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"Haier is planning to build a car, enter the whole vehicle field and launch its own-brand car products," said a person familiar with the matter, according to a China Business report on Aug. 8. " It is reported that Haier plans to adopt the contract manufacturing model, as for the launch time and whether it can land, there is no definite news.

In response to the above news, people related to Haier Group responded that the report on the Internet that Haier Group launched its own-brand cars was not true. Haier currently relies on its Kaos industrial Internet platform and is working with relevant automobile companies to build an industrial Internet sub-platform in the automotive field. At the same time, Haier will work with automobile companies to establish a new ecology of home-vehicle interconnection.

Haier, founded in 1984, is the main brand of household appliances in Haier Group. As a brand in the field of home appliances, although Haier denies the rumors of "building cars", Haier has been ploughing the automobile field for a long time. As early as 2017, Haier's Haier Capital invested in Flying magnesium, which specializes in car digitization and mobile travel, and then partnered with SAIC, Geely and Chery respectively. In March last year, Haier signed a strategic cooperation agreement with SAIC to cooperate with major automobile manufacturers for the first time, and then in May, Haier cooperated with Geely in the areas of car networking and smart home interconnection, marketing channels, finance and Internet of things payment. Haier also cooperated with Chery to build an Internet platform for the automobile industry.

From the layout of Haier in the automobile field in the past, Haier is more focused on the layout of the automobile industry chain, so as to realize the connection between the car and the home. From this point of view, Haier, which has been ploughing deeply in the automobile field for a long time, even if it really has the idea of building cars and launching its own brand, it will not be an easy task.

Of course, "it is not easy to build a car, cross-border car building is even more difficult", which may be well known to all cross-border brands. However, there are still many brands in different areas who choose to enter the automotive industry, including Midea, Gree, Skyworth and TCL, which are the same as Haier in the field of home appliances. Take Skyworth as an example, Skyworth Group as a leader in the field of home appliances, as early as 2011, Skyworth Group Chairman Huang Hongsheng reorganized Xiamen Jinlong and Nanjing Dongyu Automobile Group to establish Kaiwo Automobile to start the layout of the new energy vehicle market, and obtained the passenger car access qualification approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2017, and finally established Timi Automobile in 2019, and launched the first model ET5 the following year, but car sales were dismal. On April 27, 2021, Tianmei changed its name to Skyworth Automobile, and then Skyworth ET5 was renamed Skyworth EV6 and officially listed on July 27th. The new car launched a total of four models with a price of 15.28-249800 yuan, but the sales performance of the model was still mediocre after renaming. According to the data, the car sold only 1280 vehicles in June, with total sales of less than 10,000 in half a year. Coincidentally, beautiful cars have been built in the past. Earlier, Midea ended up building cars by buying Yunnan buses and other businesses, but ended in failure. After the failure, Midea is more focused on being a parts supplier to the car company.

In addition to the field of home appliances, including mobile phones, real estate, the Internet, technology manufacturing and so on, there are many brands cross-border car manufacturing, with the increase in the number of entrants, the threshold for car construction is also much higher than before. For example, at the end of December last year, Li Bin, founder of Xilai, said: "the capital threshold for building a car needs reserves. I said 20 billion a few years ago, but now it may not be possible to do it without 40 billion. It does not mean that (less than 40 billion) there is no chance." but the risk will be much higher. Lei Jun invested 10 billion yuan in the early stage of car building, and his estimated investment in the next 10 years is 10 billion US dollars. When releasing from the tourist brand, Li Yinan said that he expected to raise at least $3 billion to build a successful car, while Evergrande invested 30 billion yuan in three years and lost 10 billion yuan. It was only in the past few days that Hengchi 5, the first production car under the new energy brand, officially opened the pre-sale. In July this year, Xiaopeng CEO he Xiaopeng also said that the annual production of 400000 cars would become the threshold for new power to build cars. "Automotive Industry concern" believes that at present, the automobile industry continues to be hot, but the market competition is fierce. Brands in any field need a lot of capital investment once they enter the car-building field, and rush into the car-building field. If the car fails, it means that you have to bear a huge loss.

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