Can polar stone catch the "last train"?

Author丨Jinghai Produced丨Niu Dao Business Review

The founder of Stone Technology entered the car and named it Polar Stone Automobile.

Regarding the name of Polar Stone Automobile, a statement that comes to mind is very suitable. Wang Xing previously raised a question at an internal meeting about how to make the stone float on the water. The answers are varied, some say hollow out stones, some say pads a plank.

The best answer is, speed.

"Sun Tzu's Art of War" cloud: "The disease of the fierce water, as for the stone drifter, the momentum is also." ”

For Changjing, who entered later, if he wanted to catch the last bus, he only had speed, the so-called "polar stone".

Changjing is fast enough, from the market has a voice to build a car to release the first car, Changjing actually walked in front of Xiaomi Lei Jun, in addition to cutting the category of hard off-road, speed is also the key to its ability to win a place.

One after another has fallen, and there are many cross-border car projects that collapse halfway; One after another entered the game, and the lure of huge market prospects made more new forces in car manufacturing put on the test.

A number of manufacturers have successively released a number of new off-road models, from BYD Equation Leopard to Chery Exploration 06, from Haval H5 to tank 400H4i-T, Polar Stone 01 appeared on August 22 too low-key, but the story behind it is not simple.

Go to the manufacturer behind the bottom pole stone 01 with questions and controversies, and you will find that stone technology began to manufacture the whole car, and it seems that it intends to write the madness of not being crazy and not living.

First, the latecomer is the first to hit the line, why can it enter the game faster than Xiaomi?

According to relevant information, Polar Stone is a new energy vehicle brand jointly created by Loke Intelligent and Beijing Automobile Manufacturing Plant, Loke Intelligent undertakes intelligent solutions and design functions with its technical advantages, and BAIC Manufacturing is responsible for manufacturing based on its experience in vehicle manufacturing. Chang Jing, the legal representative and chairman of Loke Intelligence, is a key player in the entire cooperation plan, and his other identity is the founder of Stone Technology, who once created a famous sweeping and dragging integrated robot for Mijia, ranking in the top three in China's market share, with a market share of 21% in 2022, second only to Cobos.

First of all, Polar Stone quickly solved the problem of funding.

Loke Intelligent was initiated and established by Changjing in January 2021 with a registered capital of 12.5 million RMB.

According to enterprise investigation information, three months later, Polar Stone completed the angel round investment of Gaorong Capital and Northern Light Venture Capital, with a valuation of about 240 million US dollars; at the end of the same year, it received a strategic investment of 100 million US dollars led by Tencent and co-invested by Sequoia. In February this year, after IDG Capital Tencent invested in Tencent, the valuation of Loke Intelligent has reached 3 billion US dollars.

Secondly, the efficiency of the core team construction of Polar Stone is commendable. Changjing is a product manager, but the line is like a mountain, car building is not his field of expertise, so he needs to use external forces to realize his dream of car manufacturing, this person is Yan Feng from the automotive industry.

Growing up in SAIC, starting a business in Zebra, becoming famous in WM, Yan Feng's nearly 20 years of professional experience in the automotive field has made him the co-founder and CEO of Loke Intelligence, fully responsible for the company's product design, technology research and development and channel marketing, etc., is the soul of Loke Intelligence. Among the core team members of Loke Intelligent are Yan Quanzhong, vice president, Shen Haojie, president of the vehicle institute, Chang Baisong, general manager of the manufacturing center, and Luo Junkai, president of the research institute, who are also veterans and elites of car companies for many years.

The last and most difficult hurdle is the qualification to build a car, without which everything is empty talk.

The fastest way to obtain qualifications is to choose the foundry model, and Polar Stone is undoubtedly lucky in this regard. BAIC Manufacturing marked on the body of the polar stone car originally belonged to BAIC Group, and transferred 51% of the equity to Fulu Group in 2015, and 71% of the equity of Fulu Group was acquired by Weiqiao Guoke Zhixing Equipment Technology Co., Ltd. in the process of operation, and finally belonged to Weiqiao Entrepreneurship Group.

In the latest Fortune Global 500 list released in 2023, Weiqiao Venture Group ranks 172nd. In short, Weiqiao Group actually controls BAIC Manufacturing, and Luoke Intelligent and Weiqiao Venture Group join hands to form a strategic cooperative relationship, and Polar Stone Auto takes shape as desired.

Strictly speaking, even in the field of smart homes, where it specializes in the home, Stone Technology is a very young company. Stone Technology, which was established in July 2014, would not have imagined that in less than 8 years, it would enter the car building track together with NIO, which is younger than itself and the ideal of being one year younger than itself. When the funding, talent, and qualification issues are all resolved, everything seems to come naturally.

Second, daddy plays hardcore off-road, is this a good story that the market loves to hear?

