Written | Wu Xianzhi Leng Zelin
Edit the | Wang Pan
If new energy is compared to a gamble, then someone loses nothing and is left on the table, and someone holds the vision of the next "god of gambling".
Recently, another new force doing car group buying has entered the game of car manufacturing, and declared that "most of the new car-making forces are racking their brains in order to find a weapon to take advantage of, and we are racking our brains in the arsenal." ”
On January 5, Tuanche Network announced the construction of cars on Weibo, and cue three companies at the head of the new car-making forces one by one.
Judging from the number of likes, comments and forwards, it has not set off too much waves like other companies that have announced car manufacturing before, and even there are few media reports. Naturally, the three wei xiaoli families naturally chose to ignore it.
It seems that the results are not in line with the expected effect, and on January 14, Wen Wei, CEO of Tuanche, gave a small media interview at the Beijing headquarters, intending to release some "material" to stimulate the market.
This release has released a lot of counterintuitive "materials", "more than 100 foreign teams can do more than 20 million yuan of cars, but also can do cars below 50,000 yuan." "Differentiation, brand positioning, brand concept has not yet been determined." "It doesn't matter if the first car fails, you can make another one in 3 months." "Niu Chuang takes $500 million, and we may only be 1/10 of him."
In the face of these words, Li Xiang, the founder of Ideal Automobile, could not bear the occupational disease of the "veteran" after all, and took the pulse for him on Weibo.
Two hours later, Wen Wei, CEO of Tuanche.com, also retorted that he was "not sick" like Cai Huangong:
"I didn't expect that the first shot of the Long March came from Mr. Li Xiang. Apart from rhythm and patience, have you forgotten your vision and judgment? Wasn't Feng Sihan's repulsion that he had seen his eyes spray too early? Therefore, no one should think of themselves as prophets, nor should they be the ones they hate the most. ”
Wen Wei used the story of Li Xiang and Feng Sihan to refute Li Xiang's words, as if to remind the other party that the dragon slayer warrior should not become a dragon.
In fact, Li Xiang himself in the snowball period has liked to output a variety of views, gathered a large number of fans, some seemingly deviant statements, a closer look but there is no lack of rationality, such as in 2016, When Tesla sold only tens of thousands of units in the whole year, Li Xiang predicted that it would reach 500,000-600,000 in 2020, while in fact Tesla sales were 499,500 vehicles that year, which was almost the same.
But at the same time, some of the self-congratulatory personalities have also made the ideal car go through many detours.
They're all veterans, don't brag
According to public information, Wen Wei and Li Xiang are both serial entrepreneurs, but Wen Wei, who graduated from the Northern Jiaotong University majoring in industrial foreign trade, does not seem to be very good, so that in addition to tuanche network, there are very few entrepreneurial experiences on the network, and tuanche network has not achieved profitability since its listing in 2018. On the contrary, Li xiang, the "young head qing" who dropped out of school halfway, has repeatedly left a strong mark on the road to entrepreneurship.
Both are "veterans" on the road to entrepreneurship, so Wen Wei's word for word Li wants to estimate it can't be clearer.
Li Xiang, who has recently become very active after entering the age of confusion, used a 3,000-word essay to further elaborate on the "importance of rhythm control for entrepreneurship" on the day of his opinion, and divided it into two stages, namely from 0-1 and from 1-10.
Li wants to believe that Wei Xiaoli completed the verification from 0-1 in 2021, and is now in the stage from 1-10, which may be the reason why Li Wantsao did not prescribe a "prescription" from the 10-100 stage. As one of the three heads of the new car-making forces, it is not easy to ideally complete the stage from 0-1.
To do something right, the first task is to have a clear understanding of the industry and make accurate predictions.
In August 2016, a global new energy vehicle conference and trading exhibition was held in Shanghai, and in addition to many traditional car companies, new forces such as Yundu, Ranger, and Singularity have also joined.
Daniel Zhang, then deputy general manager of BAIC BJEV, said at the meeting, "Although more and more social capital and Internet companies are now entering the car-making industry, for car-making, it is necessary to have the most basic reverence." "There was a chorus of echoes.
