From June 5438 to May this year, the cumulative sales volume of a Li ONE in Li reached 7775, which was second only to 10324 of Weilai Automobile among all the new car-making forces. In addition, Weilai also has two models, ES6 and ES8, on sale, more than 3,000 more than Xpeng Motors and Weimar delivered earlier.
Although this achievement is still far from victory, as a new face who entered the highly competitive electric vehicle market with a high price of 328,000 yuan and did not have the ultimate service like Weilai, the ideal first battle still won.
Just on June 24th this year, Ideality just completed the latest round of $550 million financing. Looking at the capital winter in 2020, there are big moves on the financing road. Apart from Weilai, there are only ideals. In this battle, the ideal once again ran ahead.
Among dozens of new forces that can name cars, there are always warriors who really want to build cars. However, both Tucki, who worked hard step by step, and Weimar, who carefully explored the market at a low price, lost to the ideal of bringing their own charging treasure besides batteries. What is the reason?
What did Li do behind this unexpected growth? How far can the future go?
Underestimated latecomers to electric cars.
Many people have to admit that they were wrong from the beginning.
When Ideal entered the new energy automobile industry with extended-range electric vehicles as a breakthrough and launched Li ONE with a value of 328,000 yuan, almost no one was optimistic.
What is an extended-range electric vehicle? Anyone who knows something knows that it is not a pure electric car, but it is different from the traditional hybrid car. It is to add an engine (range extender) on the basis of a pure electric vehicle, but the power generated by the engine is not to drive the wheels forward, but to push the generator to generate electricity.
Simply put, the range extender is like a huge charging treasure, constantly charging the car, thus improving the cruising range.
Therefore, when the first production car, Li ONE, was ideally launched, the loudest slogan was "no mileage anxiety"-the cruising range reached 800 kilometers under comprehensive working conditions.
At that time, GAC New Energy Aion with a battery life of 650km? LX has not been listed yet, and Tucki P7, which broke through 700km, is still a company secret. The ideal 800km battery life is really a bluff.
However, Li ONE has more slots and fewer highlights, and its price is nearly 654.38+10,000 yuan higher than that of BYD Tang DM Entry Edition. The road to delivery is not smooth. After listing in April, the delivery was delayed to 65438+February.
Shortly after the delivery of the new car, Li ONE was exposed to the quality problem of "emission control system failure", and then received a series of fault feedback such as "engine fault alarm", "power battery fault alarm" and "PDI process error" for more than 20 days, and then was exposed to major quality problems such as "brake failure" and "spontaneous combustion".
For a time, Li became the target of public criticism.
Originally, it came later than Weilai, Tucki, Weimar and Zero Run, and missed the golden development period of the new force of making cars. The first production car suffered so much criticism, and the price of BBA luxury car was comparable. Many people think that Li's ideal has always been difficult to shine into reality.
I didn't expect the cumulative sales statistics from June 5438 to May 2020, and Ideal actually ranked second among the new forces of making cars. Moreover, in June, it also received a $550 million series D financing led by the US Mission, which grew faster than many people expected.
Not long ago, the party uploaded a photo of, He and Li Xiang to the social platform. The bright smiling faces of the three people, like the carnival of the champion, runner-up and runner-up on the podium, seem to imply that these three new forces will become the final winners.
In the past, "Weilai, Weimar and Tucki" often mentioned by people in the industry were quietly replaced by "Weilai, Ideal and Tucki". Li, who came late, was not ruthlessly eliminated by the cruel reality, but went against the trend.
Why did Li Can fight back?
In the cruel business world, any success is not accidental. What must be behind Li Neng's counter-attack in sales volume and attracting the US delegation to be the backer is because of gambling. What are these things? There are three points:
The first is to find the right route and use the range extender to directly hit the endurance pain point.
One of the biggest anxieties of pure electric vehicle users is cruising range. Although many electric vehicles claim that the cruising range of NEDC is 500 to 600, it is greatly reduced in actual use due to road conditions and weather. When other new energy vehicle companies continue to increase batteries to improve battery life, it is ideal to use range extender (charging treasure) as a solution and "large enough battery+charging treasure" to solve battery life anxiety.
