The survival status of Chinese automobiles is simply the first two heavens, and the miserable thing is really miserable, for example, Weimar, which once ran at the front, can't hold on, the founder Shen Hui has fled to the United States, and there are people in the United States Accountant Jia who will return to China next week, his Faraday Future market value has fallen by 99%, it's too miserable!
But at the same time, Stellantis, a large European and American automobile group, spent more than 10 billion yuan to invest in a car company that no one has heard of-- Leapmotor. Stellantis is not familiar to many people, but it is really good, is Peugeot, Citroen, Fiat, Chrysler several car companies merged large group, its brands include Maserati, Citroen, Fiat Chrysler, Dodge, Alfa Romeo, etc., all of which are well-known brands in the automotive industry. Who would have thought of this investment? What is the origin of this new energy vehicle called Leap, are foreigners stupid and have a lot of money? Invested in a car company that Chinese rarely hear of.
This is going on for you. All this has to start with a Zhejiang entrepreneur named Zhu Jiangming, Zhu Jiangming was born in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province in 1967, and he was admitted to the Department of Information and Electronic Engineering of Zhejiang University in the 80s. In the early 90s, reform and opening up entered a new era, and more than ten years of exploration made China more firm in the general direction of opening up, and the idea of going all out to engage in the economy began to spread from Guangdong to Zhejiang.
Zhu Jiangming was then acquainted with Hangzhou Tongda Electronic Equipment Factory Technical Chief Fu Liquan, the two hit it off at first sight, after a very happy conversation, the two decided to resign together to start a business, hand in hand to break out of a world, in 1993 Zhu Jiangming took out 5,000 yuan, followed by Fu Liquan founded Hangzhou Dahua Electronic Equipment Factory, that is, today's leading enterprises in the field of security - the predecessor of Dahua shares. The company was later listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2008, and Fu and Zhu achieved financial freedom.
But these two Zhejiang businessmen, after achieving Dahua, didn't think about cashing out and leaving the market to enjoy life, they had to toss and build another leading enterprise, but it was also an accident to enter the game and build a car. In 2015, Zhu Jiangming, who traveled in Spain, found that there were several Renault small electric vehicles parked on the road, in the global market at that time, the concept of electric vehicles has been detonated by Tesla and Musk, and there are also some domestic capital to invest in new domestic forces, hoping to cultivate a Chinese version of Tesla.
Dahua has technical experience in the field of electronic security, and their company has also participated in the research of smart transportation, therefore, making a car may be a good direction to start a business, one does not do two endlessly, this time Dahua's chief technology officer - Zhu Jiangming led, the two took out real gold ** set up Leap Car, at the age of nearly 50 years old to break into the camp of new forces in car manufacturing, are so old and toss new energy vehicles, can it work?
Many people are not optimistic, because compared to Jia Yueting, who is suffocated by his dreams, the younger generation of Li Xiang, Li Bin, He Xiaopeng, and Zhu Fu of the 60s are too old. Because the early zero run was still spent in research and development, perhaps this is related to Lao Zhu's technical background. But they also understand the way capital plays, burning Dahua's money to start the company, and then they found Sequoia and other capital to enter the game to engage in automobile research and development. Lao Zhu has little experience, so they will also make trouble.
In 2017, the R&D engineer reported to Mr. Zhu that the first mass-produced model of Leapmotor S01 was made, and Mr. Zhu was overjoyed, but as the problem of car-making qualification was exposed at that time, he realized that Dahua was engaged in security equipment, but the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology needed to issue production qualifications for car manufacturing, and without this license, S01 could not be mass-produced. What to do? Lao Zhu has the support of the Dahua system behind him, and he spends money to buy one without qualifications, so Leapmotor acquired Fujian Xinfuda Automobile Company and successfully obtained the new energy vehicle production qualification.
The most important thing to make new energy trams is the battery, motor, electronic control, three-electric system, technology and engineering Zhu Jiangming's approach is very simple, all in research and development, his experience tells him that the technology can be successful, if it were not for the 2002 Dahua company research and development breakthrough, the launch of the industry's first independent research and development of eight-way embedded hard disk video recorder, so that Dahua stood on the cusp of global security, there will be no today's tens of billions of market value of Dahua shares, let alone the later Leap car, Therefore, he is sure that only by overcoming the three-electric technology can Leapmotor gain a foothold in the market.
