Zhongxin Finance, January 19 (Ge Cheng) On January 16, Li Xiang, CEO of Lixiang Auto, forwarded the car-building plan released by Wen Wei, CEO of Tuanche, on Weibo, and commented that it "refreshed the bottom line of entrepreneurs". sparked extensive discussion.
Image source: Sina Weibo
In this regard, Wen Wei, CEO of Tuanche, responded to Li Xiang on Weibo: "So no one should regard yourself as a prophet, and don't be the person you hate the most." And on the 18th, he posted on Weibo again, saying that he thanked Li Xiang's attention and doubts, fearless is not blind, making a car is no joke, and invited Li Xiang to attend the first product launch of the group car.
Why did the "argument" arise?
On January 14, Tuanche CEO Wen Wei said in a small-scale media interview at the company's Beijing headquarters that the biggest motivation for Tuanche's decision to build a car came from a foreign team of more than 100 people.
Image source: Sina Weibo
This team can undertake product planning, styling design, engineering development, testing, chassis, three electric, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, systematic integration scheme, production support, supplier management and almost all car manufacturing processes, with more than 20 years of car manufacturing experience Experience has accumulated in technology and prototype vehicles.
"This team can make cars with a price of more than 20 million yuan, and can also make cars with a price of less than 50,000 yuan, including commercial vehicles and logistics vehicles."
According to Wen Wei's description, this team is almost omnipotent, and it comes with semi-finished models. The first car will be selected from these semi-finished models. "The first car adopts mature solutions, mature technologies, and mature suppliers. The quality and quality control of the product itself are fully mature and controllable.” The price is in the range of 100,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan, and it will be available for pre-sale in 2022.
Image source: Sina Weibo
Regarding funds, Wen Wei said that Tuanche itself is a listed company in the US stock market, and there are many investors who are very interested in it. The desire of local governments for car-building projects can also be one of the solutions. We estimate that the capital used for production is a fraction of the new power of car-making. Niu Chuang gets $500 million, and we may be 1/10 of his.”
Based on Wen Wei's description of the car-building outsourcing team, most of the replies below the original Weibo were skeptical.
A Weibo user commented below: "The 100-person team can cover everything from pure electricity to hydrogen energy and solar energy, and can also hit 5000w and down to 5w, and can also develop the whole process. Sorry for my limited knowledge, our company A backstage R&D team has 90 people, maybe 99% of us are fishing?!" Another user said: "Is this team of more than 100 people so invincible? Can they do so much? With years of experience in the industry, I think it would be exhausting to do these things with a zero at the back."
In this regard, Al Root, a writer for the famous financial weekly "Barron's", wrote in "Can you build a car out of outsourcing?"
The asset-light model may be just an illusion” has been explained in the article, many new car companies have adopted the asset-light model, instead of spending billions of dollars to build new factories and buy equipment, these upstarts rely on others to produce products for themselves.
In other industries, this model works well, but the success of an asset-light model in the automotive business is not guaranteed.
Whether outsourcing will be successful is unknown. There is only one super-successful electric car company, Tesla. What is its approach?
It is vertically integrated, 100% internally integrated.
What is the "holy place" of Tuanche.com?
As a new auto retail platform, Tuanche was listed on Nasdaq in 2018, becoming the first domestic new auto retail stock listed in the United States.
Calculated at the closing price of US$7.83 per share on the day of its listing, the initial market value of Tuanche.com reached US$626 million; as of the close of market on January 18, 2022, the market value of Tuanche.com was only US$2.76, and the total market value was US$55.7974 million. At the beginning of the listing, it has evaporated 91.08%.
From 2018 to 2020, due to the decline of the overall industry, the contraction of marketing expenses of car companies and dealers, and the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the offline business development of Tuanche.com was affected, and its performance declined severely. Its full-year revenue in 2020 was 330.2 million yuan. , a year-on-year decrease of 48.8%; gross profit was 241.4 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 47.3%.
The performance of the group car has improved since entering 2021. According to its financial report for the first three quarters of 2021 announced on January 13, 2022, the group car’s net income was 274.4 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 66.9%; the net loss attributable to the parent company was 59.362 million yuan Yuan, the loss decreased by 56.88% year-on-year.
After Wen Wei released the news of building a car, the stock price of the group car has not changed significantly recently, and even dropped slightly. Investors in the US stock market are not interested in "building a car".
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