Just a few days before I posted this article (165438+ 10/0), Geely took over Lifan:
On the afternoon of165438+1October 10, *ST Lifan (60 1777) issued the Announcement on Investor's Equity Adjustment Plan of Restructuring Plan (Draft). Manjianghong Equity Investment Fund will replace Lifan Holdings as the controlling shareholder, and Geely Automobile and Geely Technology Group will participate in Lifan's restructuring as industrial investors.
The benefits brought by this restructuring plan to Lifan Automobile are tangible, which can not only help Lifan avoid bankruptcy and liquidation, improve the company's balance sheet, but also enhance the company's ability to continue operations and profitability.
-"Car memorabilia"
Before this incident, we actually mentioned what we will discuss with you in this article.
Before I talk about Geely, I want to tell you about another brand-Polar Star.
If I say that a factory can produce as many as ... 500 cars a year when various automobile companies are competing to produce 654.38+million cars, 200,000 cars and 500,000 cars a year, can you believe it?
This is the case with Polaris's Chengdu factory.
I talked to you about a network celebrity of Tik Tok before: Thomas Ingrat, CEO of Polar Star (Thomas? Ingenlath).
As an outstanding CEO of an automobile company, Thomas went to Tik Tok as an online celebrity without any burden during the 14 days of entry quarantine! In fact, the car company Polar Star is not only the CEO, but also its production planning is so unique today.
For the automobile industry, to improve the efficiency of the production line, 60jpn (60 cars per hour, that is, 60 jobs? per？ Hours) Even 70jph is an old understanding in many people's minds, which is to maximize the benefits of the factory.
Since Ford's Model T era, we have known that our investment in the fixed assets of the factory is one-off, our wages for workers are relatively fixed, and our investment in automobile molds is also fixed (except that the production is too large and the molds need to be reopened).
In other words, the more models workers produce in a certain period of time, the more they can dilute the previous one-time cost input, thus reducing the cost of bicycles and improving the profitability of enterprises.
However, Polaris took a completely different path.
As the first model of Polestar, plug-in hybrid? Polestar？ 1 sell millions. Polestar has specially built a new factory in Chengdu. Although it is a factory, many people don't notice a detail-the annual output of this factory is only 500 vehicles.
The annual output is 500 sets. To put it bluntly, polestar 1 is handmade, just like some super-running brands.
There are also many things worth analyzing about this 500-capacity factory:
1.？ This factory is located right next to Volvo's factory in Chengdu. Whether it is built or put into production in the future, it can get the most timely support from Volvo's factory. Once there is any shortage in the factory, you can borrow it directly from the Volvo factory next door;
2.？ Polestar？ 1 is a plug-in hybrid vehicle developed based on Volvo's SPA platform. A plug-in hybrid vehicle is developed based on SPA platform, and Volvo has the experience of S90PHEV and S60PHEV. So Polestar? 1 pays more attention to materials and performance, and optimizes the chassis to some extent.
From Polaris? Judging from the shape of 1, it continues Volvo's current design idea, compared with the more technological Polestar? 2、Polestar？ 1 and S90 are somewhat similar. Therefore, in terms of product development cost, the investment is not large.
3.？ Polestar？ The price of 1 is 1.45 million yuan. From the price point of view, this brand, this model is not used to measure, but mainly to define the height of a brand.
What Polestar needed at that time was to launch a product to the market as soon as possible. Volvo didn't have a pure electric vehicle at that time, or the pure electric platform based on CMA platform was still immature.
Moreover, I have heard before that Polestar once hoped to seek the support of external investors because of the influence of the Sino-US trade war. If you want to attract investors, there is a model that gives you more bargaining chips than PPT. As for later, Polestar abandoned external financing and turned Geely into a joint venture company. Over there, Polaris? The historical mission of 1 has been basically completed.
In this case, it is also reasonable for Polestar to adopt the factory with the lowest beat efficiency, reduce the factory investment, rely more on the manual operation of employees and give up the assembly line design.
From the video in Polestar 1 factory seen on the Internet, it can be found that the automation degree of the factory is really low, and it is definitely unnecessary to install an automatic propulsion assembly line for the pallet where it can be pushed by hand. The gluing on the carbon fiber board is all done by manual gluing. Robots and mechanical arms are rarely seen in the whole factory. From the perspective of cost input, the initial investment has indeed been greatly reduced.
I have to say that Polaris looks simple, but in fact, it is very smart.
The second car-Polestar? 2 is it directly aimed at Tesla models? Pure electric vehicles are produced in Taizhou Luqiao Factory.
This factory has two compact SUV models, Volvo XC40 and Lectra 0 1. For this model, Polestar, Volvo and Geely executives have high hopes. It is responsible for the whole brand to achieve self-hematopoiesis, and even the key to achieving profitability.
Therefore, Geely took out its only CMA factory operated by Volvo to produce this pure electric vehicle placed on the CMA platform.
According to the latest news, Geely will build a new Polestar factory in Chongqing to produce products based on Polestar? The production car model of Percept concept car is currently planned to have a production capacity of 30,000 vehicles per year.
This is very problematic-have you ever heard of a factory with a capacity of 30,000 units? Of course, this is more than 60 times the annual output of 500 units.
In any case, in fact, 30 thousand units, for a factory, it may be difficult to make money if the scale effect is not enough.
