This article is for Youth Cars (Part II).
The sedan has twists and turns
In 2004, Pang Qingqing came into contact with the German MAN company and planned to enter the sedan market, but he did not expect to usher in a greater failure.
After the Spring Festival of this year, Youth Automobile found Guizhou Skylark's parent company, Guihang Group, and bought 69% of the former's equity, and Guizhou Skylark also became a young Skylark, and it was not until 2015 that the two broke up and resumed as a Skylark Automobile.
As you know, one of the three major three small and two micro in Guizhou that year, several small cars that introduced Subaru were half-dead by the end of the nineties. The specific production of what models will be considered in the long run.
The first choice must be Guizhou Skylark's old friend Fuji Heavy Industries, that is, Subaru.
Later, he contacted the Iranian national brand Hodro and the French PSA, and several times even reached the prototype stage, such as the Hodro Samand, known as Poussin in the Middle East, with the Skylark code GHK7180, but they were eventually abandoned for various reasons.
Pang Qingqing even said, I won't get the best car, just like when I said that Liu Yifei would not marry.
After going around and around like this for more than two years, Pang Qingqing finally ushered in the "best car" - Lotus. At the end of 2006, Youth Automobile announced that it had signed a contract with the Lotus Project to jointly establish a research and development center and commission the design of models.
A few words about the Lotus Project, it is not the legendary Lotus sports car, the two are just under the same group, the former provides engineering consulting services for car companies including many independent brands, and the latter is the same brand as Porsche Ferrari. After successively selling to GM, Daewoo and other companies, Lotus has now belonged to the Malaysian national brand Proton Motors, and one teacup is equipped with seven or eight teapots.
In 2007, Young Lotus imported the Porton Gen-2 from Malaysia for CKD assembly and named it "Racing RCR". To say that this car is also quite interesting, hanging the youth lotus logo, jointly developed by Proton and Lotus Engineering, the chassis is derived from the fifth-generation Mitsubishi lancer, the hatchback is dynamic and the big slip-back thief is dynamic, and the competing products are aimed directly at the Focus, but the zero hundred can only run for about 10 seconds, which is basically the goddess on the small card, and the look of the goods.
From this, it can be seen that Pang Qingqing's operation of the car business is the same as that of the young Neoplan and the young Manka, hoping to use foreign technology and brands to make up for their own shortcomings. And it has been blurring the relationship between the real Lotus sports car and the young Lotus, and it has always been printed with Engineered by Lotus on the butt, which is said to be used for ten years. It makes people feel that it is the Lotus car in the world?What does the lotus flower have to do with my young lotus?So did Lotus come to China?If so, is it really coming?As it comes......
But no matter what, Pang Qingnian has high hopes for this car. In 2009, racing RCR was officially produced in China and renamed Lotus L3. In the following years, Young Lotus launched a sedan version of the L3 and L5 based on this car, and then exhibited the L6 and a prototype SUV T5. In 2013, the official sales volume was close to 80,000 units, but some people say that this is a tenfold overstatement, which I think is unlikely.
But problems also arise. In 2011, when the genuine Lotus car was ready to officially enter China, it was found that the young Lotus had been playing its own side ball, and an engine company in Guangdong also registered the Lotus and Lotus trademarks. Speaking of which, the bowl of rice with the Lotus trademark, don't pull it in the pot if you don't eat it, leave some opportunities for others.
In 2012, the Lotus Project was born in a bad way, cut off the technical support of the Young Lotus, and the Youth Lotus began to decline all the way, coupled with the debt-ridden debt of the Youth Automobile Group, it completely stopped production in 2017.
Before this, Pang Qingqing also thought about saving himself. When Saab went bankrupt in 2011, Youth Auto pulled the huge group that sold cars to intervene, and even spent more than 500 million yuan, but it didn't succeed in the end.