Compared with plug-in hybrid products that can only use fuel vehicles, extended-range electric vehicles can use electric vehicle qualifications. In a sense, among all new energy vehicle products that use the qualification of electric vehicles, extended-range electric vehicles are the most economical, convenient and feasible solution to the pain point of battery life.
The second is to accurately position and aim at the high-end market that continues to grow.
With the transformation of domestic auto market from incremental market to stock market, increasing purchases and exchanging purchases has gradually become the mainstream of auto market consumption, and the luxury car market with higher prices is snowballing under the impetus of this demand.
In terms of market share, the market share of luxury cars was 6. 1% in 20 15 years, increased to 7.4% in 20 17 years and reached 8.8% in 20 18 years. According to this growth rate, the market share is expected to exceed 12% in 2020.
The high growth of the luxury car market has made most luxury brands taste the sweetness, and the first car aiming at the middle and high-end market has also gained dividends.
The third is to understand the market demand and create seven super-large spaces.
A considerable number of users who buy more cars are two-child families, and six and seven seats are exactly what they need. As the founder of car home, Li wanted to know exactly what users needed, so Li's first car had only six seats and seven seats.
Especially in the seven-seat SUV market, Highlander has been invincible in the country for many years, and a big reason is that there are not many opponents. Many people have doubted how big the market space of 7-seat SUVs is, but it turns out that the potential of this market segment is bigger than we expected, enough to feed a new Li ONE.
In addition, as a medium and large SUV, Li ONE's car length of more than one meter and wheelbase of 2935mm create a "big abnormal space", which is also an important reason why it can be accepted by some people.
Li Xiang once said, "We only have one chance to play cards. If we don't succeed at first, we'll never have a chance to play cards again, even if we get the money. "
To this end, Li Xiang made great efforts to study the market and users, so that Li Yi took the first step successfully.
What does Li want to bet on next?
In the business world, there is never "stop when you are good", only "pursue victory". After successfully taking the first step, what is Li's next plan?
Li Xiang gave the answer in the "Spring Farming Meeting" debate at Lakeside University-expansion, and it is overweight expansion.
"We are at a turning point, facing the transition from 0 to 1 to 1 to 10. It has been under development before, and it has only been officially released for a few months. From 0 to 1, you will carefully verify the model, verify the entire business closed loop with the smallest product, and will not expand easily. "
"When sorting out the strategies during the Spring Festival, we obviously found that it was necessary to expand, and the epidemic situation had little impact. The market and industry in which we were located decided to expand."
At present, in the domestic new energy vehicle market, pure electric, hybrid, plug-in and extended-range electric technologies coexist, and the power battery route of electric vehicles is lithium ternary, lithium ferrous phosphate, lithium manganate and solid-state batteries coexist. BYD introduced the new height "blade battery" of lithium iron phosphate battery, and Tesla began to study cobalt-free battery in order to reduce the cost.
This is an era in which a hundred schools of thought contend and wars are raging. There are opportunities and hopes everywhere, and people may fall down at any time and ruin their lives. The ever-changing update iteration does not allow the participants of the game to ponder and climb slowly, and make accurate judgment and expansion quickly, which is the basic condition for survival. This point, whether it is a traditional car company or a new force to build a car, is well known.
Find a foothold and then expand rapidly, so as not to be overwhelmed by the tide of the times.
The question is, how to expand?
Tesla spared no effort to increase production capacity and increase the localization rate of parts to occupy market share; BYD began to share its battery technology and set up a joint venture with Toyota. Willera, sponsored by Hefei Municipal Government, successfully raised 7 billion yuan for R&D and set up camp in Hefei, Anhui.
What about the ideal? Li Xiang's plan is to complete the transformation from 1 to 10 from both channels and technology research and development.