Is it worthwhile to build so many factories?
As the old wizards of the automobile industry, Geely and Volvo both know that the current output of a single Polestar factory, especially 500 in Chengdu and 30,000 in Chongqing, is not only too small, but also geographically far away, and the logistics cost of suppliers is very high. In fact, it is difficult to achieve profitability at the manufacturing end.
As for the export to Europe, Polestar2 is bound to go by sea, while Polestar 1 and Chongqing factory production are estimated to be in China and Europe. If Polestar wants to enter the American market, cars from Chengdu and Chongqing factories need to go through Wanshui, Qian Shan, to find the sea port, and the logistics cost is very high.
So why did Geely and Volvo do this?
The support of the local government is considered to be the biggest reason why Volvo, or Geely behind Volvo, made such a choice.
Let's not look at Polestar, just look at the layout of Volvo's factory in China. Geely has never considered the problem from the perspective of the most reasonable layout of the factory.
-The two automobile plants in Chengdu and Daqing and the engine plant in Zhangjiakou, if you count the CMA plant in Taizhou, are all invested and built around the local government. I will set up a factory where the local government gives high subsidies.
The following are some details of the Daqing factory:
When Geely gritted its teeth and bought Volvo, Daqing, which provided a lot of financial support, was actually one of the biggest investors.
Judging from the total cost of $654.38+0.8 billion, the funds provided by Daqing Municipal Government are $700-800 million. This is a rather low proportion. And why should Daqing fully support Geely's acquisition of Volvo?
Speaking of Daqing, friends who have a little impression on the history of junior high school and senior high school should all know Daqing Oilfield.
-Yes, it is Daqing. For Daqing, with the gradual depletion of oilfield resources, Daqing urgently needs to find new industries to support the transformation and development of the city. Volvo is not only the representative of advanced manufacturing industry, but also the huge automobile volume and the pull of upstream and downstream industrial chains can help Daqing municipal government to carry out a transformation.
But the problem is that if a car company really wants to build a factory in the northeast, whether it is Changchun of FAW-Volkswagen or Shenyang of BMW and GM, its convenience and facilities are far better than Daqing. Which main engine factory is willing to set up a factory in Daqing with inconvenient transportation and no supplier base?
Therefore, Daqing did not hesitate to support the acquisition of this snake swallow elephant.
In return for the strong support of Daqing City, Volvo put the production of S90 and S60 main car models in Daqing and spread them to the world, which has formed a strong support for the local GDP of Daqing.
Therefore, judging from the three factories basically finalized by Polestar in China this time, except Taizhou, which is based on CMA platform, the other two factories have the shadow of local government factors.
Especially in Chongqing, where the third factory is located, it has been reported that Geely's investment company will participate in the restructuring of Lifan Automobile. And yesterday, everything "heard" has happened.
Judging from the current investment planning, Geely has laid out the financial technology project of Shengbao (China), the global headquarters project of Geely Industrial Internet and the first power exchange station of Geely Group in Chongqing Liangjiang New Area. The Polestar factory project that landed this time should also be a high-end new energy vehicle (Chongqing) production base project signed by Geely and Chongqing Municipal Government.
For this Chongqing factory, I don't know how much the local government has invested.
But one thing is certain: local governments hope to introduce vehicle companies with brand appeal. For example, at the beginning of this year, the Hefei municipal government's support for Weilai Automobile was 654.38+0 billion, while the previous Shanghai municipal government's support for Tesla was tens of billions.
For Polestar, compared with other new power car-making enterprises, they often plan a factory with a capacity of 200,000 to 300,000. When planning a factory with an annual output of 30,000, we should comprehensively consider Polestar's future sales, the investment of Chongqing government and the possibility of building factories in other places in the future.
Again, don't look at Qi Xing Han Han, but he is actually very smart.
But the story is not over yet. There is also news from Beijing Yizhuang International that it will invest 800-900 million US dollars in Polestar. In return, Polestar is also considering building a factory in Beijing and is conducting research and development to benchmark Tesla models. Y compact SUV In other words, Polestar will have four visible factories in China in the future, while its main competitor Tesla currently has only two factories in China and the United States.
The construction cost of the factory is directly proportional to the planned capacity of the factory. In other words, the higher the planned production capacity of the factory, the greater the investment required.
At the same time, the flexibility of the factory is also directly proportional to the investment, that is to say, the more models a factory needs to produce, the more investment it will have.
For the automobile industry, we have always said that we should make money through economies of scale, but with the saturation of the domestic automobile market, or bid farewell to high-speed growth, and the high degree of integration of information and technology brought about by our industrial 4.0 era, should we consider making some smaller factories according to local conditions to reduce the initial investment of the factories?
Tens of billions of new factory investments, as well as a large number of cars that may need to be pressed, are a great burden on the funds of the main engine factory.
So from this perspective, Polestar can't build some small-scale factories in different places, but it is still possible to be rich and expensive.
Especially in Chongqing, Polestar can basically be linked with Volvo and Polestar factories in Chengdu. If you have the support of the local government, why not build a factory here? What's more, Geely has regarded Chongqing as the base camp for operating the southwest.
I was a little worried at first that Polaris was too expensive to go. After looking at it, I actually got a factory with a capacity of 30 thousand, and I am a little looking forward to the next performance of Polaris.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.