Plan key point:
1. Li Xiang may be the only one among the founders of new energy car companies with a “stucky” personality. He has repeatedly emphasized his "stingy" in public, strictly controlled costs and expenses, and likes to plan carefully. In addition to research and development and factories, other aspects of expenses can be saved. Therefore, Ideal Auto has not done much advertising.
2. Where exactly is the money for the ideal car spent? Li Xiang mentioned a few days ago that in the past five years, ideals spent one billion US dollars (about 7 billion yuan). Among them, more than 2 billion yuan was invested in research and development, and more than 2 billion yuan was used to purchase factories and production qualifications. In addition, the money was spent on self-built sales and service systems in 20 cities, as well as five years of personnel and management costs.
3. When the prospectus was submitted two years ago, Li Bin was 44 years old, and now 39-year-old Li Xiang has embarked on a similar path. But ideals and Weilai, whether they are the founders, automobiles, and corporate culture, are very different. After Weilai and Ideal go public, the outside world will focus on the future development of these two domestic new energy car companies, and profitability is undoubtedly the most concerned point.
Text/刘喵喵向阳
Editor/水笙
This article was first published exclusively in conjunction with Tencent News and may not be reprinted without permission.
Li Xiang may be the only one among the founders of new energy car companies with a “stunning” persona.
In an industry with heavy investment such as new energy vehicle manufacturing, each financing is hundreds of millions of dollars. When funds are abundant, many new energy vehicles will be heavily marketed.
Many people still remember the new car launch conference of Weilai Automobile at the end of 2017 that spent 80 million yuan. In addition, the founder Li Bin also invested heavily in the operation of the Weilai experience store, established an autonomous driving research and development center in the United States, and also gave high salaries to talents.
But the ideal situation surprised many people. Li Xiang has repeatedly emphasized his "stingy" in public, strictly controlled costs and expenses, and likes to plan carefully.
produced a lot of golden sentences from this:
(ideal) as the third entrepreneurship, very strict on operating cash flow;
team with more than 3200 people, only two VPs ；
The administration requires that all economy class on business trips must be bought with the lowest discount, and the economy hotel must have two same-sex stays together;
is not that we are short of money, saving is an atmosphere...
Compared with the rapid and strong expansion of other players such as Weilai, the ideal speed is not fast. Li Xiang's "stingy" style affected his ideal offensive speed.
Few people know that Ideal is the earliest registered new car company in China. Now Weilai is listed and ranked first, with high output and abundant models. Xiaopeng Automobile also owns several models, with sales exceeding 16,000 in 2019.
In comparison, the ideal car is slower. In April 2019, Ideal ONE, the first model of Ideal Motors, was officially launched. In December, the ideal ONE began to be officially delivered. At present, this is the only ideal car.
However, its performance is not bad, since its delivery, cumulative sales have reached 10,677.
The ideal pace is getting faster. In June this year, the D round of financing was completed. On July 10, Ideal Auto officially submitted a prospectus to the US SEC and applied for listing on the Nasdaq. Listed.
Li Xiangzeng once said that he has already traded a tens of billions of companies and hopes to trade another 100 billions of companies.
The ambitious ideal car needs more funds to open up a bigger world.
Li wants to win and wants to win. After leaving the car home in 2015, he once summed up his 15-year entrepreneurial road to "lose more and win less", emphasizing that what he cares most is winning or losing.
Now hope is pinned in the ideal bodyon. Li Xiang once promised to complete the mass production and delivery of new cars in the fourth quarter of 2019, with sales reaching 100,000 in 2020 and 1 million in 2025.
Li Xiang, who refuses to admit defeat and stingy, can he achieve this goal?
1, "stingy" is Li Xiang’s style
Li Xiang is very realistic.
In October 2018, at the press conference of the Beijing Performing Arts Center, Li Xiang appeared in the center of the stage amidst applause, wearing a dark shirt and jeans, with an iconic honest smile. This is the first time that Ideal ONE has met with the public. The conference is very simple.
There is no bells and whistles, no procrastination, the whole process only took less than 50 minutes, no feelings, no emotional cards, in the whole conference, all Li wants to talk about is the product highlights of Ideal ONE .
At the end of the press conference, the sentence "See you next year" will be fulfilled as scheduled in 2019. In April 2019, the ideal ONE launch conference was held at the manufacturing base in Changzhou, Jiangsu, but this time it was more rudimentary. It can even be described as "shabby" in the press conferences of many car companies.