"Our initial plan was to open 20 offline car shops this year. At this time, we found a problem: in the case of high customer satisfaction after the delivery of the new car, 20 stores meant giving the opportunity of' enclosure' to competitors, so we adjusted our strategy and changed the number of stores opened this year from 20 to 60. "
Li used the unconventional charging method of "battery+charging treasure" to intimidate a group of potential buyers of electric vehicles, but in the final analysis, the ideal has no real core technology, that is, it has no core competitiveness, which is a problem that the ideal must solve if it wants to strive for greater development, and it is imminent.
Li wanted to know this very much, so he made a major decision: to lay out major core technologies in advance. "The company originally planned to start the research and development of L4 autonomous driving next year, and it only started this year, which is another investment of 654.38 billion."
Channel+technology is the new direction for Li to gamble next, but this time, will Li be so smooth?
Variables Faced by "From 1 to 10"
It can be said that the ideal of "from 0 to 1" may not be as smooth as the first step in the transformation process from 1 to 10.
As the saying goes, "it is difficult for a ship to turn around." The ideal of just taking the first step is just a boat. It can not only give play to the advantages of "small but fast", but also adjust the strategy and layout at any time.
However, the subsequent development is like snowballing. The bigger the snowball, the harder it is for enterprises to adjust their direction and deployment. At this time, the risk will become greater.
"From 1 to 10", the ideal faces many risks and variables, among which the most crucial point is whether the capital, that is, the financing ability can be sustained.
Although Li wants to say that "snowballing" money must be spent, where does this money come from and how to ensure a steady stream of money is an ultimate problem.
Money is the main reason why most new car-making forces are sentenced to death at this stage. Whether it's Baiteng, who suspended his business in China, Lindsay, whose assets were seized, or Bo County, who admitted failure and looked for a receiver, all fell on the word "money".
According to enterprise survey data, Li Chengli has raised eight rounds of financing in the past five years. Together with the latest financing on June 24th, 2020, the accumulated financing amount exceeds 1 10 billion yuan, which is still far from the threshold of 20 billion yuan. Judging from the ideal financing in the last two years, that is, the last two financing cases, it is mainly because Meituan and Wang Xing are platforms, rather than being generally optimistic by the capital community.
When it comes to hematopoietic capacity, the ideal is obviously far away. Even Weilai, whose product unit price is more expensive and sales volume is higher, is still struggling in huge losses, let alone ideal. For a long time, Li Can can only rely on external blood transfusion to maintain normal operation.
Therefore, Ideality plans to go public in the United States, and changes in equity, which has been frequent in the last six months, is the performance of building an overseas listed VIE structure. It can be seen that ideals are in a hurry. However, after the exposure of Luckin Coffee fraud, the United States adjusted the listing rules and raised the listing threshold, making it more difficult for China enterprises to go public in the United States.
Even if the ideal listing is successful, there is likely to be a risk of falling below the issue price on the first day of listing, just like Weilai. Moreover, in the past two years since its listing, Weilai has laid off staff and reduced salary, and even sold the non-main business of the FE team, which has already broken production for money. Weilai Automobile, which is the most favored by the capital circle among the new forces to build cars, is still the case, and the financial problems faced by the ideal follow-up will never be small.
In addition, according to Li Xiang's plan, Li will open 60 new offline stores this year, and at the same time start the research and development of L4 autopilot that needs to invest 654.38 billion yuan. These expenses are a lot of money. The platform of Meituan alone cannot support the huge financial pressure in the future. How to persuade the capital circles to invest in themselves and continue to have confidence in themselves is the biggest challenge in the process of Li Jiama's expansion.
Of course, in addition to financial difficulties, quality control, threats from rivals, especially Tesla, the shock adjustment of the new energy vehicle market can also bring many variables.
One step wrong, one step wrong, new ventures simply can't stand decision-making mistakes. The competition between car companies depends on the core technology, the competitiveness of products, the foresight of the industry, and the ability to predict and prevent crises.
The road from ideal to reality is really not easy, practical and thoughtful.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.