, WM Motor has also chosen to take the "old road" in terms of product positioning and pricing.

Generally speaking, independent brands like to push "moderate" models the most, and the pricing will choose 10-250,000, which is the most concentrated range of public car purchases, but new forces often have different products and price positioning, such as NIO and ideal focus on high-end, the pricing is more than 300,000, while Nezha and Zerorun are mainly cost-effective, and the lowest price of Zerorun T03 is only about 60,000.

However, as a new energy brand, WM Motor has no hesitation in choosing to take the "moderate" route generally chosen by independent brands, and has also plunged into the most concentrated range of 100,000-250,000 public car purchases in terms of product pricing.

Take WM Motor's first new energy vehicle WM EX5 as an example, this model can only be said to be decent in terms of product power, but the price of 11.23-164,800 yuan after subsidies still makes it a hit, selling 16,876 units in 2019; however, such products and pricing strategies also make it "open high and go low", and the EX6, W6, and E5 launched later, although they are all in the same price range, but they can no longer be sold. This is the result of the lack of clear product positioning and pricing.

In addition to the two points mentioned above, WM Motor is also taking the old road of "self-built factory" in the production mode, and when a number of new forces achieve rapid mass production through the foundry model, WM Motor is still throwing money to build production lines; From the above analysis, WM Motor, which is not short of money, is precisely because of the lack of "new thinking" that it gradually declined.

The whole line "routed", Shen Hui also returned to the sky?

Three years ago, Wang Xing asserted that in the basic pattern of Chinese car companies in the future, the top three new forces will not have a position for WM.

In the face of Wang Xing's "bullishness", Shen Hui, who was not convinced at the time, once responded: "If WM's sales in 2020 enter the top three of the new forces in car manufacturing, Wang Xing will send him a Meituan takeaway; Instead, he was willing to give Wang Xing a car. ”

Unexpectedly, in just 3 years, Wang Xing's prediction has come true. For the whole year of 2022, WM Motor's cumulative sales were only 29,500 units, a year-on-year decrease of 33.3%; Looking at the five new force car companies such as Nezha, Ideal, NIO, Xiaopeng and Leap, all of which will sell more than 100,000 units in 2022, it is clear that WM Motor has fallen out of the top three of the new forces in car manufacturing.

Of course, for WM Motor and Shen Hui, it is no longer important to fall behind, and how to "survive" is the key to the moment.

According to media reports, in order to reduce expenses, WM Motor recently launched a new round of salary reduction plans and will retain all employees without pay, and throughout 2022, the news about WM Motor salary cuts, layoffs, and store closures has never stopped.

In addition, according to the media "Der Spiegel Pro", because the headquarters building of WM Motor has been seriously in arrears of property fees and rent, the headquarters building of WM Motor may also move out in the near future, it is clear that the current WM Motor has fallen into a "desperate situation".

On January 12, WM Motor reported that it would go public - through a reverse takeover, it will acquire a strategic acquisition with Hong Kong's Apollo Smart Mobility, and will be listed, and WM can obtain about 5.4 billion yuan of financial support after listing; However, because some shareholders of Apollo have questioned the acquisition of WM, whether WM can be listed is also full of uncertainty.

From the current point of view, the possibility of WM Motor wanting to "turn over" is not large, even if it can eventually go public and resolve the capital chain crisis, but in the face of the increasingly fierce competition of the new energy vehicle track, WM Motor's first-mover advantage has been exhausted, in the face of NIO, Ideal and Xiaopeng, which have been ahead of more than one "position", WM Motor is no longer competitive.

Two years ago, in response to the statement that "WM is left behind in the new forces of car manufacturing", Shen Hui once responded that "the new energy track is a long-term track, we are like playing football, and now the first 15 minutes of the first half have not been played, and who wins and who loses is not yet known." ”

But now, although the game is still not finished, Shen Hui and his Weima are likely to not last until the end of the game.