Now, Li wants to review the process of building a car, and he also claims to be "almost abnormal cost and efficiency requirements for himself." And this ideal ONE launch conference, "it took less than 2 million to get To tens of thousands of orders.”
The control of costs is the experience of this entrepreneurial veteran after many ventures. He rarely talks about "ideal", but chooses to face reality.
The "Home of Graphics Cards" founded by Li Xiang set an advertising fee of 10 yuan per 10,000 impressions in 1999, and relying on advertising revenue, he can earn about 8,000 yuan per month. Later, he gave up the college entrance examination to start his own business and founded Paobao.com. In 2004, he founded Autohome. In 2013, he led Autohome to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. He was once known as one of the "Four Little IT Companies in Beijing". Founded Chehejia in 2015, dedicated to building new energy vehicles.
Although each entrepreneurial experience is different, but in these experiences, he has formed his own methodology: looking for opportunities among countless problems, prioritizing the work of the day, and only doing things that affect 90% of the results. 3 important things, the remaining questions choose to ignore.
Ideal car is the same. It is not so idealistic, but takes it step by step, and every money must be calculated carefully. Without a radical expansion strategy, if you know how to attack, you will choose to give up and spend your money on the blade.
Li Xiang’s habit is to solve the main problem first, and the "thing that affects 90% of the results" is undoubtedly the research and development and the factory in the car building. In addition to these two aspects, in other aspects The cost of the car can be saved, so ideal car has not done much advertising.
Car manufacturing is a money-burning industry. In the industry, there are many cases where billions of billions of financing have been burned out but eventually collapsed. Byton, which has recently been on the verge of bankruptcy, is one of them.
On the evening of July 5th, Li Xiang reposted an article titled "300 people ate 50 million snacks and a box of business cards thousands of dollars. How did Byton burn 8.4 billion?" 》, and commented that: "Administrative requirements must buy the lowest discount in economy class on business trips, and economy hotels must have two same-sex stays together."
Li Xiang mentioned, ideal car The team of more than 3,200 people has only two VPs and very few senior directors. "In such a difficult industry, it is necessary to train an entrepreneurial company that starts from the 18th floor of hell, and then it can be more competitive. Not to mention that outsiders don’t understand it, it will take five years for most colleagues. You can understand all this. Choose and time to be friends.”
He once revealed that within the ideal company, whether it is service, sales, store opening or launch, a mathematical model must be developed. “If not, then I think this I didn’t figure it out. Many times we spent 1 yuan that we shouldn’t spend, and we might spend 3 yuan later to make up for the problems caused by the previous one.”
Even the name of the ideal car is changed from the original "ideal intelligent manufacturing" to "ideal". The reason is that the four characters are changed to two characters, which can reduce the manufacturing cost of the car logo and the light box of the offline store.
"It's not that we are short of money. Saving is an atmosphere. We are all talking about stages internally. This is the life span from 0 to 1." Li Xiang's label.
But it is this company's direct confrontation of the bleak reality that allows it to go to the present in the cold winter.
In 2019, my country's new car sales continued a negative growth trend, and new energy vehicles also experienced a first decline. Coupled with the impact of the 2020 epidemic, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers predicts that China's auto sales will drop by 10% to 20% in 2020.
When the industry generally encounters financial problems, the once low-key ideal car has become a spotlight in cash flow.
With the formal mass production of Ideal Auto in the first quarter of 2020, the net cash flow generated by Ideal Auto’s operating activities in a single quarter will be -63,007 million. Under the heavy delivery of Ideal Auto, operating cash flow is expected to also increase Turn positive. Together with the D round of financing in 2020, the ideal is to have US$1.03 billion in cash and reserves.
The ideal car is closer to the ideal.
2. Where is the money spent?
Ideal Auto has raised a lot of money.
From 2015 to 2020, Ideal has gone through 9 rounds of financing, with a total of more than 12 billion yuan in financing.
Meituan founder Wang Xing has invested more than 800 million U.S. dollars in Ideal Auto, including nearly 300 million U.S. dollars personally led by Wang Xing in the C round of financing, and 550 million U.S. dollars led by Meituan in the D round of financing.
In April of this year, Li Xiang mentioned that Ideal has not yet used Series C financing, and claimed that Ideal could make a profit with 1 billion US dollars. This has caused a huge response. You must know that Byton, which was established in 2017, has burned nearly 9 billion yuan (about 1.27 billion US dollars). Li Bin said that it takes at least 20 billion yuan to build new energy vehicles.
