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Every once in a while, there will be some news about layoffs and salary arrears from Evergrande Auto, which is not fatal to Evergrande Auto. Fatal, similar to the rumors this afternoon.
Text | Wang Xin Editor | Wu Neng
Source: Leopard Change
The official Weibo of Yuexiu District Public Security Bureau in Guangzhou, because of posting three words, instantly detonated the entire Internet.
These three words are: Xu Jiayin.
Since then, various rumors and various confirmations.
Regarding the information about car manufacturing, it was first reported that the headquarters of Evergrande Automobile Group will be disbanded, and the staff structure of the headquarters will be adjusted. Most people will face layoffs, and a small number of people will sink to the factory.
Later, people familiar with the matter said that the news was not true.
This is not the first time that Evergrande has reported layoffs and adjustments.
Layoffs and product complaints
In recent days, it has been reported that Evergrande Automobile’s Tianjin factory is laying off 60% of its employees. Some employees have been interviewed internally, and some employees will go on vacation.
As a manufacturing-based auto industry, factory layoffs mean production cuts and shutdowns, and follow-up sales are therefore also facing layoff turmoil.
As early as August this year, there were rumors of the suspension of production at Evergrande’s Tianjin factory.
Fortunately, Liu Yongzhuo, President of Hengchi Automobile Group, quickly appeared to refute the rumors: At present, the production of the Tianjin factory is normal, and the mass production of Hengchi 5 is progressing in an orderly manner.
Last year, a number of employees of Evergrande Auto reported that they had taken paid shifts, and the participants included R&D personnel, as well as most of the production personnel in the manufacturing bases in Shanghai and Guangzhou.
In July this year, Hengchi 5, the best pure electric SUV within 300,000 yuan, was pre-sold. According to Hengchi Automobile, pre-sales have been held for 15 days, and orders have exceeded 37,000 vehicles. It seems that Liu Yongzhuo’s claim that Hengchi 5 is a big hit is a foregone conclusion.
At the end of October, Hengchi Automobile announced the delivery of the first batch of 100 Hengchi 5s.
In order to build momentum, Hengchi Automobile publicized the first batch of delivered car owners’ articles praising Hengchi 5 on its own platform, but it could not cover up the complaints about Hengchi 5 from car owners on other platforms.
The dissatisfaction of users is gathered into one sentence: Hengchi 5 is a semi-finished or unfinished car.
The main issues reported by these car owners are:
The text on the screen of the car machine overlaps, which is jokingly called stack in stack. Image source: AutohomeThe text overlapped on the car screen, and the entire screen was blurred, making it unusable at all.
At the configuration level, when the brakes are stepped on, there will be an abnormal sound of soundtrack.
It claims to have L2 level assisted driving, but the central control screen cannot be opened at all, or it is not powered on. In the meantime, some salesmen advised car buyers: assisted driving software is not reliable, and they should take safety into their own hands.
The cruising range of CLTC is claimed to be 602 kilometers, but riders found that it is only 470 kilometers after actual measurement.
When the car had 13 kilometers left in its battery life, it just lay down and didn’t go away.
Some riders reported that the driver’s seat cushion of the Hengchi 5 exhibition car was bulging, and the seat ventilation and heating could not be used.
At present, the feedback problem of Hengchi 5 has not yet involved the three major components of the motor, electric drive and battery.
The first bet product, with such a reputation, actually did not exceed expectations.
It is the fifth year to transform into a car
At the beginning, Xu Jiayin, the chairman of the board of directors of Evergrande Group, was eager to build cars and set a grand goal: In ten years, the group will shift from real estate to new energy sources, with annual production and sales exceeding 1 million vehicles in 2025 and over 5 million vehicles in 2035.
At the beginning of 2018, Evergrande Group’s first automobile company was established, kicking off the prelude to car manufacturing. Evergrande, which has no accumulation of car manufacturing, has adopted the “buy, buy, buy” model.