First look at the product itself, from the perspective of the entire progress of the release of Polar Stone, it can be evaluated by superspeed, the main reason is that it adopts a relatively mature technical path and an insurance range extension power form, and it is easy to find partners.

Similarly, the high degree of appearance similar to other mature models also reduces the risk of design recognition of the Polar 01, and according to some car bloggers, "you can not only see the shadow of the Land Rover Defender, but also experience the sense of déjà vu looking up at the U8." "In addition, the price of polar stone 01 is 10,000 higher than the ideal L8.

Looking at the product positioning, "love home, love the outdoors, love every trip" is the advertising slogan of Polar Automobile's first launch, it seems that they also want to reflect the product positioning of Polar 01 in the copywriting - hard off-road + super daddy.

Hardcore off-road has become a big category, and the market doesn't look that big yet.

Industry data shows that the overall sales volume of China's hardcore off-road vehicle market in 2022 is not high, only 210,200 units, but the market coverage of the Great Wall tank alone is as high as 60%. The current situation reflected behind the data is that in the off-road vehicle market, many first-mover old car companies have won more user recognition and brand recognition, and latecomers have a natural weakness in brand perception, making it difficult for them to gain fan favor and win market share, Great Wall, Land Rover, Jeep, BAIC and a number of older off-road vehicles involved in this field are always difficult to overcome.

More and more new car-making car companies are doing subdivision under this category, the most prominent is to ideally shape the "refrigerator color TV sofa" into the three major parts of the new car, accurately grasp and even create customer needs.

The contrast between the two concepts of off-road and household is itself too large to unify, and it is doubtful how high the utilization rate of the industry's first rear kitchen system is, after all, driving with the elderly and children to engage in extreme off-road while the car also carries pots and pans The picture is unimaginable, family-centered "daddy", will really drive it off-road?

Third, dreams come true VS can't help themselves, is there a bitterness behind Jishi Automobile

As an enterprise that once belonged to the Xiaomi ecological chain, Stone Technology has also achieved rapid development with the help of Xiaomi platform resources with Xiaomi smartphones as the core carrier, and "Mijia intelligent sweeping robot" has become a star product in the Xiaomi ecological chain. Listed in September 2016, in less than half a year, the sweeping robot project created revenue of 181 million yuan for Stone Technology in the first quarter of 2017.

Later, Stone Technology began to develop its own brand. "Stone intelligent sweeping robot" + "Xiaowa intelligent sweeping robot" respectively attacked, respectively targeting the high-end market and low-end market, so as to fully get rid of the revenue dependence on the Xiaomi model. Changjing did it, and the proportion of Stone Technology's own brand revenue rushed to 98.8%.

However, the almost predictable results came as promised. On the one hand, the physical business of Stone Technology has achieved "de-Xiaomiization" to a large extent, but because of the loss of Xiaomi's resource platform, Stone Technology's operating costs began to increase significantly, and although the market revenue and scale have expanded, the final profit has not met expectations, but has a downward trend. According to the 2022 performance report of Stone Technology, although the company's revenue increased by 13.56% in 2022, the profit decreased by 14.96% for the first time, and Stone Technology began to increase revenue without increasing profits.

It is an indisputable fact that the sweeping robot track is cold. Data show that the annual sales of sweeping robots in 2022 were only 4.414 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 23.8%. The inside of the sweeping robot track is crazy involution, Cobos is the largest, the market share is about 40%, the status is almost unshakable, cloud whale has a trend of coming up, according to the Ovi data survey, in 2022, China's sweeping robot online sales accounted for, cloud whale brand ranked third with a market share of 14.5%. Brands such as Xiaomi and Chasing are also desperately releasing new products to form a market impact. Although Stone Technology temporarily ranks second in market share, its position is not stable.

Finding new profit points and activating the second growth curve is the countermeasure taken by Stone Technology. At the beginning of 2021, Changjing, as the legal publisher and chairman of the board, established Shanghai Luoke Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., whose business scope involves new energy vehicle sales, new energy technology research and development, etc.

In fact, before doing vehicle manufacturing, stone technology is still exploring in other directions. For example, the little-known project of an automatic lawn mower.

Changjing himself also planned to reduce his holdings on the day when the restricted shares of Stone Technology were lifted in early 23, and the total amount exceeded 7 hospitals based on the stock price at that time. There was a lot of speculation about the whereabouts of these funds at the time, and with the listing of Polar Stone, the answer to the question seemed to be "stone".

Perhaps, building a car is not Changjing's deepest dream, but only a means for stone technology to solve the crisis of the main business.

In recent years, there have been too many cross-border entrants in the field of vehicle manufacturing, but more have broken into sand and few have successfully taken root.

Whether the crazy stone can go down the new track, we can only wait and see.