Let's take a look at the current financial situation of Ideal Auto. The prospectus shows that in 2019, the ideal revenue was 280 million yuan, and in the first quarter of this year, it achieved another 840 million yuan revenue, but the overall loss is still in the process.
From 2018 to 2019, the ideal net loss is 1.532 billion yuan and 2.438 billion yuan. The loss in the first quarter of 2020 narrowed to 77.11 million yuan. The total loss exceeded RMB 4 billion.
Where is the ideal money spent? A few days before submitting the prospectus, Li Xiang mentioned in the circle of friends that in the past five years, the ideal has spent one billion US dollars (about 7 billion yuan). Among them, more than 2 billion yuan was invested in research and development, and more than 2 billion yuan was used to purchase factories and production qualifications. In addition, the money was spent on self-built sales and service systems in 20 cities, as well as five years of personnel and management costs.
From a more detailed perspective, the prospectus shows that in 2019, a large amount of approval confirmation and testing fees were incurred before the mass production of Ideal ONE. For the whole year of 2019, the ideal total operating expenses are 1.86 billion yuan, of which R&D expenses are 1.17 billion yuan; the operating expenses for Q1 in 2020 are 300 million yuan, and the operating expense ratio is 35.5%, of which the R&D expense ratio is 22. %.
Ideal Auto has not yet reached the goal that Li Xiang said in April to use 1 billion US dollars to achieve profitability, but it can be seen that it does have cost control.
From the point of view of spending money, compared to the many NIO cars that have invested a lot in sales and management, the ideal is more restrained in this regard. Li Xiang mentioned that the rental cost per square meter of Ideal Automotive Beijing R&D Center is only one yuan, and the number of marketing teams is not as large as other new energy car companies.
I firmly believe that Apple and TeslaThe ideal of "product strategy", so far there is only one model of Ideal ONE, which was released in 2018.
In addition, the ideal choice is the direction of extended-range electric vehicles, which is different from pure electric, which is plug-in Hybrid electric, that is, the power system is composed of a gasoline generator and an electric motor. This makes the manufacturing cost of an ideal electric car lower than other players.
However, the next ideal investment may be more. This means that the ideal state of loss will continue for some time.
2020 is ideally a year of expansion, and this undoubtedly requires more financial support.
Li Xiang has already set a few moves.
first is a physical store. The number of stores opened this year will be changed from 20 stores throughout the year to 60 stores throughout the year. Li Xiang once mentioned that a city has or There is no ideal car store, the market share difference is 8 times, physical stores can greatly increase car sales. In addition, the after-sales service network will also be expanded to 100 cities by the end of the year.
The single product has been questioned, and more new products need to be expanded. New models including medium and compact SUV models are planned to be developed, and a new high-end electric SUV is planned to be launched in 2022.
The ideal also requires an entry ticket to the self-driving track. In contrast, Xiaopeng Motors has long focused on intelligence as its research and development focus, and has carried out full-stack self-research beyond the chip. Weilai is set up in China and the United States The intelligent driving research and development team has opened the NIOPilot intelligent assisted driving system.
Li Xiang said that the research and development of L4 autonomous driving will be launched ahead of schedule this year, involving 1 billion-scale investment. Prior to this, the ideal intelligent investment has always been compared Limited, the number of people in the team is less than 50. According to 36 krypton, Ideal has opened nearly 200 recruitment places for the autonomous driving team.
All of this requires a huge investment. Ideal car is still a while away from profitability. Time.
Although it is not the best time to go public, the ideal has to take a quick step. The success of the IPO determines whether the capital reserves can be further expanded, which will also be the key to the expansion of the ideal this year Factors.
3. Ideal and Weilai, who will realize profit faster?
When the prospectus was submitted two years ago, Li Bin was 44 years old, now 39-year-old Li wants to leave On a similar road.
But ideal and Weilai, whether it is the founder, automobile, or corporate culture, are very different.
Compared to Li I think Li Bin has a high degree of education, graduated from Peking University, and the road to entrepreneurship has been smoother. He once led Bitauto to become China's first overseas-listed automotive Internet company and is known as the "Godfather of Travel." At the beginning of its establishment, Weilai attracted many celebrity capital injections, and it was very abundant in capital.
is different from the ideal car of "the poor child has a poor child", Weilai has always been "grow up rich."
Once a Weilai employee revealed that when the standard of ordinary Weilai employees was high on business trips, they had reached a hotel of around 1,500 yuan per person, and a hotel for two people can stay at 3,000 yuan a night, basically you can book Five-star or super five-star hotels, and there is no need to make an application before going on a business trip, "just book the ticket and go." For the
model, unlike other new forces including NIO, which chooses pure electric, the Ideal ONE is an "extended range hybrid" car, that is, a battery-driven electric motor runs, and a fuel engine is used to recharge the battery when the battery is insufficient.