According to the company’s public data, Evergrande has invested a total of 47.4 billion yuan in the new energy vehicle industry, and the money has been spent on vehicle R&D and design, power batteries, autonomous driving, intelligent network connection, sales and administration. Since then, Evergrande’s license plate has been suspended, and data updates have been interrupted.
What did the money buy back?
At the Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Global Strategic Partner Summit in 2019, Xu Jiayin succinctly explained the car-making strategy: buy, buy, buy, combine, and circle. Therefore, all the parts and components needed by Evergrande to build cars are to establish a supply chain circle of friends.
The first is to build a factory.
For example, the Nansha base of Guangzhou Evergrande Automobile covers an area of 1.26 million square meters, which is equivalent to 1.5 times that of the Tesla Shanghai factory before the renovation. If the Tesla Shanghai factory is a super factory, then the Evergrande Nansha factory is a super super factory in terms of area.
Evergrande originally planned 10 bases, with a standard production capacity of 100,000 vehicles and a maximum production capacity of 200,000 vehicles. It will build a production capacity of 1 million to 2 million vehicles within three years.
An executive of a car company analyzed that the factory planned by Evergrande must be able to produce all the 14 models planned. Out of the level of 50 years of car engineers.
According to media reports, Evergrande found three engineering design companies to develop new cars on three different car platforms after planning the factory construction. “It’s just nonsense.” The above-mentioned car company executives pointed out that generally, one platform can only design and produce one main product, but it is basically impossible for three platforms to design 14 models and then put them in a factory with a unified standard for production.
“Even if the Tesla super factory, each factory has its own emphasis, not all of them are unified.” An engineer from a car company told “Super Source Power” that Evergrande’s car manufacturing and plant building is not to use a car to explore the road, but to be anxious On the whole, with such a multi-point spread, there is no accumulation of car manufacturing experience and technology, and too much investment, “if ordinary companies would die early.”
The second is to buy technology.
Evergrande acquired two in-wheel motor companies – Tate Electromechanical and Protean in the UK.
The hub motor is to install the motor into the wheel of the car, and the speed exceeds all the motors of the current mass-produced models, so it can bring strong and directional driving force to the four wheels. However, due to the advanced technology, many difficulties need to be overcome to realize it. For example, how to reduce the temperature of the motor at high speed is still being explored. This is why this technology has not been adopted in mass-produced cars so far.
To this day, Japanese companies that specialize in the development of in-wheel motor technology can only hope to push this technology into the car in 2025 or later.
Evergrande spent a lot of money to acquire the company and obtained this technology, but was forced to give up because it could not overcome the technical difficulties of uploading.
Evergrande claims that in accordance with Industry 4.0 standards, it has introduced the world’s most advanced production equipment and processes from Germany’s Siemens, Schuler, KUKA, Dürr, Switzerland’s ABB, and Japan’s FANUC.
Evergrande has obtained the intellectual property rights of the new energy vehicle 3.0 chassis structure of the German BENTELER Group and the German FEV Group. The two companies are leaders in front suspension, rear suspension modules, chassis systems, engine exhaust, control systems, chassis controls, lightweight design solutions and long-mileage electric drive technology.
In terms of power batteries, Evergrande spent 1.06 billion yuan to acquire a 58% stake in Kanai New Energy. In order to recruit high-level talents, Evergrande also poached these talents: Li Junxiu, the internationally renowned battery scientist and former director of the battery research institute of SK Group in South Korea, Zhang Qing, the former director of engine battery research and development of Yamaha in Japan, the former general manager of Hyundai mobis in South Korea, and SK Innovation Battery in South Korea. Kim Sang-beom, technical director, Lee Kyu-sung, former general manager of South Korea’s LG Chem Battery PACK Development Center…
Evergrande also established a joint venture with the German automotive power engineering giant Hofer Powertrain Group to establish Evergrande Germany Hofer Power Technology Co., Ltd. to develop three-in-one – motor + reducer + motor controller – core technology of powertrain.