However, from the results, many new forces that once had a "sense of awe" for car building fell on the eve of dawn, and The Sai Lin Eye master made a hundred thousand "old man music" with a low score of tens of millions, and Byton invited the industry bigwigs to eat snacks and spend tens of millions. At the time of the chaos of hundreds of new forces, only Li Xiang had made preparations for "winter" early.
In fact, the ideal financing ability in the early days is far inferior to most of the new car-making forces, according to its disclosure data, when the B round of financing was completed in 2018, the ideal only got more than 4 billion yuan.
Because Li wants to stubbornly develop the "transition stage" of the technology of the extender, investors are not optimistic at first, and his own personality Geng Zhi more or less increases the difficulty, in a recent small essay Li wanted to even use three "too poor" to describe his financing level. So many investment institutions are Jingwei China Zhang Ying, Mingshi Capital Huang Mingming and other people to help broker, and the latter also almost played the role of the early ideal half of the CFO.
Although financing is difficult, Huang Mingming concluded afterwards that "Li wants to have his own corporate background for a long time." The implication is that entrepreneurs understand the thinking of entrepreneurs better, and most institutional investors do not understand. The whole environment in 2019 is not good, the ideal C round of financing is not progressing smoothly, fortunately, the sample car came out, in addition to the investment institutions, Byte and Meituan also joined in, of which Wang Xing still used his own real money and silver to vote.
Because Tesla used pure electricity at that time, and the extender as an "old" technology, there was no successful case in the world, about why to do the extended range. Many investors without industrial background do not understand and are unwilling to invest, but this is the judgment that Li wants to make on the energy system in combination with the national conditions. Unlike abroad, the Chinese market does not have the conditions for fixed parking spaces and private piles, and no technology company has achieved success in the past few years by completely copying the American model.
In fact, as of September last year, the layout of charging piles in the mainland still showed an uneven distribution, with a vehicle-to-pile ratio of about 3:1 and a utilization rate of less than 10 percent of charging piles. Li Xiang's prediction made Ideal Auto smooth sailing last year, not only taking out the first sales volume in the market segment, but also leading a wave of range extenders.
Ideal insight into the market is actually reflected in the previous "failed" product. In the eyes of outsiders, the ideal early car SEV project and the subsequent medium and large SUV ideal ONE, from the price range, user population and model and other aspects of the span is too large.
But looking at the top few of today's C-end sales list, one is a mid-to-high-end new energy vehicle of about 300,000 such as Model 3/Y, and the other is a mini-electric vehicle such as MINI EV.
Li Xiang once analyzed to us: "It is two poles, especially simple, the industry will always be like this." "And when the middle only begins to popularize, the improvement of the next generation of charging technology may give the answer."
In the 0-1 stage of the enterprise that Li wants to summarize, the professional expertise of the manager is the most important, and it needs to be rapidly grown and verified with the goal of obtaining 3% of the market segment. In addition to the well-known product strength, Li Xiang's strength is also the ability to manage cash flow and organization.
On the one hand, due to the lack of grain and grass in the early days of the ideal, on the other hand, due to Li's harsh cost management, such as the renaming of the car standard, the unification of standards, the cutting of pure electricity and a series of no-one actions in the industry, making it much better in the cold winter of 2019 than Weilai, who lives in the ICU, and Xiaopeng who queues outside the door.
Before the listing, the ideal cost of sales was only more than 7 points, while the traditional car manufacturers in the same period were basically about 30 points, and Weilai and Xiaopeng did not suppress it. According to the financial report of the third quarter of last year, the comprehensive gross profit margin of Ideal Automobile reached 23.3%, which was the highest for domestic new forces.
In terms of organizational management, Li Xiang and Li Bin, who is also a teammate and opponent, have formed two opposites. In the early days, Weilai recruited a large number of industry bulls to lay the foundation for its high-end, while Li wanted to only recruit people who believed in them, and the hero did not ask the source.
Li Xiang once described his 40-year-old self as "still unobstructed, provocative, annoying, and not living as mature and stable, broad-minded, rational and objective as others want", on the contrary, Li Bin has always been polite and easy-going.
