Weima Of "Left Behind"

? ? After six years of business, Shen Hui's hair has turned grey.

? ? In 2015, less than a year after resigning from Volvo's global senior vice president and chairman of China, Shen Hui, 45, officially entered the new car manufacturing trend. At that time, Shen Hui had thick hair, but his temples were a little gray.

? ? ? At the end of 2015, Shen Hui acquired an electric vehicle manufacturing enterprise in Germany and officially established Weima automobile under the name of "weltmeister" (meaning "world champion").

? ? ? He Xiaopeng and Li Bin, who were born on the Internet, and nearly 200 new car brands were also involved in the trend of car making almost at the same time as Shen Hui.

However, compared with Li Bin, he Xiaopeng, Li Xiang, and other founders who have worked hard in the Internet field for many years, Shen Hui, who came from a traditional car manufacturing enterprise, is somewhat different.

However, although Shen Hui, who turned from a professional manager to an entrepreneur at the age of 45, has no Internet experience, Shen Hui is also the only founder of a new car manufacturing enterprise who has gathered all the experience required by automobile manufacturing enterprises such as energy, auto parts, vehicle companies and software before making cars.

? ? ? It took Shen Hui two years to negotiate with the local government, acquire land, build factories, assemble production lines, and bring the first mass production vehicle off the production line.

In addition, unlike Weilai and ideal starting from high-end models, Weima has been trying to popularize new energy intelligent electric vehicles from the very beginning.

Shen Hui has always talked about "using well" and "affordability"“ "Easy to use" refers to the improvement of user experience of intelligent electric vehicles to traditional fuel vehicles, while "affordable" represents the product positioning of Weima, adhering to the most mainstream market of 150000-250000 yuan.

Because of Shen Hui's pragmatic style and rich automobile industry background, Weima successfully obtained star capital such as Baidu, Tencent, Sequoia, Chengdu capital, SIG and other star capital and local government investment when "Internet car making" was controversial.

Weima was once juxtaposed with Weilai and Xiaopeng, ranking the first camp of the new forces of car making.

"We are confident that we will become the world's first truly full year profitable new car manufacturer. We hope to be ahead of Tesla and firmly believe that we can do it." Shen Hui pointed out in an interview with the media.

However, six years later, with tens of billions of investment, the situation of the four little dragons, once a new force in car making, is different. While Weilai and Xiaopeng have completed their IPOs and are gradually on the right track, and Byron is deeply involved in the rumor of "being applied for bankruptcy reorganization", Weima, whose IPO on the scientific and technological innovation board is blocked, has also been questioned as "left behind".

There was no half-time, no score

? ? “ There are a lot of such "voices", but Weima is in the silent period (applying for listing on the science and technology innovation board), and there are many things that cannot be disclosed on its own initiative. As a matter of fact, this year's Weima automobile sales volume has increased very fast. Compared with the same period last year, the sales volume of Weima in the first half of this year has doubled year on year, and it is expected that the growth rate of the whole year will be the same. "

On the afternoon of July 15, a gray haired Shen Hui appeared in front of the media inside the Beijing Weima user center, which understands chedi Jingang automobile park outside the East Fifth Ring Road, for the first time in response to rumors of "falling behind".

"Compared with some enterprises with higher overall sales volume, Weima's network layout is relatively less, and the new product launch speed is not so fast." Shen Hui told reporters.

It is understood that since the beginning of July, new forces of car making have successively released sales data for the first half of the year. Among them, Weilai, Xiaopeng and ideal ranked first with 41956, 30738 and 30154 respectively; It is worth noting that in the first half of this year, the total delivery of Zero run vehicles reached 21744, and that of Nezha vehicles also reached 21104 in the first half of this year.

Therefore, Weima, which used to be in the first echelon of car manufacturing, but has not released sales data for a long time, is also regarded as "lagging behind" by the outside world.

However, according to the sales data released on the same day, Weima sold 4007 units in June and 10116 units in the second quarter of 2021, up 105.6% year-on-year. In the first half of 2021, the cumulative sales volume was 15665, with a year-on-year increase of 103.8%.

"It's not easy to achieve a" year-on-year doubling "in sales. We can't disclose some data like our friends, so the outside world feels that we have less voice. " Shen Hui explained.

However, from China's overall new energy vehicle market, Weima's situation seems not optimistic.

According to the data released by the China Automobile Association, the domestic sales of new energy vehicles in the first half of the year were 1.206 million, up 201% year-on-year. By comparison, Weima's growth rate of 103.8% in the first half of the year was not only "behind" the overall market, but also gradually overtaken by zero runner and Nezha.

