"Now is not a good time for an IPO, the entire capital market is not good, including the mainland and Hong Kong markets, GAC Aion's IPO process depends on whether the market can recover next. ”
At the beginning of this year, GAC Aion was rumored to be going to Hong Kong for IPO, and on March 17, Gu Huinan, general manager of GAC Aion, officially responded to the listing rumors at the media communication meeting of the 2024 Electric Vehicle 100 Association.
Gu Huinan mentioned that GAC Aion's IPO is different from many companies, GAC Aion is not short of money, the IPO is not to finance a sum of money, the core is to solve the problem of system and mechanism, in the past, the new forces robbed people by giving stocks, and now GAC Aion can also give.
In September 2021, GAC Aion started the mixed reform, and GAC Aion's employees raised more than 2 billion yuan to invest in the company. In October 2022, GAC Aion completed Series A financing, with 53 investors, including PICC Capital and CSG Nengchuang, subscribing for 18.294 billion yuan, and GAC Aion's valuation soared to 103.239 billion yuan. After the completion of the A round of financing, GAC Aion has been looking for opportunities to go public.
Gu Huinan said, "If GAC Aion really wants financing, the financing ability is very strong, the last round of financing more than 20 billion, we are still thinking about where to invest the more than 20 billion." ”
In addition to the topic of listing, the market is also particularly concerned about the high-end process of GAC Aion.
In July 2023, GAC Aion's high-end brand Haobo GT will be launched, and the new brand Haobo will officially join the market competition, and will successively release models such as Haobo SSR and Haobo HT. However, Haobo's current sales performance is not ideal.
In this regard, Gu Huinan said that the channel expansion speed of Haobo was not fast before, and he hoped to do a solid job of foundation and cultivate product strength first, and Haobo would definitely bring surprises to the market this year.
Leifeng.com's "New Intelligent Driving" previously learned that Haobo will launch an SUV model with the internal code name AH8 this year, which is similar in size to Wenjie M9. Mass production of this model was originally scheduled for the end of March, but in order to improve market competitiveness, Haobo postponed the mass production time.
Gu Huinan also mentioned that the second half of new energy is still the competition of EV+ICV, and disruptive electrification technology will be born, and car companies must not miss this opportunity period.
"The infrastructure for energy replenishment has been developed at a high speed, but the anxiety of energy replenishment has not been alleviated, and is even aggravated. Because new energy vehicles are increasing, especially hybrid vehicles are also coming, plug-in hybrid is so mileage, and they also grab charging piles, and the anxiety of charging piles is intensifying. ”
At the media meeting on the same day, Gu Huinan also shared with a number of media on topics such as price wars and going to sea, and Leifeng.com's "New Smart Driving" was edited without changing the original meaning.
Q: You mentioned in your speech that 2024 is the year of the outbreak of L3 intelligent driving, would you like to talk in detail about the current progress of Haobo in L3 intelligent driving, and what intelligent driving capabilities can it achieve?
Gu Huinan: I would like to start by talking about why I think this year will be the year of L3 explosion.
First of all, there are already a number of enterprises in the L3 pilot, the state also hopes to promote this industry, and strive to be able to officially introduce L3 corresponding regulations this year;
Haobo GT is already a core model of the L3 level, because the most important thing for L3 is that the hardware should have a dual redundancy system, and then the software.
Hardware, we have 5R (Radar millimeter-wave radar), 11V (camera), 3L (Lidar lidar), and now we have cooperation with Huawei, using their MDC series intelligent driving chips, and also cooperating with NVIDIA to use Orin series autonomous driving chips, and there is no problem in hardware.
Now L2+ high-speed intelligent assisted driving has been relatively mature, and the core is to increase the software calibration related to urban intelligent assisted driving, and Haobo has been prepared in this regard.
I also have the point that 2026 will be the year of the explosion of Level 4 autonomous driving.
We have also recently registered a mobility company with Didi, and we judge that the best application scenario for full autonomous driving in the future is car sharing, because it saves the cost of drivers, and it is still very cost-effective to spend the money of hiring drivers to do autonomous driving.
Our goal is to be able to bring a large number of Level 4 autonomous driving products to market by 2026.
The above is a prediction based on our own stage of development, and it remains to be seen whether Level 4 autonomous driving is in line with the market or whether it can become a mainstream development trend.
Q: At the beginning of the year, the price war of car companies is very strong, Aion has set a very large growth target this year, I would like to ask you to talk about the overall sales market situation in combination with the current market competition environment, as well as the sales volume of Aion in the first two months, and what are Aion's countermeasures in this regard?
Gu Huinan: At the moment, even people who are not in the automotive industry know that there are special volumes now, and I feel that they define volumes more than I perceive.
Maybe we're in it, a little bit of a boiled frog in warm water, I used to roll every day, every year a little bit more than the previous year, for me it's just a few degrees more warm, so I don't have a particularly strong feeling.
We are participants ourselves, and we are prepared for this kind of scenario. To make a new industry or operate a brand, I must have six dimensions of capabilities, including R&D technology, manufacturing capacity, product matrix, stable and reliable industrial chain, marketing services, and organizational system culture.
