Following last year's Weimar, Gaohe Automobile in the camp of new car-making forces is also about to die.
On February 18, Gaohe Automobile officially announced that it would suspend production for six months. In fact, since October last year, Gaohe has been a chicken feather, all kinds of arrears, layoffs, store closures, negative news such as business rights protection, and now the ** businessmen who are owed money are gathered in the Shanghai headquarters of Gaohe Automobile, and even their own employees are banned from flying, and the access control card is also invalid, and they are turned away from entering the office building.
In January, Gaohe was refuting the rumor that "the company's operations are normal", but in February it advised employees to find their own way out. The imminent collapse of Gaohe Automobile has become a common judgment in the industry.
According to public information, in addition to the actual controller Ding Lei, the parent company of Gaohe Automobile, Human Horizons, the other two major shareholders Jiangsu Yueda Group and Jiangsu Aoxin New Energy Automobile Company. Yueda Group holds a 20% stake in Human Horizons. Because of this, Gaohe got the Yueda Kia foundry and solved the problem of production qualification, but according to many sources, the foundry fee to Yueda Group has not been paid.
Originally, Gaohe was expecting the "life-saving money" of the Middle Eastern tyrants, but in the end, it didn't come to fruition. On June 20, 2023, Human Horizons, the parent company of Hi-Hop Automobile, signed an investment agreement worth US$5.6 billion (approximately 40 billion yuan) with the Saudi Ministry of Investment to establish a joint venture engaged in vehicle research and development, manufacturing and sales. However, due to many reasons, this investment has not been put in place, and now Gaohe is in deep financial crisis.
Hiphi X, the first model of Gaohe Automobile, is priced at 800,000 yuan and is positioned as a high-end product, but the main highlights are more dependent on first-class merchants in addition to the more sci-fi exterior and interior, and there is no core technology. Sales data shows that in 2022, the cumulative sales of Gaohe Automobile will be 4,349 units, and by 2023, the total sales of Gaohe's two flagship models, Hiphi X and HiPhi Z, will be less than 3,000 units.
At present, the industry generally believes that Gaohe Automobile is on the verge of "death". In the past 2023, 7 new forces such as Weimar, Aiways, and Ziyoujia have left one after another, and now it is likely that the name of the Gaohe brand will be added behind this. In the list of many new car-making forces that have grown savagely before, there are not many who have survived, and there may be many whose names have been crossed out. So who will be next?