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Zhongtai Motor, which was caught in the suspension of production, is also on holiday at the General Research Institute.

Recently, the media has exposed an internal document of Zhongtai Automobile, the content is "notice about the holiday of the General Research Institute." The notice shows that according to the company's research and decision, from November 30, 2020, all the staff of the Research Institute will have a holiday, and the staff who will return to work and the time will be notified separately.

At the same time, Zhongtai Automobile requires that during the holiday period, arrange personnel to do a good job in the safety and protection of technical data and other assets.

With this holiday notice from the General Research Institute, it also means that Zhongtai's R & D business has to stop because of the company's operational difficulties. Prior to this, Zhongtai automobile production has basically stopped production. According to the report, Zhongtai produced only 574 cars in the first half of 2020.

According to the official website, Zhongtai Motor has set up four major R & D centers in Hangzhou, Chongqing, Yokohama, Japan and Turin, Italy, and set up academician expert workstations and postdoctoral research workstations in China. It has created a research and development team of more than 2000 people composed of domestic and foreign experts, with two major fields of traditional cars and new energy vehicles. As well as engine, transmission, battery, motor, electronic control and other core components design, development and manufacturing capabilities. In recent years, Zhongtai Automobile has concentrated its advantageous resources and made every effort to build a brand new 3.0platform architecture "ZFA" with I ·AFA (compact car platform), I ·BFA (intermediate car platform) and I LFA (luxury vertical platform) as the core. The product development capability covers the C-level market segment from A00UV, and reaches the international advanced level in styling, mold, CAE, trial production, NVH, inspection and other aspects.

Today, it is uncertain whether these businesses can eventually be realized in mass-produced products.

Since 2019, the production and operation of Zhongtai Automobile has become more and more difficult. Capital problems, national six factors and its own operation all have an impact on Zhongtai, which further leads to the stagnation of production and the enterprise into crisis. The report shows that Zhongtai lost 11.19 billion yuan in 2019.

In the first three quarters of 2020, Zhongtai Motor achieved operating income of 981 million yuan, down 72.68% from the same period last year; the net profit belonging to shareholders of listed companies was a loss of 1.563 billion yuan. Due to the inability to operate normally, Zhongtai Motor has low revenue and is even less than the amount of loss.

Zhongtai Automobile has said that the reason for the large performance loss is that due to the influence of the shortage of funds superimposed by the COVID-19 epidemic and the low prosperity of the automobile industry as a whole, at the same time, due to the decline of the company's refinancing capacity and the aggravation of capital tension caused by overdue bank loans, the company's subordinate bases are basically in a state of suspension or semi-suspension of production, the company's automobile production and sales have dropped sharply, and sales revenue has dropped sharply.

It is uncertain whether Zhongtai will be able to enter the restructuring process. Zhejiang Yongkang Rural Commercial Bank Co., Ltd. has applied to the people's Court of Yongkang City for pre-restructuring on the grounds that Zhongtai Motor is unable to pay off its due debts and obviously lacks the ability to repay, but still has the value of restructuring.

In 2016, Zhongtai launched a number of models, such as the T600 sports version, the SR9 and the New Damai X5, among which SR9 became Zhongtai's "star" products after its launch. Thanks to this, Zhongtai Automobile's cumulative sales reached 333100 vehicles in 2016, an increase of 50% over the same period last year, which is also the peak of Zhongtai Automobile sales. The good times did not last long, due to the subsequent outbreak of quality problems, word-of-mouth plummeted, Zhongtai car sales have been declining, after a decline in 2017, sales fell to 154800 in 2018 and only 116600 in 2019. Whether Zhongtai, which is becoming more and more difficult, can survive 2020 is also a topic of great concern to the industry.

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