However, fortunately, in 2012, Pang Qingqing and the major shareholder of Saab's parent company, the Netherlands, established two joint ventures, and obtained the non-exclusive right to use the Saab Phoenix platform, and claimed that it had developed a "nano carbon battery" to engage in new energy vehicles on the basis of the Phoenix platform. As everyone knows, the phoenix did not fly.
However, this has also become the last positive highlight moment of the youth car, and the next plot development has begun to move towards magic.
Water hydrogen cars and 100 billion **
Today, we should evaluate Pang Qingqing and his youth car from two perspectives.
From the perspective of car manufacturing, until 2015, Youth Auto can even be regarded as a serious car company, or even the only one in the country.
3. Zhejiang is the only enterprise that has a full set of production qualifications for buses, trucks and cars, but its operation is not very good. The so-called nano-carbon battery is still within the acceptable range of normal people, and the water-hydrogen car is just an unreliable big leap forwardFrom the perspective of capital operation, there is nothing to say, pure and pure. Let's talk one by one.
The concept of water hydrogen vehicles was first proposed in 2017, but it was not until May 2019 that the following article was published in "Nanyang**", which became the target of public criticism.
Pang Qingqing introduced that the full name of the water hydrogen car is "on-board hydrolysis hydrogen production hydrogen energy vehicle", the biggest secret is a special catalyst, which can convert water into hydrogen at almost zero cost, without refueling, charging, only adding water, the car can easily run 1000 kilometers, sewage and dirty water can be used, and the car can also drain water.
Even at the scene, Pang Qingqing asked the staff to drive a water hydrogen car for hundreds of meters, but he refused to say what the specific principle was, and he didn't even open the cover of the mechanical part. People with a little common sense know that energy is not generated out of thin air, water produces energy and then turns into water, unless there is a young man in every car pedaling a bicycle, otherwise it will not only insult everyone's personality, but also insult everyone's IQ.
But does it matter?Unimportant. At the time of the report, Nanyang had invested 8 billion yuan with Youth Automobile to set up a joint venture bus factory, and put 72 hydrogen energy buses, 1.2 million units, which can be charged with hydrogen energy. And the funniest thing is that at that time, Nanyang TM did not have a hydrogen refueling station ......at all
It all started in 2010. That year, Pang Qingqing announced that he would invest 26.7 billion yuan to build a car in Shizuishan City, Ningxia, on the condition that 400 million tons of coal resources would be allocated.
In 2011, Pang Qingqing announced that he would invest 29 billion yuan in Ordos to build a car, and on the condition of preparing to acquire Saab, he wanted 700 million tons of coal resources.
Someone introduced it like this, although Pang Qingnian didn't know a few big words, he was very eloquent, he talked endlessly for four hours without drafting, and the words were so dense that others couldn't insert them, and the power was comparable to that of a mop sticky Lu Bu was alive, and more than a dozen people were not allowed to get close. Maybe it's because of eloquence, maybe it's because of profit, in short, this clumsy way of cheating always works. Starting from Shizuishan, Pang Qingqing has done this in more than ten places, and even said that he would establish ten major production bases in the country, and the money that Pang Qingqing fooled away has accumulated more than 100 billion.
Although the localities were reluctant to admit it, by the time they reacted, they had no choice but to sue the court. The court had no choice but to force the bankruptcy of Pang Qingqing's related enterprises and auction off the plant and equipment. By 2019, there are 73 enterprises with Pang Youth as a legal person, and Hangzhou Youth Automobile and Jinhua Youth Automobile, which have gone bankrupt, are only one of the main automobile manufacturing entities. Youth Automobile Group is still in operation, nearly seventy years old Pang Qingqing himself is even very tough, to "show his strength" in the field of new energy in the popular sense, we look forward to it, there will be any unlucky people to be fooled.
The story of Pang Qingnian and his youth car empire has come to an end here. To this day, people's reactions to the words "youth car" are always contradictory, some people still lament the fall of young Neoplan and young Manka, and some people are ridiculing the clumsiness of water and hydrogen cars and local fraud, and the only thing that can reach a consensus is that Pang Youth is not a good young man.