Now the competition is a kind of all-round competition, not a certain field of competition, just sell a few cars is not able to survive this stage, it is a systematic competition, comprehensive strength of the competition, the car is durable, the car is not sold this year and everything will be fine next year, but take turns to do the bank.
We who do this industry must first have a basic understanding, if we want to eat this meal, we must face the roll, and don't be afraid of the roll, the roll is organic.
We can have the opportunity to go overseas, but it is not so simple for China to go to sea, and there are still many obstacles to the on-board operating system, map, ecology and other links to go overseas.
We must have a consensus that China's new energy leadership does not mean that it has always been able to lead, don't think that everyone will do it all at once, and it is completely market-oriented, and it is not so simple.
Q: Everyone is concerned about the process of Aion's IPO, how is the current process? This year, Aion mentioned 700,000 sales, and the overseas market is a more important part, except for the Thai region, what measures will we take in which regions next?
Gu Huinan: Now is not a good time for an IPO, the entire capital market is not good, including the mainland and Hong Kong markets, and Aion's progress mainly depends on whether the market can recover in the future.
GAC Aion is different from many companies, the IPO is not to raise a sum of money, but to solve the problem of system and mechanism. Many of the new forces and talents were sent out by GAC, and they went there to have stocks, and now GAC Aion also has stocks for him.
We did a round of financing in the last round, and our employees invested more than 2 billion yuan. If GAC Aion really wants financing, the financing ability is still very strong, we raised more than 20 billion in the last round, and we are still thinking about where to invest the more than 20 billion.
Money is not the core issue, the problem of IPO now is finding the right time.
For the international layout, Chinese enterprises are similar. Last year, Chinese companies claimed to have sold 1 million vehicles in Russia, but in fact there may be more than that, and there are many more through other channels, because all international brands in Russia have gone out and are fully open to Chinese companies.
Russia, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia are the core markets of the "Belt and Road". In addition, there is Europe, and for us GAC Aion, there is South America, and then Africa.
We probably follow this path to accelerate the layout, other enterprises in China are similar, but each has its own products, considering its own scale, whether to build a factory there, whether to research and develop, and how to make good use of local resources, or their own people, the direction is similar, but the specific operation model is still very different.
Q: More and more car companies have joined the price war, including BYD to hit the A-class car to the range of 70,000 yuan, Aion also has models to reduce prices, what do you think of the increasingly fierce price war?
Gu Huinan: First of all, from the perspective of measures, the first must participate in the competition, and the second must be differentiated competition.
Next, not only all cars will have to fight a price war, but also a lot of value wars, such as now Aion, including Haobo, in addition to the price war of the car itself, we can do energy.
GAC Aion established GAC Energy Technology Co., Ltd. to create an integrated energy system of light, storage, charging and swapping. Recently, we have the strength to do this, not to sell other people's piles, energy is a good differentiated competition.
The second is intelligent driving, I think that autonomous driving will bring you a change in the business model in the future, GAC Aion and Didi cooperation, can give birth to a new business model, can participate in the travel market, is a new opportunity.
Many people say that the first half is EV, and the second half is ICV and dual carbon, I don't agree with this view, the first half is EV, and the second half is an enhanced version of EV+ICV.
We are also undertaking a project to develop solid-state batteries, and we will definitely see solid-state batteries in two years, but it may be a little more expensive, but it is also a disruptive technology.
Nowadays, don't stare at this year's competition every day, this year's competition is long live to survive, in addition to surviving first, but also brewing the next round of technological change when you have the opportunity to participate.
Q: As Aion's high-end luxury electric vehicle brand, Haobo is still very well-known, the 20 million new energy vehicles last year were Haobo, but its increase in sales is not particularly large, I would like you to analyze the reason. You mentioned that you want to give Haobo a little time, and you want to ask if there is a specific deadline?
Gu Huinan: After electrification, electric vehicles made by traditional luxury brands do not have a brand premium on fuel vehicles, which provides an opportunity for new energy vehicle companies.
But this new opportunity is very interesting, Tesla has taken 20 years to get to where it is today, and it has exploded in the past three or five years.
Now there is no new energy high-end brand that can really live well, and those who claim to have survived have not yet, which shows that it is not so easy to really do high-end.
Why does GAC Aion want to be a luxury brand? Or based on the fact that there is such an opportunity at the moment, why don't I do it, GAC Aion has a good foundation, including the six dimensions of capabilities just mentioned.
I think Haobo will definitely surprise you this year. When Haobo was first listed, there were only more than 40 channels, and now it has developed to 100 real offline stores. Let's not expand so fast, take our time, first do a solid foundation, have product power, and have time to accumulate. It's not about financing to be a high-end brand, it's better to be slow, but there will definitely be surprises this year.
I came from a technical background and engaged in manufacturing, and when I took over GAC Aion in 2017, I began to deal with the media. In the early days of new energy, the old reporter was not interested, and once told me in person that he was not optimistic about new energy.
I have started two businesses, one is Trumpchi, we look for a parts factory, ask them to help me make parts, he helps me, not you give him business.
The second time was GAC Ai'an built new energy, at that time there were few people to do new energy, our trading company opened a 4S store by itself, we injected 40 million at one time, why?
Today, I can talk and laugh because the light boat has crossed the Ten Thousand Mountains.