Reporter Liu Zhao and Feng Yuyao.
Lockouts, production stoppages, unpaid wages, debt collection, ......In the past few days, Gaohe Automobile has been caught in a whirlpool. On the evening of February 22, the official APP of Gaohe Automobile issued an announcement to give an official reply to a series of recent problems of the company for the first time.
In the announcement, Gaohe Automobile admitted that the company has a series of problems, but is currently taking various relief measures. During this period, we will also make every effort to ensure the user's service operation and vehicle after-sales maintenance as the highest priority.
What is the current business situation of Gaohe Automobile? On February 22, the reporter came to the Gaohe Delivery Center located in Wufang Tianya Automobile Service Park, Chaoyang District, Beijing, which is one of the few stores in Beijing that is still open.
The reporter saw at the scene that the front desk staff in the store were no longer on duty, leaving only one person in charge of insurance and several staff in charge of after-sales service at the scene. According to the car viewing register placed at the front desk, the last record of the car viewing was on December 27 last year, and there has been no record since then.
There is no sales staff on duty in the Beijing Wufang Tianya store of Gaohe Automobile Liu Zhao photography.
There was also a front desk staff there yesterday and no one today. The staff in charge of insurance in the store said bluntly to reporters. Then he smoked a cigarette and walked away quickly, unwilling to say anything more to the reporter.
On February 18, the first day for employees to return to work after the Spring Festival holiday in the Year of the Dragon, Gaohe Automobile was revealed to be suspending work and production for 6 months. This news was like a bolt from the blue, which made many company employees unable to come to their senses, and also shook the entire automobile circle.
In addition, the relevant departments of the Yancheng factory, the main manufacturing base of Gaohe Automobile, have intervened as soon as possible, and said that they will set up a special team as soon as possible to coordinate and solve related problems.
A layer of dust fell on the offline store display car
Recently, Gaohe Automobile issued an internal notice to suspend the company's daily operations, which is generally 3 to 6 months depending on the situation in each region.
In the Beijing area, according to the reporter's visit, a number of local Gaohe automobile experience centers have been closed. On February 22, the reporter came to the above-mentioned Gaohe delivery center, which was still in operation, and saw that there were still some maintenance vehicles entering and leaving the site.
At present, the after-sales service of our store is still in normal operation. A clerk in charge of after-sales work told reporters.
The reporter looked at the store at a glance, and the whole store was slightly deserted. In addition to the expired ** display board, car registration records, and empty front desk, a layer of dust has obviously fallen on the display car placed in the store, and traces can be seen when you touch your hand.
No one has been in the store for a long time to maintain Liu Zhao photography.
Today, Gaohe Automobile, a new car-making brand positioned as a high-end and luxurious, is hovering on the edge of the "line of life and death".
According to public information, Gaohe Automobile is a luxury intelligent pure electric brand under Human Horizons, which was officially released on July 31, 2019. The latter Human Horizons was established in 2017 with a registered capital of 2500 million yuan, the company's actual controller and chairman Ding Lei, once served as the general manager of Shanghai General Motors, vice president of SAIC and other positions, and has many years of experience in the automotive industry.
With the fermentation of the news of Gaohe Automobile's "shutdown and shutdown", problems such as debt negotiation, large-scale store withdrawal, and employee resignation have also spread on the Internet. According to relevant reports, Gaohe Automobile's factory in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, is currently experiencing the dilemma of production line shutdown, employees asking for wages, and peer car companies going to the site to "poach people".
Staff: "We're still holding on".
During the period of 'shutdown and shutdown', the company's user service will still be fully guaranteed. On February 22, for the company's "suspension", the relevant person in charge of Gaohe Automobile told the reporter.
According to the latest announcement issued by HiPhi Automobile, the company is actively coordinating resources and striving to ensure that the after-sales service and maintenance of related functions of HiPhi Vehicles, and the vehicle control functions and community sections of HiPhi Vehicles can still be used normally. However, the service of Gaohe charging stations, charging pile installation, and APP charging function (including free charging service) will be temporarily suspended, and the distribution of APP Hi Bei points and Gaohe Choice** will also be temporarily suspended, and will be reopened after follow-up resources are in place.
In addition, Gaohe Automobile will work with Yancheng Yueda Zhichuang New Energy Vehicle, a subsidiary of Jiangsu Yueda Group, a strategic partner, to provide users with after-sales service guarantee.