Evergrande also contacted 15 world-renowned auto designers, including Anders Warming, the former chief designer of BMW, and Walter De Silva, the former design director of Audi, to form a design alliance and select the best from hundreds of design plans for one plan.
Third, buy qualifications.
In 2019, Evergrande Health, a subsidiary of Evergrande, spent US$930 million to acquire MiniMinor Limited and its 51% stake in Sweden’s NEVS, increasing its stake to 82.4%. In 2020, it will spend another US$379.5 million to acquire the remaining 17.6% of NEVS shares. So far, NEVS has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Evergrande Health.
Why acquire NEVS?
First of all, NEVS acquired the assets and intellectual property rights of the bankrupt Swedish Saab Automobile in 2012, and also focused on the development of pure electric vehicles. There was also an electric smart vehicle R&D center in Sweden, and the autonomous driving technology was also in the first echelon at that time. NEVS indirectly holds 50% of the equity of Guoneng Automobile, while Guoneng Automobile had “dual qualifications” for new energy car manufacturing at that time, and Evergrande had a license to manufacture cars.
To get off to a good start, Evergrande also established a joint venture with Koenigsegg, the world’s top supercar manufacturer, and launched the first new energy supercar Gemera at the 2020 Geneva Motor Show. eye.
At the beginning of 2019, after Evergrande had a complete quarrel with Jia Yueting, Xu Jiayin decided to build his own car. To this end, he visited 23 countries, 47 cities, and 58 leading companies in the auto industry. Xu Jiayin also went to the Yakeshi test base of China Automobile Research Institute, braved the severe cold of minus 35°C, and supervised the winter test of Hengchi Automobile.
There are at least 9 models released by Evergrande Automobile. Some commentators wrote this: Tesla has been busy for 18 years, and there are not as many models on sale as Evergrande.
Funds were tight, and the auto sector was almost sold
Before Hengchi was put into production, Evergrande’s auto sector had been losing money, requiring continuous blood transfusions from the group. Evergrande Group entered a period of financial constraints last year, and its car manufacturing was implicated, and its investment could no longer be the same as before.
The external financing environment is not optimistic. The stock price of Evergrande Motors has risen to 69 Hong Kong dollars in 2021, with a market value of more than 600 billion Hong Kong dollars. Today, Evergrande’s share price has fallen to HK$3.2, with a market value of HK$34.7 billion.
In August last year, Evergrande announced that it was contacting third-party investors to discuss some of its assets, including Evergrande Automobile.
Since then, wage arrears, salary cuts and vacations, adjustments to layoffs, etc. have been reported from time to time.
“Looking back, Xu Jiayin really didn’t come to build cars, or what he valued was the air outlet, and he would not be like Musk carrying bedding to the factory to eat and live in the factory to study technical problems.” The above-mentioned car company engineer said.
There is a detail that is intriguing: the mass-produced Hengchi 5 has been offline 3 times.
According to previous media reports, on January 12 this year, Hengchi 5 officially announced that the first car would roll off the production line, 12 days earlier than the original schedule. However, internal employees revealed that this is actually the third time Hengchi 5 has rolled off the assembly line. In November last year, there was an internal rehearsal and offline. Liu Yongzhuo arranged another Hengchi 5 offline when he visited the Tianjin factory. “Every loading is for the outside world to see.”
This formality reflects the problems of internal management.
The personnel of Evergrande Automobile are divided into Geely Group, Toyota Group and Evergrande Real Estate Group. The teams have very different styles, and the management posts are more real estate-oriented, and the most they do are planning and PPT. Employees revealed that there were at most 4 directors in a workshop.
When Xu Jiayin first started his business, there was the first wave of private enterprises making cars in China.
It was the late 1990s when private enterprises such as Bird, Chunlan, Geely, Duckling, BYD, Midea, Oaks, and Amoi entered the field of automobile manufacturing on a large scale. Today, only a few car companies such as Geely, BYD and Great Wall remain.
As for the second wave of car-making by private enterprises that started around 2015, I don’t know how many are left.
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