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With a continuous investment of more than 10 billion yuan, Boss Xu's "first model" has finally gone offline. According to the official Weibo release of Evergrande New Energy Automobile Investment holding Group Co., Ltd., Evergrande's first production model, Hengchi 5, was released at the Tianjin factory 12 days ahead of schedule. Evergrande ushered in a major milestone.

What kind of car is Hengchi 5? According to previous reports from the automotive industry, Hengchi 5 is an entry-level model in the layout of Hengchi automobile products, with a price of less than 200000 yuan, matching luxury entry-level models such as BMW X1, Audi Q3 and Mercedes-Benz GLAs. According to the public information of 350batches of road motor vehicles released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in November 2021, Evergrande New Energy has applied for HDE6470BEVA1F and HDE6470BEVA0F models for Hengchi 5, with length, width and height respectively 4725/1925/1688mm and wheelbase 2780mm. In terms of power, the new car uses a motor produced by United Automotive Electronics Co., Ltd., with a maximum power of 150kW. In terms of interior decoration, according to the exhibition car at the Shanghai Auto Show in 2021, the center console of Hengchi 5 adopts a connected screen design, which is divided into three screens, including the instrument, the central control and the big screen in front of the co-driver. In addition, the position of the control handrail in the new car is also equipped with multiple buttons, and the three-spoke multi-function steering wheel is also equipped with Hengchi LOGO.

Generally speaking, after the announcement of the new car by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, it will be officially made public soon, and then the declared new car will begin the pre-sale and listing process within the period of April to June. However, in the license announcement of "Road Motor vehicle Manufacturing Enterprises and products" (batch 350) issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on December 7, both Hengchi products were removed, meaning that Hengchi 5 failed to be publicized and new cars need to be declared again, which will also postpone the listing time of Hengchi 5.

It is worth mentioning that the downline of Hengchi 6 does not seem to be far away. Recently, a suspected Hengchi 6 trial production picture was exposed on the Internet. it is not difficult to see that it was taken in the factory, and a number of employees are studying the vehicle in front. From the perspective of the new car, although there are only rear espionage photos, you can still see that the new car is painted with a bold red and blue gradient, which is highly similar to the previously released patent map. It is understood that Hengchi 6 positioning cross-border pure electricity compact SUV, the price is also below 200000 yuan.

With an investment of more than 30 billion, did Evergrande become a car? Evergrande built cars as early as 2017, and initially chose to build cars in partnership with Jia Yueting's FF, but eventually Evergrande and FF parted ways because they did not agree on some projects. After the collapse of talks with FF, Evergrande did not stop expanding the new energy vehicle business through a series of operations, including the holding of National Energy Electric vehicle Sweden Co., Ltd. (NEVS), the acquisition of Carney New Energy, Hubei Tate Mechanical and Electrical Co., Ltd., the Netherlands e-Traction, the British hub motor company Protean and other enterprises to form a technological advantage. For Evergrande's car-building road, Xu Jiayin described as follows: "Evergrande wants to change lanes to overtake, to sum up five words: buy, buy, circle, big, good."

Building a car is very expensive, but I never thought it would be so expensive! Li Bin once said that you can't build a car without 20 billion yuan, but Evergrande's investment has already exceeded that figure. It has been three years since Evergrande announced cross-border car construction, with a total investment of about 29.4 billion and a cumulative loss of more than 15 billion. At the 2021 interim results conference, the management said that in order to build cross-border cars, Evergrande Group will invest 14.7 billion yuan in 2019, 5.7 billion yuan in 2020, and 9 billion yuan in 2021, with a total investment of 28.4 billion yuan in three years. After 2022, with the mass production and sale of cars, the group will no longer invest in them. According to incomplete statistics, from 2018 to 2020, Evergrande's losses were 1.428 billion yuan, 4.426 billion yuan and 7.74 billion yuan respectively, plus a loss of 4.822 billion yuan in the first half of 2021. Evergrande's cumulative loss has exceeded 15 billion yuan.

A real car or a fake car? As we all know, 2021 is an extremely difficult year for Evergrande. The beleaguered Evergrande has to sell the assets it bought at high prices a few years ago, and even Evergrande faces the risk of selling as its capital is tight. On August 10, 2021, Evergrande announced that it was "in contact with several potential independent third-party investors to discuss the sale of some of its assets", including Evergrande. On September 26, Evergrande issued an announcement to terminate Evergrande's listing in A-shares. However, with the offline of Hengchi 5, Evergrande, which has invested nearly 30 billion yuan in total, has had to do this again, and has even strengthened its determination to build cars, which may be the most difficult way for Evergrande to get out of adversity. In October 2021, Xu Jiayin announced a major strategic adjustment for Evergrande to realize the industrial transformation from real estate to new energy vehicles in the next 10 years, forming an industrial pattern dominated by new energy vehicles and supplemented by real estate. In November of the same year, Evergrande conducted two rights issues, raising a total of about HK $3.2 billion for the research, development and manufacture of new energy vehicles, laying the foundation for the smooth commissioning of Hengchi new energy vehicles.

Can Evergrande make it? Evergrande's huge losses have made Evergrande's predicament more awkward, and Evergrande's trillion debt has directly affected Evergrande's progress in mass production, and the two are constantly vicious circle, restricting each other's development. therefore, it is obviously not realistic for Evergrande to rescue Evergrande quickly. Therefore, rather than stick to the "dream of building a car", it is better to say that building a car is an attempt by Evergrande to save itself.

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