On February 18, 2023, the first day after the Spring Festival holiday, the employees of Gaohe Automobile did not usher in the expected start of construction. Except for a few employees such as some department directors, most of them received a message at home: the company has suspended work and production for 6 months, and the salary will be delayed, and the basic salary will only be more than 2,000 yuan in the future.
The first-class battle in the auto market since 2023 is destined to have an impact on every participant, and the suspension of Gaohe Automobile has undoubtedly added a thick ink to this fierce competition.
At present, the work cards of most employees have been banned from entering the building, and only a few product and service support personnel have been asked to stay and work. In order to continue to pay social security, Gaohe employees had to find another way, and some competitors also began to tap Gaohe's core engineering team. It seems that Gaohe Automobile is also facing the risk of gradually falling down after the bankruptcy and restructuring of WM Motor last year.
Gaohe Automobile is a new car brand with ultra-high-end positioning, and compared with competitors such as NIO, Xpeng and Li Automobile, which are often in the industry spotlight, Gaohe Automobile has a relatively low degree of popularity. However, the company's founder, Ding Lei, is well-known in the automotive industry and is known as the "godfather", who joined SAIC Volkswagen in 1988 and began a car life that lasted for about 30 years. After that, he served as General Manager of SAIC-GM and Vice President of SAIC, and in 2013, he entered politics as Deputy Mayor of Pudong New Area, Shanghai. During his tenure as general manager of SAIC-GM, Ding Lei led the company into the era of "million sales"; During his tenure as the deputy mayor of Pudong, he actively approached Tesla, hoping to introduce the company to build a factory in the local area, and built the largest overseas supercharging station for Tesla in Pudong at that time, laying the foundation for the settlement of Tesla's factory.
After 30 years of hard work in the political and business fields, in 2017, Ding Lei decided to start his own business and enter the car manufacturing industry, and established Human Horizons, its brand Gaohe Automobile. Relying on the resources and status in the automotive industry, Gaohe Automobile did not choose the positioning of Weilai, Ideal and other main 30-500,000 yuan market, but actively focused on the luxury ** chain, and approached the 60-800,000 yuan market with a flamboyant styling design.
The start was pretty smooth. In 2020, the HiPhi X, the first mass-produced model of the company, was launched, with a price of between 57 and 800,000 yuan. Despite the high price, the sales of HiPhi X are not low. In 2021 and 2022, HiPhi X sold 4,237 and 4,349 units, respectively, easily surpassing competitors such as NIO. As a result, Gaohe Automobile has won a place in the high-end market in pursuit of personalization.
However, the resources invested by Gaohe are not much. According to public information, the total financing amount of Gaohe Automobile is only 5 billion yuan, far less than the annual loss of tens of billions of yuan for NIO. In contrast, NIO has established a huge system of battery charging, sales and community life.
This unique high-end positioning seems to be able to enter the open area of scale by gradually decentralizing technology and product design according to Tesla's path. But apparently, the road has encountered major obstacles under the notice of "suspension of work and production for 6 months".
Will there be any improvement after a 6-month shutdown? Many employees began to question. After BYD took the lead in launching a fierce ** war, car companies fell into a state of anxiety at the beginning of the year, and did not dare to miss any product rhythm, let alone stop work for half a year. Faced with the situation of panic and looking for a place to go, Ding Lei had to come forward in person to appease the employees. "The news of the discontinuation of 6 units is like a bomb, which has attracted a lot of attention, and many institutions have expressed interest in Gaohe and want to invest or acquire. On February 22, Ding Lei led the core executives to appear at the Shanghai headquarters, sending a positive signal.
He appointed two members of the Executive Committee to lead a task force to maintain the company's basic operations for three months and pledged to work to save the company during that time. "If it suddenly falls, none of us will be reconciled. Ding Lei said.
Gao He is obviously in dire need of a life-saving fund, but more importantly, it is more important to reflect on how to get from the highlight moment to today's precarious situation. The rhythm of the product is out of touch, which makes Gaohe fall into a financial crisis.
Tesla undoubtedly provides a full-fledged sample for domestic car manufacturing, but blind imitation can be fatal. Gaohe Automobile is obviously such a typical example. The initial positioning of Gaohe was to pursue "the perfect combination of physical experience, scene experience and intelligent experience", and "create products that are envied by more people through the process of excellence". In other words, product strength is what Gaohe Automobile values the most. However, due to the unstable capital chain and the uncomfortable market structure, the rhythm of Gaohe's products is obviously out of touch. "10,000 hours of design is not as good as an hour of market verification", which may be what Gaohe needs to warn about. It is likely that the product is too "made in China" and ignores the actual needs of the market.
The design and craftsmanship are great, but that's not the only way for them to succeed in the market. Nowadays, people pay more attention to the product's **, charging network, intelligence and user experience, and this is exactly what Gaohe needs to improve.
Therefore, Hi-Tech needs to make all-round adjustments to products, markets, brands and other aspects to cope with the increasingly fierce market competition and changes in consumer demand. Only by continuously optimizing products and enhancing brand influence can we be invincible in the fierce market competition.