What is worth pondering is that in 2019, Wang Xingzeng, founder of meituan, said on social media: "the pattern of Chinese automobile enterprises is basically" 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 "competition for the next two rounds. In addition to three central enterprises, three local state-owned enterprises and three private enterprises, the three new forces are ideal, Weilai and Xiaopeng."

As for Wang Xing's remarks, Shen Hui once said in an empty space that "Weima automobile will enter the top three in the company of new automobile manufacturing forces."

Today, Wang Xing's speech seems to be "a prophecy", but Shen Hui is still full of confidence in Weima.

"The intelligent electric vehicle is a long-term track, just like playing football. Now the first 15 minutes of the first half are not finished. It is still unknown who wins or loses." Shen Hui said in an interview with reporters.

Perhaps it was because of the low volume in the first half of the year, or to dispel doubts from the outside world, Shen Hui announced a number of plans including brands and products in the "mid year summary" of that day.

Enable dual brand logo. According to the introduction, the logo with circular elements will be applied to Weima's travel user products, that is, sharing and operating market products; The new super ellipse brand logo will be applied to Weima's individual user products -- W World Series SUV and M Master Series cars.

"Car + SUV" double line layout. On the basis of Ex5, EX6 and W6 SUVs, Weima will release the first pure electric car M7 within the year. As the first pure electric car launched by Weima automobile, Weima M7 has powerful full scene automatic driving ability, equipped with multiple laser radars and 500-1000 tops super computing power; In order to further expand and improve the layout of Weima automobile in the field of large travel, Weima will launch a car for the travel market -- E5.

"By 2025, the number of car Hailing vehicles in China's compliance network will reach 2.4 million, and the annual sales volume of electric network will reach 500000." Shen Hui said, "in the new travel market, many young people's interest in owning a car has weakened. This trend has a great impact on traditional car factories, but for the new forces who are in the stage of sales from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, the travel market will become a growth point."

Competition in the medium and long term

The vast market in the future is pregnant with unlimited opportunities, but also full of variables and challenges.

In the face of the transformation of traditional automobile giants and the cross-border car making of Baidu, 360, Xiaomi and other technology companies, not only Weima, but also weixiaoli, Nezha and zerorun, the new car making forces that survived the first round of elimination will also make great efforts in the next competition.

"Every car manufacturing enterprise will always step on some pits when making cars from scratch, but the reality is that some enterprises can still climb over, and some have not. These pits can not be avoided by any enterprise. If a crossover enters a new industry, it is certain that they will fall into the pit. It is not necessarily that these giants are at a higher level than us. "

Shen Hui believes that cross-border car making attracts more young people or potential users to pay attention to intelligent electric vehicles and this market segment. At the same time, it also needs some learning ability and quick reaction ability to succeed.

However, although Weima has accumulated many years of experience compared with cross-border players, it still faces many challenges.

In the secondary market, Weima lags behind weixiaoli. After the three companies have made their debut in the US stock market, Xiaopeng has taken the lead in landing Hong Kong stocks. Although the listing application of Weima Kechuang board has completed the listing guidance in March this year. But affected by many factors, the IPO process has been suspended.

"When it will go public, I can't predict, and I can't decide. I can only hope to be listed on the science and technology innovation board as soon as possible." When talking about the listing plan of the science and technology innovation board, Shen Hui said, "when it comes to the capital market, we have always been the leading enterprise in the new domestic forces, and the State supports us very much. However, we are still in a silent period about the scientific and Technological Innovation Board. As long as we do a good job in the company, we think that we will always get the support of the capital market, and sooner or later we will stand on a different stage of competition. "

It is worth noting that on the same day of the mid year communication held by Weima, the founder of zero running automobile, Zhu Jiangming, set up the flag of "surpassing Tesla in three years, launching eight new models before the end of 2025, and reaching the annual sales volume of 800000 vehicles by 2025", and plans to submit IPO documents in the second half of this year to realize listing on the science and technology innovation board or Hong Kong stock market.

In addition, a number of new forces including Nezha and Aichi also released IPO plans.

However, with the gradual tightening of the market window period, who can catch up with the "last train" to successfully IPO also means who can walk longer and farther in the next market competition.

"With the gradual alleviation of core shortage, W6 production capacity will gradually climb, orders are also accelerating transformation, and pure electric cars M7 and E5 will be released in the second half of the year, so Weima's follow-up approach is still very competitive."

