“The competition in the new energy vehicle market of more than 250000 has been very fierce. In addition to new car brands, all the cars pushed by traditional OEMs are also in this field, so we think that now the greater opportunity is at the entry level.” Recently, another brand-new electric vehicle brand – “electric house” announced that the first vehicle has been delivered. Hu Jun, managing director of electric house, said in an interview with the reporter of economic observer that high-end electric vehicles are already a red sea, and his idea is to share the rich dividends of the entry-level electric vehicle market through “cost performance” and higher operation efficiency.
The “electric house” brand was officially released by Chongqing Xinte automobile in August 2021. This delivery is its first pure electric vehicle product, young guangxiaoxin.
Although “electric house” as an automobile brand is relatively strange to Chinese consumers, the enterprise that launched the brand can also be called a veteran in the field of Shanxi Guoxin Energy Corporation Limited(600617) automobile. In September 2017, a new car manufacturing enterprise called Xinte automobile was established in Gui\’an new area of Guizhou Province. With the support of the industrial fund of Gui\’an new area, Xinte completed the first batch of off-line and shipment of the first model dev 1 in 2018.
However, since 2019, due to the unsustainability of the development model, Xinte automobile has fallen into a state of shutdown and unsustainable operation. In September 2020, after the introduction of capital such as Chongqing Changshou high tech Zone and CDH investment and the exit of Gui\’an new area, Xinte automobile completed the restructuring. The registered place was transferred from Guizhou to Chongqing and renamed “Chongqing Xinte Changshou New Energy Automobile Co., Ltd.” (hereinafter referred to as Chongqing Xinte automobile). Hu Jun became the managing director.
Hu Jun has 25 years of working experience. After stepping down as executive vice president of Chery Jaguar Land Rover sales and service organization in 2018, Hu Jun chose a new car manufacturing enterprise as a new professional track.
In January 2021, Chongqing Xinte automobile announced a strategic cooperation with Sinotruk Jinan Truck Co.Ltd(000951) heavy truck Chongqing automobile, which will OEM its new products; In August 2021, Chongqing Xinte automobile officially released the electric house brand and new enterprise strategy, and announced the completion of a new round of financing (round a financing) and the introduction of Shanghai Hemu Technology Co., Ltd., with a financing scale of 100 million yuan.
According to the information of qixinbao, in July 2021, Chongqing xiaodianxingshi New Energy Vehicle Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as xiaodianxingshi) was established with a registered capital of 20 million. Hu Jun is the legal person and the largest shareholder, holding 35.52% of the shares. Other shareholders are Chongqing Xinte investors. Small electric celestial body has the brand of “electric house”. This means that the electric house has become a new car building and entrepreneurship project invested and participated by Hu Jun.
In the official introduction, “small electric celestial body takes the cost-effective pure electric car as the starting point to enter the market. In the future, the product planning will always focus on high cost performance in an innovative mode from A0 to A00 and a, from passenger cars to commercial fields.”
“High cost performance” – this is the biggest advantage that the electric House continues to emphasize. This core competitiveness will be based on its lightweight resource integration operation mode – dock mode.
In August 2021, Hu Jun first publicized the dock expansion dock model to the outside world, which is different from the high investment mode of most brands’ self built factories, self-developed technologies and self built stores.
“The Shanxi Guoxin Energy Corporation Limited(600617) industry is very mature, and there are many resources in the whole industrial chain from R & D system, production capacity to supply chain system to sales and after-sales service system,” Hu Jun said. The electric house will focus on building four ports of R & D, manufacturing, market and users in parallel with independent and joint R & D, including independent quality control manufacturing, OEM integration, parts supply chain cooperation, high-quality dealer partners jointly layout sales and service outlets, and make every effort to build dock mode.
Liu Hongwei, chief marketing officer of electric house, explained that the dock model can reduce costs in four aspects: R & D, production, marketing and operation. Among them, at the R & D level, it cooperates with mature and excellent technology companies to jointly develop technology; At the production level, if self built factories are not selected, the capital burden of at least 2 billion yuan will be saved; In terms of channels, do not invest too much in decoration and reduce the investment cost of dealers in building stores; In terms of operation, DTC’s user operation mode is adopted instead of the method of large-scale advertising by traditional car enterprises. As the marketing architecture designer of electric house, Liu Hongwei was one of the heads of Chery sales company and served as the vice president of Pang Da Automobile Trade Co.Ltd(601258) .
The fast pace of electric house also seems to be the demonstration of the high operation efficiency of this model. Since the reorganization in August 2020, the electric house has spent one year to launch the brand and realized the production and delivery of the first product in 16 months. Even lantu and Zhiji, which rely on large traditional car enterprises, need more than one year to realize the delivery of the first model. Hu Jun revealed that the electric house will quickly launch three models in 2022.
In addition to mass production and delivery faster than most electric vehicle brands, the channel laying speed of electric houses is also faster. It is reported that within four months since the birth of the brand, the electric house has built sales and service outlets covering 95 cities, and completed the basic construction of DTC (face-to-face user) digital direct marketing system.
On this basis, the electric House hopes to significantly reduce the cost through the dock mode, so as to achieve the goal of breakeven in 2022.
It should be noted that although the dock mode of the electric house is a lightweight operation mode, this lightweight is only relative. As an electric vehicle brand, rigid R & D expenditure is still essential.
Hu Jun revealed that the total number of the electric house team is more than 100, with R & D and marketing accounting for the majority, compared with other departments. In addition to platform development, the R & D personnel of the electric house are mainly concentrated in three modules: electronic and electrical architecture, battery life and DMC, and intelligent cockpit and human-computer interaction.
Moreover, all planning will be based on the acceptance of products. “Only with a quantitative basis can we gain a firm foothold. What we are taking now is the so-called first step,” Hu Jun said. The second and third cars around other scenes are being built simultaneously. In the next two years or so, the product layout for these three core use scenarios will be completed.
In terms of product planning, the electric house believes that the demand for entry-level pure electric vehicles below 100000 is not saturated, which is also the market entry point of the electric house. Its first model “young guangxiaoxin” is positioned as a five door four seat pure electric walking car, with a standard 402km long endurance, and the price range is 59800-65800 yuan.
According to the plan, the electric house will launch three pure electric products in 2022, covering electric vehicles from A00 to A0, with the goal of breaking 10000 sales per month and achieving positive single vehicle gross profit, including a more intelligent A0 model to seize the C-end market with cost performance, and a more economical A00 model to develop the shared vehicle market.
Under the current situation of a large number of idle automobile production capacity and the transformation of traditional sales network in China, it is considered to be feasible to take the “asset light operation” at the production and sales end as the starting point of entrepreneurship. However, for the market potential of electric cars, although SAIC GM Wuling and Chery have made sufficient demonstration, it is more due to the cumulative demand of points. At present, it is not easy to achieve both sales scale and profit in this segment.
However, as a start-up vehicle enterprise mainly relying on financing, in order to ensure sufficient R & D expenditure in the initial stage, the electric house must quickly realize the sales accumulation at the market end.
“Financing has been continuing. At the present stage, the focus is on putting the first car on the market, quality and process control and initial brand construction.” Hu Jun said.
In order to support the sales of products, the electric house brand plans to continue to expand the coverage of the sales network in 2022. The goal is to achieve the coverage of 250 cities nationwide and establish 500 stores by the end of the year. Hu Jun predicts that by the end of 2022, the monthly delivery volume of young guangxiaoxin will exceed 10000 vehicles.
(source: Economic Observer)