The advantage of this model is also that it can solve the anxiety of endurance, low-cost car use, and ensure the best fuel efficiency, which makes Ideal have good sales results.
But there are also shortcomings. In the new energy vehicle market, which is generally based on pure electricity, extended-range hybrid power is less optimistic by investors in the early stage. Li Xiang also expressed the financing obstacles encountered in the early stage. And on the consumer side, compared to pure electricity, extended-program hybrid electricity is more difficultExplain to consumers. Therefore, in April of this year, Li Xiang announced that the ideal ONE "extended range electric vehicle" positioning was changed to "plug-in hybrid".
In terms of manufacturing, unlike Weilai OEM, the ideal is to build a factory. The ideal first model is produced in a self-built factory in Changshu, Jiangsu. According to official disclosures, Ideal Automobile's Changzhou base has a designed annual production capacity of 100,000 vehicles, covering the four major workshops of stamping, welding, painting, and assembly.
The self-built factory can be fully controlled with less uncertainty. At present, high-quality car companies must have their own factories, and more importantly, they can increase the gross profit margin of their products.
Weilai’s financial report shows that as of December 31, 2019, Weilai had paid Jianghuai a total of 271 million yuan in OEM fees and sold a total of 31,913 vehicles, that is, the average OEM cost per vehicle was 8,500 yuan. Every time JAC produces a Weilai car, the latter needs to send a certain fee. If this cost is subtracted, the gross profit rate will inevitably increase.
However, the initial investment in self-built factories is relatively large. For new energy car companies, when sales are not high, self-built factories are a huge investment, and the production line needs a certain amount of sales to support. When the sales volume is insufficient, OEM is also a good way, but with the increase in sales volume, it is necessary to build a factory by itself.
In terms of capital, Ideal Auto, as a latecomer, is lower than Weilai Auto in terms of loss.
Its prospectus shows that in 2018, 2019, and the three months ending March 31, 2020, the ideal net loss is 1.532 billion yuan, 2.438 billion yuan and 233 million yuan, respectively. Gradually narrowed.
and Weilai’s net loss is even higher. The financial report shows that the net loss for the whole year of 2018 was 9.639 billion yuan; the net loss for the whole year of 2019 was 11.413 billion yuan. In the first quarter of 2020, Weilai's net loss was 1.692 billion yuan.
In terms of revenue, in Q1 2020, Weilai’s total revenue was 1.372 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 15.9%, while Ideal Auto’s total revenue in Q1 2020 was 852 million yuan.
From the data of the first quarter, the difference between the two in revenue is 520 million, and the difference in loss is nearly 1.5 billion.
However, Weilai has always ranked first among domestic new energy car companies in terms of sales. Recently, Weilai Automobile announced the delivery data for June. In June, Weilai delivered a total of 3740 new cars, a year-on-year increase of 179.1%, which also indicates that Weilai’s revenue in the second quarter will also increase substantially.
2020 is still a year of continuous offensive for both.
Ideal Auto has increased its number of stores to 60 stores this year, and its after-sales service network will also be expanded to 100 cities by the end of the year, and more new models will be expanded. Weilai announced in January this year that it plans to increase the number of stores to 200 within 2020, and will build more than 50 new replacement stations and put them into use.
On the issue of profitability, as Li Bin said, Tesla has lost more than ten years before it came out, and the time for Weilai to become profitable will be shorter than Tesla. will stick to it. In terms of the high-end route of NIO, and the ideal that is being attacked, the current profit may not be the first goal.
Ideal wins cost control, but sacrifices brand awareness. Even if more than 10,000 vehicles are delivered, the popularity of the ideal car is still a certain distance from Tesla, Weilai and other new energy car companies.
However, in the past two years, Weilai has had a hard time. In the past five years, Weilai has raised more than 40 billion yuan. However, due to insufficient control of funds, it was once into layoffs. With management problems and financing blockages, stock prices are now rising gradually, and the prospects are gradually becoming clearer, but losses are still a shortcoming.
Li Bin has now become as "stunner" as Li Xiang, closed some of the experience center that burned money, and began to plan carefully. 04aAfter 7d#
Weilai and Ideal go public, the outside world will focus on the future development of these two domestic new energy car companies. What will be the future expansion and investment of ? Who will realize profit first?
