From the beginning of the outbreak of the new energy track, the automotive industry is destined to have a bloody process, and marginal brands will continue to be "rectified". The "repeated deaths" of Weimar has become a lesson from the past, and now Schrödinger's Gaohe has fired the first shot in 2024.
On February 18, on the first day of resumption of work, Gaohe Automobile announced a six-month shutdown, and also explained the processing of employees' wages in batches. In the previous internal all-staff meeting of Gaohe, there were rumors such as the postponement of the payment of wages in January, the cancellation of the year-end bonus, the prohibition of entering the factory, and the suggestion that employees find their own way out.
There is already a lot of danger
We don't know how the shutdown and negative Gaohe will develop in the future, but at present, whether it is car owners, employees or businessmen on social platforms, posts to defend their rights have been seen everywhere.
There are ** interviews with relevant personnel, they have complained, including the manager of the Gaohe direct store said that in the past two years, Gaohe has been going downhill, 3 years has not been delivered and the after-sales center can only borrow the dealer's site to complete the delivery work; Some of the relevant businessmen who cooperated said that Gaohe has been in frequent arrears for a period of time, with an amount of nearly 10 million yuan;
Since last year, there have been voices of rupture in the capital chain of Gaohe, and the life-saving Middle Eastern capital has finally failed to reach cooperation.
To say that Gaohe can be described as "noble", the founder of Gaohe Ding Lei is the first batch of car people to join the era of China's joint ventures, he has been in the industry for 23 years and then entered the political precipitation, during which he led the landing of Tesla's Shanghai factory, after learning a martial arts, Ding Lei decided to enter the new energy automotive industry.
At that time, when some new car-making forces were still struggling for financing roadshows every day, Gaohe's resources were enviable, and the parent company Human Horizons had the original capital of the United States and a strong background investment, "no shortage of money" made Gaohe, who was positioned at the high-end, have a "sense of superiority" that he is strong and he is strong, and the breeze blows the hills.
According to the data, compared with the 20 rounds of financing completed by NIO with an amount of more than 100 billion yuan, the financing found by Gaohe is only 5 billion, and the sales volume of Gaohe for three consecutive years from 2021 to 2023 is only 4,237 units, 4,839 units and 4,829 units respectively.
In fact, the rupture of funds is only a concrete expression of Gaohe's internal problems, and the real reason also represents the core problem of the current new forces of the same model of car manufacturing.
To whom is the industry scythe swinging?
The difficulty of Gaohe is mapped to the whole industry, and the root cause is still the problems of product scale, technical barriers, and organizational efficiency.
Liu Cixin once said in the Three-Body Problem, "Weakness and ignorance are not obstacles to survival, arrogance is."
For Weibo profile is "high-end electric vehicles on the choice of Gaohe", Gaohe took the lead in launching two models, Hiphi X and Hiphi Z, the pricing was at a higher level in the industry at that time, the price was 570,000-800,000 yuan, known as a rich man's big toy, these two cars can not expand the market scale for Gaohe, and last year, Gaohe's real volume model Hiphi Y strategy was late and rushed in the market, and it did not work, obviously Gaohe's market response is undoubtedly a big step behind.
In addition to the market size, the product functions of Gaohe are also often criticized by consumers. "More than a dozen cameras, the hardware configuration is full and the blind spot reflection cannot be realized", "the voice function pulls the hips", "the sales do not understand the product", "a large number of cameras, there is almost no intelligent driving" ......And in fact, a large part of the reason for these problems is that Gaohe does not have core self-developed technology, such as three electrics, chassis, etc., although they are all good things, but they are all external suppliers, and there is no internal integration, resulting in good materials but can not achieve basic functions. In the end, it only leaves the sense of emptiness under the cool exterior of the public.
As the saying goes, "the children of poor families are in charge early", Gaohe, who was born rich and noble, is not sensitive enough to respond to market changes, it does not have the sense of vigilance that is always in danger like the new car-making forces, and it does not have BYD Chang'an's many years of car-making heritage, and it cannot support Ding Lei's extravagant "idealism" in the bloody market. And all brands should realize that there is enough time for high-end products to precipitate.
At the beginning of the development of automobiles, there were 1,500 car brands in the United States at its peak, and the small-scale brands were either swept to death by the industry giants or became part of the giants and were acquired, otherwise you have an insurmountable technological gap to continue to develop, otherwise the market that accelerates the reshuffle leaves little room for the imagination of the challenger.
Finally, according to relevant reports, Gaohe's current strategy is to reduce costs and clear inventory, and then wait for capital hot money or be acquired. Six months later, we don't know how the company will return to our sight, but there are still a group of enthusiastic users who expect him to "come back to life".