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Five years later, the new power car manufacturer knight-errant car has not yet separated from the title of "PPT car-building". Recently, news of stagnation in research and development, layoffs and unpaid wages, and factory shutdowns has been reported again.

According to media reports, the self-built factory of Ranger car has been shut down and the research institute has been disbanded. A former employee of the Ranger Automobile Research Institute revealed that many of the declared research and development achievements of the Ranger car are an illusion, and now the company's research institute has also been disbanded. At the same time, a number of employees said that due to financial difficulties, the 10 billion yuan factory of Ranger has long been shut down, and the company also made substantial layoffs not long ago, delaying the wages of some employees for many months, and some have filed lawsuits against the company.

In response to the news, Ranger officials responded that since about 10% of layoffs were made at the end of last year, all staff pay cuts have been made this year in order to control costs, and the focus is on preparing for mass production. The company also said, "the company did have some employee adjustments at the end of last year, abolishing some employees' year-end bonuses and some bonuses, because the whole market last year was not very good, and some employees raised objections at that time. But there is no case of arrears of wages for so long. In terms of research and development, we basically completed the R & D and design of the Ranger X in 2018. At present, we still have about 3 products waiting to be released. In the future, we may look for traditional car companies to carry out contract manufacturing to achieve mass production. "

Earlier, it was revealed that the Ranger car (Huzhou) superfactory project had been shut down and that construction was a long way off. The relevant person in charge of Ranger car said, "because of the problem of qualification, it is very difficult to achieve mass production in the short term, so we are currently considering working with traditional car companies to achieve mass production through the OEM model." The company has been negotiating with a more influential traditional car company for nearly half a year, but since the government is also included in the funding, it cannot be made public until it is all finalized. "

According to information, Shanghai Ranger Automobile Co., Ltd. was established in 2014, the legal representative is Wei Jun, with a registered capital of 4.2 billion yuan, and is headquartered in Shanghai. It is an integrated intelligent electric vehicle manufacturing enterprise integrating new energy vehicle research and development, design, production, sales and service. Knight-errant car is an earlier batch of Chinese new power car-making enterprises.

In July 2015, the Ranger X pure electric vehicle was officially released, and then it was exposed by the media that the shape, chassis structure, size and other parameters of the Ranger X are highly similar to Tesla Model S, so it is known as "PPT car building".

Knight-errant cars have completed multiple rounds of financing, with a total financing amount of more than 8.7 billion yuan, part of which is mainly invested in research and development and factory construction. According to a plan released earlier by the company, Ranger cars are expected to be delivered on a large scale between 2019 and 2020, and Ranger Chairman Wei Jun also said that Ranger's first 3000 cars will be digested internally.

In April 2017, Ranger signed a cooperation agreement with the government of Wuxing District of Huzhou City to build a Ranger car (Huzhou) super factory project in Wuxing District, with a total investment of 11.5 billion yuan. Construction will begin in 2017 and is scheduled to be put into production in 2019. The total annual production capacity can reach 200000 units. But until now, the construction of the factory is still stagnant, and there is no further development of the car-building project. In December 2019, the government of Wuxing District, Huzhou City discussed to take over the knight-errant factory project and planned to acquire land for the knight-errant automobile industry project and dispose of projects under construction, which is conducive to invigorating land resources, defusing project risks and reducing disposal costs.

It can be seen that five years later, the formal mass production of Ranger cars is still a long way off, and perhaps the biggest problem is funding.

The new power of car building is facing the financial test, and there will be great obstacles to sales after listing in the future. In 2019, NIO delivered 20, 000 cars, the largest among the new power enterprises. Subsequently, Weimar and Xiaopeng delivered 16876 and 16609 respectively, both of which failed to meet the sales target. And the rest of the new power car companies, sales do not have much expectation.

In addition, due to the substantial reduction in subsidies for new energy vehicles, sales have declined one after another, car-building new power enterprises are facing greater problems. According to the China Automobile Association, sales of new energy vehicles in China have declined for nine months in a row, of which only 114000 vehicles were sold from January to March 2020, down 56.4 percent from the same period last year.

With the lowering of the threshold for car-building, the rise of Internet car-building, and the influx of a large number of funds, dozens of new car-building enterprises have been born, but with the changes in the market and the stagnation of market demand for new energy vehicles, some enterprises are facing the fate of being eliminated before they are officially put into mass production. In the current environment of new energy vehicles, it has been difficult to accommodate dozens of new power car-building enterprises, some brands and enterprises may fall down. For five years, there has been a big obstacle to the mass production of Ranger cars on the market.

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