Perhaps in peacetime problems are always lurking, and once they are stimulated by external stimuli, they will erupt together. In 2018-2019, WEILAI continued to rub sparks internally, and executives such as North American CEO Wu Sili and software vice president Zhuang Li left one after another, which had a particularly far-reaching impact on Li Bin.
Relatively speaking, Li wants to describe his management as "feeling that you are wrong in the morning, and hurrying to leave in the afternoon." From entrepreneurship to listing, the ideal internal director and senior executives above the director have rarely voluntarily left except those who have been dismissed.
It doesn't take a day to ask
Even if Li wants to do a full amount of thinking, from 0-1 is not smooth sailing, but also experienced being questioned about backward technology, insufficient funds led to slow research and development progress, difficult to coordinate the emotions of new and old car owners, and so on. However, perhaps it is precisely after experiencing the difficulties from 0-1 that we know who is the new force of car-making who is "talking about the river" and who is "must have a basis for words".
Accurate prediction of the industry is actually no different from becoming a veteran, in addition to some talents, relying on the continuous learning of the day after tomorrow is still important, looking for problems, reviewing, correcting in misjudgment, and stripping away the cocoon in experience and redundant information to find the lesion. And sometimes when experience and talent don't work, personal character may also be a crowbar that opens the door to success.
"Although we manage expectations very well in business, sometimes when I say too much, it will undermine the management of expectations, after all, business operations need stability."
Li Xiang realized very early on that some words could be said so far. The helmsmen of companies at the forefront of the industry tend to remain relatively silent to prevent being taken out of context and bring unnecessary trouble to the company. For example, in the mobile phone industry, four of the top five in The country do not speak, only the fifth in the market share has the most words, and he is also the most misunderstood person.
No matter what reason Li wants to be, at least in the current new car-making forces, he not only has the actual combat experience of personally building cars, but also through observation, thinking, and summarizing the theoretical experience of other car companies. This unique experience allows him to cross the river by feeling the stones, or he can learn others to touch the stones while watching, and then cross the river by himself.
2019 is a big year for new energy car owners to protect their rights, and in March, Tesla's entire car system dropped prices, and the highest drop even reached more than 300,000, resulting in many car owners going to the door to defend their rights and asking for a return. There is no way, Tesla can only introduce two free upgrades to automatic assisted driving to deal with it.
In July of the same year, when the Xiaopeng G3 2020 model was listed, it was also because the new low-end version and the 2019 medium-high-end version not only had a substantial increase in battery life, but also the price was cheaper, which caused dissatisfaction among the owners of the old model and played a banner to protect their rights. Finally, forced to do so, He Xiaopeng first wrote a sincerely worded apology letter, and then launched the right to exchange for an additional 10,000 yuan subsidy within three years before pressing the public opinion.
After learning from the experience of the two companies, although the price of the ideal ONE 2020 model was still 328,000 yuan when it was launched, it also took care of the mood of the owner of the ideal ONE who ordered the 2019 old model, and promised to directly upgrade to 2020 model, and the cost increase brought by the new configuration will be borne by himself, thus avoiding negative events in the most difficult year.
Even so, the ideal ONE still encountered old problems when it was revamped in 2021.
Some car owners got information from the sales office that they did not change the price of the listing that year, so they placed an order for the 2020 model. As a result, in 2021, the model was revamped and listed, and the configuration of assisted driving, radar, camera, motor, fuel tank volume and other configurations were comprehensively improved, resulting in dissatisfaction among a number of old car owners, and many people also besieged Li Xiang Weibo.
The fundamental problem is with the chip vendor. Because the ideal ONE 2020 is equipped with a chip from the Israeli company Mobileye, which is not flexible enough, it cannot adopt the ideal self-developed algorithm, and then cannot be equipped with the ideal AD advanced driver assistance system that has been developed full-stack, which is incompatible with the software and hardware mentioned in the previous promotion of the ideal. But if you don't follow up, then you will lag behind your peers in terms of competitiveness and research and development progress, and you have to give up your fish and take the bear's paw.