This is different from what is currently being reported in the market. The above-mentioned person in charge admitted that there are some misunderstandings in the actual situation of the company.
In fact, since 2023, according to the changes in domestic and foreign markets and industry competition, Gaohe Automobile has been making strategic adjustments. He said that judging from the information that has been made public, Gaohe has adjusted the store channels in core cities, reduced the proportion of directly operated stores, continued to develop the direct sales model of partners, and optimized the internal organization to improve efficiency, and the core management took the initiative to reduce salaries.
In recent years, the new energy vehicle market in which Gaohe Automobile is located has developed rapidly. In the case of the industry becoming more and more "involuted", many industry insiders bluntly said that 2024 will be a year for domestic auto brands to enter the "sea of blood" competition.
For the company's current predicament, there are still "Gaohe people" who stick to their posts and are actively saving themselves. "Lao Ding (Ding Lei) is not easy, he is a good boss, he has not given up, and he is still working hard. Li Wei (pseudonym), a staff member who is still in Gaohe Automobile, told reporters, "I will accompany Lao Ding to go down, and leaving at the moment is not good for our brand." ”
Some industry insiders believe that the current shutdown of Gaohe Automobile does not mean that there is no turnaround at all, and if it can be adjusted in time, it is also to prepare for the subsequent introduction of strategic investors, and is expected to build a new starting point for development opportunities.
However, there are also insiders of Gaohe Automobile who expressed concern, and said bluntly: "In fact, the meaning of shutdown and shutdown is basically to go out of business, such as WM and Tianji have also issued notices of shutdown and shutdown before, which are routine operations." ”
Where should Gaohe Automobile go?
Pan Xinxin, the former general manager of Landwind Automobile Marketing, bluntly told reporters that the positioning of Gaohe Automobile at the beginning was actually destined for today's situation. "It is somewhat similar to some of the early new car brands, that is, when consumers do not fully recognize the corresponding brand, they have played the banner of high-end brands. ”
Gaohe Automobile has always been regarded as a "luxury pure electric ceiling" by the industry. According to the data, there are currently three models on sale in HiPhi X, HiPhi Z and HiPhi Y. Among them, the first model launched in 2020, the HiPhi X, was priced at 570,000-800,000 yuan, much higher than the price of its peers at that time.
In 2021, when the Chengdu Auto Show announced the start of the national delivery of the HiPhi X 4-seater model, Ding Lei, the founder of HiPhi Automobile, said at the time, "The mass production and delivery of the HiPhi X 4-seater model marks the first time that the luxury camp of more than 800,000 yuan has officially had a Chinese brand, breaking the monopoly of foreign luxury brands for half a century, and its technological luxury has redefined the 'ceiling' of China's luxury electric vehicles." ”
Despite its high-end flaunting, sales of Gaohe cars are not satisfactory. According to the data of the passenger association and the sales list of Yiche, from September 2023 to January 2024, the sales volume of Gaohe Automobile will be 1,735, 1,834, 696, 564 and 232 respectively.
Zhang Xiang, director of the Vodaf Digital Vehicle International Cooperation Research Center, added to reporters: "Compared with other new car-making brands, Gaohe Automobile is also slightly worse in financing. ”
New energy vehicles are a money-burning field. Compared with a number of new car-making forces that often raise tens of billions of yuan, Gaohe Automobile's financing actions seem to be much more low-key. According to public information, before 2023, Human Horizons, the company behind Gaohe Automobile, only received a credit support of 5 billion yuan from the Shanghai branch of the Bank of Communications in November 2021.
In the early days of its establishment, the founder Ding Lei made it clear that Human Horizons has original capital from the United States, as well as ** investment, and there is no plan to start social private placement for the time being, and there will be several rounds of investment in A, B, C, and D.
The most important thing is that the brand has no added value. Pan Xinxin said frankly that in addition to attracting attention in the door, interior atmosphere lights, etc., Gaohe does not seem to deliver more product value in the intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving that new energy vehicle owners are more concerned about. "From the beginning, I wanted to make money by high product pricing, but ignored the value of the product itself, which is an unreliable dream for new car manufacturers. ”
* |Station cool Hailuo production |Zhang Wenling review |Edited by Zhao Xueyi |Qiao Chuanchuan final review |Peng Chunlai