Shen Hui is full of confidence, "compared with other new forces, Weima has a very big advantage - once fought in the bloody battle of fuel trucks. Smart electric vehicles, which do not waver in strategy and focus on products and mainstream, may have a little less noise in the short term, but in the medium and long term, Weima can become a leading enterprise. "

It is worth noting that since this year, the domestic electric vehicle market still shows the characteristics of "dumbbell". That is to say, the market of A00 and A0 electric cars represented by GM Wuling miniev and Euler HaoMao, as well as the medium and high-end models represented by Tesla, are popular. However, the sales of electric vehicles which mainly focus on the mainstream consumer market are depressed due to the competition from the same level of fuel vehicles.

However, in Shen Hui's view, in the future, China's new energy vehicle market structure will accelerate optimization from "dumbbell type" to "spindle type". By 2030, the domestic mainstream market segment will occupy about 60% of the market share; It is expected that in the next 10 years, the penetration rate of mainstream new energy vehicles will increase from 3% to 40%.

This also means that Weima, which is positioned as the mainstream intelligent electric vehicle, is about to usher in the "home battle" and create its own moat.

Automatic driving defines smart car

"New energy vehicles are not the next automotive era. Smart cars are the watershed of the automotive industry." He Xiaopeng, the founder of Xiaopeng automobile, said publicly more than once.

"Not all electric vehicles are smart electric vehicles. The concept of he Xiaopeng and I are relatively close. For the definition of smart car, our concept is to have enough cost support to ensure the safety and reliability of products. " In Shen Hui's opinion, those less than 100000 yuan can only be called electric vehicles, not intelligent electric vehicles.

On the one hand, intelligent electric vehicles have very high requirements for electronic and electrical architecture. The requirements of electronic and electrical architecture for communication and computing speed are very high, and the requirements for chips, cameras, millimeter wave radar, lidar and other sensors are very high.

On the other hand, driverless people invest a lot in software. On the one hand, it is for the software investment of its own intelligent cockpit unmanned driving; On the other hand, we should also consider the continuous iteration in the future.

"Costs and prices limit the use of smart electric vehicles in the future. For example, when Weima decided to use the high-end 8155 chip and automatic driving domain controller on W6, it hoped that the vehicle could grow with the users. That's what we think is a key element of smart electric vehicles. " Lin Shihan, vice president of Weima motor and head of intelligent systems and product planning, added.

In fact, the electrification represented by new energy and the intellectualization represented by automatic driving are the two major theme directions of the automobile industry, which complement each other. Especially with the advent of 5g era and the rapid development of artificial intelligence, automatic driving vehicle has become a new battlefield.

For new energy vehicles, vehicle control is more integrated into the computer. Compared with fuel vehicles, there is more room for innovation in the vehicle architecture, which determines that the intelligent represented by automatic driving will become the core competitiveness of vehicle enterprises in the future.

"Via W6, Weima redefines the standard of intelligent electric vehicles in China." On the morning of April 19, at Weima exhibition stand of Shanghai auto show, Shen Hui and Zheng Fu, partner of Roland Berger in Greater China, pointed out that "one is driverless and can be delivered driverless; The second is the user-defined car. Weima W6 implements user-defined programming on the cockpit software. "

It is understood that on the eve of the Shanghai auto show, Weima took the lead in releasing the L4 level driverless product Weima W6 jointly developed by Baidu Apollo platform. Weima W6 is equipped with AVP unmanned autonomous parking system, which truly realizes one button parking in and out of the garage.

"Parking is a pain point in China. Weima does L4 unmanned parking. W6 is the first to implement first delivery in L4 under limited scenarios. In a familiar place, first learn once, you can achieve driverless, do not need high-precision map, but to network. The next generation we are going to iterate on is called pavp, which is autonomous parking with high-precision maps in public parking lots. "

Shen Hui doesn't like blindly following Tesla in the field of automatic driving, such as building access gates on expressways, because that is the primary driving demand of American users; This is not the case in the Chinese market. Parking is the pain point of the Chinese market, so Weima chooses to do the L4 unmanned driving in the parking scene first.

"Consumers have strong confidence in Weima's brand or in the autonomous driving and some innovative features of other brands. Many consumers are willing to try the automatic driving function, which is a key competitive dimension. It is very likely that we will buy a certain car for a certain function." Zheng said it would become a "moat" for competition between brands in the future.

"At present, the intelligence of Weima bicycle can be done very well, and the rest is continuous iteration. However, L5 is more worried that bicycles can do it, but the networking and infrastructure can't keep up with each other. This is not something that can be done by a single company. "

Shen Hui finally said that it will take a long time, at least 10 years or more, to realize full scene driverless driving. Moreover, an automobile company must not be able to achieve full scene driverless driving. This is a very big topic. It is not easy to become a mature business model without Huawei and Baidu.

?