Three years after its establishment, Leapmotor has become the second manufacturer in the world after Tesla to have complete independent research and development capabilities for smart electric vehicles, and has developed its own electric drive, battery, and electronic control technologies. Intelligent network technology, autonomous driving technology, and even the development of AI intelligent driving chip Lingxin 01, it can be said that in the new force car-making camp, Leap belongs to the one that does not make much noise, but does a lot of great things in obscurity. Moreover, in 2018 and 2019, Leapmotor has successively obtained Series A financing from IB**, Shanghai Electric, and Jinhua CRRC**, and the time has come to hand in the report card in July 2019, and Leapmotor delivered the first mass-produced coupe S0,1199 to 14The price of 990,000 yuan was very attractive at the time, but the sales volume was unexpectedly miserable, with only 500 units delivered in the third quarter and only about 1,000 units delivered for the whole year.
The failure of the first car made the company realize that the unknown Leap must first find a breakthrough in the market, and a year later, Leap actually released the "Old Man Le", which was priced at 6 after subsidies58 to 7The 580,000 yuan T03 model has a range of 403 kilometers and is equipped with L2 level assisted driving. That's right, although the price of S01 is already very cheap, but among the many new forces and old brands in China at that time, this coupe has no characteristics, but the old man is different, he competes in the market is more focused on the field of scooters, the competitors of this track, the best seller is SAIC-GM-Wuling's mini EV, switching to the right market segment, Leap achieved a counterattack, and delivered more than 10,000 units of T03 in seven months, which led to the listing of C11 models in the future.
In 2021, the cumulative sales of Leapmotor cars will be 43,121 units, of which the old man Le T03 will sell 38,463 units, accounting for nearly ninety percent, and Leap finally stabilized the situation, followed by further help from capital, Leap B round completed financing of 4.3 billion yuan, and the investors even included Hefei, the first city of China's venture capital, and the C round successively won CICC, China Securities Construction Investment, Hangzhou** and a total of 4.5 billion capital injections. The increase in sales volume and capital is not only due to the real R&D investment of Leap and the successful market commercialization route after the correction, but also because of the endorsement of Dahua behind it, with a listed company behind it, and the capital is more recognized.
In September 2022, Leapmotor was listed in Hong Kong, becoming the fourth new car-making force to land on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and in the first half of 2022, Leapmotor delivered more than 510,000 smart electric vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 265 times, from June 2020 to July 2023, Leap's monthly car deliveries have increased from just over 100 to nearly 150,000 units, and even the monthly sales surpassed the first lineup of new car-making forces NIO and Xpeng, but Leap still has the common problem of increasing sales without increasing profits, that is, the more you sell, the more you lose.
In the first quarter of 2022 before the launch, the price of its single bike was 920,000 yuan, but the cost of the bicycle according to the bill of materials reaches 1050,000 yuan, that is, a loss of 130,000 yuan, so Zhu Jiangming began to solve the problem of profit margins, if the old man is drainage, then the C series SUV must make money, the method of this zero run is to determine the range extender, and fully release the cost advantage of self-development. First of all, with the popularity of electric vehicles, we find that charging is a problem, especially high-speed travel on holidays, which leads to the bet on the pure electric route of Weilai and Xiaopeng and so on have a very hard time, and BYD, ideal and other refueling and rechargeable hybrid and range extender technology has been recognized by the market, Leap C series bet on the range extender route, and the main 15 to 200,000 range ** cost-effective SUV, at the same time, because the technology is self-developed, the more sold, the total cost of research and development will be diluted, which forms a technology cost reduction, and reflected in the financial formation of the gross profit margin increase, the end.
In the third quarter of 2023, the gross profit margin of Leap turned positive, and Zhu Jiangming's efforts were not in vain, from betting on resources to cutting into the market through the old man, and then to betting on the main cost performance of the range extender, the gross profit margin turned positive for the first time, and Leap finally became a dark horse, killing the rivers and lakes of new energy. Zhu Jiangming once said that the annual sales of new energy vehicle companies can only achieve profitability to 100,000 units, and to 5 million vehicles to live well.