AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)12/15 Report--

After Baidu, Foxconn and Xiaomi, a "boss" announced his move into the auto industry. On December 15, Niu Innovation Energy, founded by Li Yinan, launched its new car brand "NIUTRON" and announced its Chinese name "self-Travel Home". According to the official description, NIUTRON symbolizes the spirit of exploring the world, and the core of the brand advocates exploration, diligence and pleasure. The Chinese name is "self-traveler", hoping to provide users with a comfortable and comfortable travel experience.

According to the plan, the product layout of self-traveling home adopts pure electric and add-on parallel, and the Gemini Gemini platform has been developed. NV, the first product launched on this platform, is targeted at medium and large high-end SUV and is expected to be available and pre-booked in the first half of 2022. In terms of brand positioning, Li Yinan said "it must be high-end". However, for the target group of the first product, Ziyou's executive team has not yet given a clear definition, but it is clear that "will not mark a certain model of the existing brand in the market", in order to meet the market demand.

According to comprehensive media reports, the Niu Innovation Energy Technology (NIUTRON) car project was established in November 2018, the brand is headquartered in Beijing and set up an R & D center in Shanghai, while the R & D and intelligent manufacturing base is located in Changzhou, the company currently has a core R & D team of nearly 1000 people, all from domestic and foreign mainstream first-tier automobile companies. In December 2020, Jiangsu Niu Innovation Energy Technology Co., Ltd. completed registration with a registered capital of US $50 million. The company is a wholly foreign-owned enterprise wholly owned by a legal person from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao. In August this year, the address of Niu Innovation Energy was changed to Jintan District, Changzhou City, while the registered capital increased by $400m from US $50 million.

The reason for the change of Niu Innovation Energy address is related to production qualification. As early as the beginning of this year, there was news that Mavericks electric cars would be built across the border through the acquisition of BAIC's new energy plant in Changzhou, which was quickly denied by officials. However, according to people familiar with the matter, Li Yinan did negotiate with BAIC New Energy about the acquisition, which failed, but eventually chose the Mahayana car plant, which is 30 kilometers away from BAIC New Energy's Changzhou plant.

Data show that Mahayana was founded on December 1, 2014, formerly known as Jiangsu Jintan Changdanghu New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., and changed its name to Daisheng Automobile Co., Ltd in 2018. Unlike other new power car companies, Mahayana has production qualifications for passenger cars, commercial vehicles and new energy vehicles, as well as two major production bases in Jintan, Jiangsu and Fuzhou, Jiangxi.

Since October 2019, there have been frequent reports of arrears of wages to employees of Mahayana. According to Mahayana employees, Mahayana Jintan base in Changzhou has been in arrears for many months, of which only part of the salary was paid in 2019 and has not been paid in full in 2020, involving more than 1500 employees. In addition, after the epidemic, there are about 500 employees in the first batch of Mahayana Jintan base, all of whom have not assigned a clear task for the time being, and the rest of them will not be notified to return to work for the time being.

According to the media "Automobile Commune", Mahayana has been taken over by the bankruptcy liquidation team of Fuzhou High-tech Zone, the relevant asset liquidation procedures are being processed, and the two major production bases of Maeshi have also changed hands, and the Fuzhou factory has been taken over by BYD. Changzhou factory is taken over by Niu Innovation Energy. However, Niu Innovation Energy currently uses the Mahayana Science and Technology Industrial Park by lease, and some Niu Innovation Energy employees have entered the industrial park to work.

The map also shows the "Mahayana" industrial park, which is now hung with the LOGO of "NIUTRON". In the office building behind the main entrance, several workers are cleaning the glass on the outer wall. It is worth mentioning that this industrial park is only more than 40 kilometers away from the ideal automobile base in Changzhou. It is understood that Li Yinan and ideal car founder Li Xiang are very close personally, and the two will soon meet at the new track, because the first model of Niu Innovation Energy is the medium-and large-scale add-on SUV, which is consistent with the ideal ONE.

Making awesome cars is nothing new. On January 11, Baidu teamed up with Geely Holdings to form a smart car company, and Baidu will officially enter the automobile industry as a vehicle manufacturer. Subsequently, Jidu Automobile Co., Ltd. was officially established on March 2. On March 30, Lei Jun officially announced Xiaomi's entry into a smart electric car, and declared that "this is the last major start-up project in my life, and I am willing to bet on all my reputation." According to the plan, the first model of Xiaomi will be mass produced in the first half of 2024. On October 18, Foxconn unveiled three electric vehicles, including the electric buses Model T and SUV Model C, and the business luxury driving Model E. Earlier, Foxconn founder and former chairman Terry Gou said at an internal meeting, "Apple cars are just four-wheeled iPhone. If we can build iPhone, why can't we build electric cars?" In addition to the above, including Evergrande, Alibaba, Ningde Times, 360and so on are all involved in building cars.

When electrification and intelligence become the trend of automobile development in the future, more and more enterprises enter the bureau to build cars, and traditional car companies are also speeding up the layout of this market. Just yesterday, Akio Toyoda, who has bombarded electric cars on several occasions, held a Toyota electric vehicle strategy conference. Toyoda announced that he would spend $35 billion on electric vehicle research by 2030, before which 30 electric vehicles would be launched. The Lexus brand will also be fully transformed into an all-electric brand. According to the plan, Toyota will invest 8 trillion yen ($35 billion) in research and development costs for new energy vehicles, including electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles and fuel cell vehicles, half of which will be spent on pure electric research. By 2030, Toyota's new energy vehicles will account for 75% of total sales, and strive to sell 3.5 million vehicles a year.

Based on the above, it is not surprising that Li Yinan built a car. However, there are also many problems facing Li Yinan, such as capital, technology, talent and so on. Previously, Li Bin of NIO said that do not build a car without 20 billion yuan. Today, Niu Innovation Energy has just completed a round of financing, with IDG Capital and Coatue Management leading the investment of $500m.

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