Car building is an incomparably precise thing, any link of the problem will make the enterprise into trouble, even if Li wants to think more thoroughly as much as possible, there will still be a hundred dense and one time. In addition, the mini car project verified by Wuling is also the same, betting on the right track, but the timing is not ripe enough is still just a void.
Another reason for the shelling of Wen wei is that Li wants to be very clear that there are countless unexpected factors in the process of building cars in the past few years to make things more complicated and tricky.
Previously, when talking about the delivery of 10,000 units, Li Xiang confidently said that the supply chain design can be predicted very accurately, and even used six "easy": easy parts management, easy supply chain, easy production management, easy staff training, easy research and development, and easy OTA.
But no one ever thought that last year, due to the epidemic, the supply of chips was tight, which affected the delivery process of the ideal ONE. In order to minimize the impact, ideals had to introduce a plan of delivering the car first and then supplementing the radar. Vehicles scheduled for delivery in October and November will be fitted with only one forward millimeter wave radar and two rear-angle millimeter wave radars, and it is planned to reload the remaining two millimeter wave radars for users picking up the car as soon as December to the Spring Festival this year.
Therefore, from this perspective, to understand those words in Li Xiang's Weibo, we may be able to truly perceive that the "veteran's" hope and smell are actually cold and warm behind it.
epilogue
In Wen Wei's Weibo, Li wanted to forward it, mentioning two words that hit the nail on the head, namely "life-saving straw" and "brand".
Since its listing, Tuanche.com has been in a state of loss for consecutive years due to sluggish revenue, and then its offline trading has been hit hard by the epidemic. In January last year, Wen Wei proposed to complete the privatization at a price of $4.25 per share, according to which the valuation of Tuanche.com at that time was $85.45 million, down nearly 90% from the market value of $626 million on the first day of listing two years ago.
It is interesting to note that the privatization bill was finally abandoned after 10 months, and the reason given by Tuanche.com was "to open up more opportunities for the company." Whether the opportunity is opened is unknown, at least the valve of the market value reduction has not been closed, as of the close of Beijing time on January 14, the market value of the group car is only 55.6 million US dollars.
In the case of RenrenChe, Uxin and other head companies have lost the favor of capital, offline business continues to shrink in the case of difficulties, as a small and medium-sized player in the same track, it is difficult for Tuanche to stand alone. Historical experience shows. In recent years, many bigwigs in the lost industry have regarded car building as a "life-saving straw", from Jia Yueting to several domestic real estate car manufacturing, the process is very bumpy.
To VC, all of which have been for life.
However, car manufacturing is extremely demanding on funds, as of December 31, 2020, the balance of cash and cash equivalents of group cars is only 139.7 million, and there are still 98 "small targets" from the recognized threshold of 10 billion.
The desire of local governments for car-making projects mentioned by Wen Wei seems to be somewhat out of step with the times. Local governments that have experienced the pain of new car construction such as Sailin and Byton are no longer able to allocate land "at will" by relying on exquisite PPT, such as Wuhan and Liuzhou have chosen local enterprises that know more about the roots, and it is not easy to become the next Hefei.
As for "brand", Li wants to think that entrepreneurship needs to find something certain as a basis, and empty talk about branding is "completely a group of blind people touching elephants".
He believes that the main role of the brand is the identity of the car company. "The previous generation of Mercedes-Benz E sold 2,000 units a month, and there were 200,000 discounts. This generation of Mercedes-Benz E sells 15,000 units a month, with a discount of 30,000 or 40,000. Please tell me about any changes to the Mercedes brand? ”
When it comes to brand building, he uses three practical and concise metaphors, namely to pierce the brain with one arrow in understanding (such as the product library of the car home), one arrow through the heart in contact with users (moving is the concept of the car, stopping is the concept of home), and getting an arrow through the soul in the pursuit (making the product the user's pursuit and belief).
In summary, on the issue of building cars, Li xiang is a person who has tasted both crabs and bitter heads. Instead of fighting a war of words, Wen Wei should sink his heart to think about the little surplus grain he has on hand, whether it is actually a car or a wheel. Of course, you can also talk to people about experience, just like Li Xiang once did, watching others touch stones and cross their own rivers.