AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)04/11 Report--

Another new power company can't pay wages! On April 10, the Human Resources Department of Aichi issued a notice on the delay of wages in March, which said that the company had to make a decision to delay the payment of wages for three months due to objective reasons. Social security and public provident fund will be paid normally in March, please rest assured. The company would like to express our deep apologies to all of you and sincerely ask for your understanding and support.

According to the data, Aichi Automobile Co., Ltd. was established in February 2017. it was once known as Jiangxi Aichi Yiwei Industrial Co., Ltd., with a registered and paid-in capital of 868 million yuan. But its sense of existence is far inferior to NIO, ideal, Xiaopeng and other brands, or even to the endangered Weima Motor.

Like Weimar, Aichi founder Fu Qiang is also a car mogul. Before founding Aichi, Fu Qiang held important positions at FAW-Volkswagen, SAIC Skoda, Beijing Mercedes-Benz, etc., and the previous position was President and CEO of Volvo (China) sales Co., Ltd. is fully responsible for Volvo's sales and service activities in China. Shanghai Aichi Yiwei Technology Co., Ltd. was established in October 2016, jointly invested by Fu Qiang, Xu Chao and Tencent, of which Fu Qiang served as CEO. In January 2018, Shanghai Aichi Yiwei Technology Co., Ltd. changed its name to Aichi Automobile Co., Ltd.

After Aichi was founded, Fu Qiang was not eager to build a car, but first poached Gu Feng, who once served as CFO of SAIC, as the co-founder and CEO of Aichi. In July 2019, Aichi acquired a 50 per cent stake in Jiangling Holdings for 1.747 billion yuan to become the largest shareholder, while Jiangling and Changan Motor both diluted their holdings to 25 per cent. In contrast, ideal Motor spent 650 million yuan on Lifan and 1.18 billion yuan on Weima Motor to acquire Huanghai. At that time, Aichi's acquisition of Jiangling Holdings set a record of the highest cost for a new force in domestic car building to obtain production qualifications.

In December 2019, Aichi U5, the first volume production car, was officially put on the market. The new car was positioned as a pure electric medium-sized SUV with a price of 19.79-292100 yuan. In terms of power, Aichi U5 is equipped with a permanent magnet synchronous motor with a maximum power of 190hp, a maximum torque of 315N ·m, and a mileage of 503km under NEDC conditions.

After entering 2020, the Aichi car crisis began to appear. In May 2020, Cai Jianjun, Executive Vice President of Aichi Automobile, said in a long post on Weibo that "Aichi, who is leaving office for more than a year, because the sudden epidemic has disrupted the pattern of the industry, but also changed the concept of life of many people. Since the outbreak of the epidemic, I have not been with my family for three months, which makes me have to rethink the relationship between work, life, career and family." So I decided to take a personal rest for a while! " In this regard, Aichi co-founder and president Fu Qiang said that although reluctant to give up but respect his decision.

Aichi car has a low sense in the domestic market, on the one hand, it can be attributed to its own marketing method. It is understood that at present, Aichi car models on sale include U5 and U6 models, of which U5 is priced at 16.69-249900 yuan and U6 is priced at 21.99-237900 yuan. The U6 concept version was released as early as March 2020, but it was not officially listed until October 23, 2022. According to the insurance figures, Aichi sold a total of 830 cars in 2022, down 50.00% from the same period last year.

In order to avoid the gap in the domestic market, Aichi has embarked on the road of "curve saving the country", hoping to open up the situation in overseas markets. According to incomplete statistics, since the first models were exported to France in May 2020, Aichi cars have landed in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Israel, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and other countries.

In fact, there is a reason why Aichi lags behind the market. First of all, Aichi entered the game late, and the product launch missed the best window, resulting in not much product competitiveness after the U5 launch. the first product was launched in December 2019, when both Ulai and Xiaopeng had delivered new cars. Secondly, in order to solve the problem, Aichi needs to update and iterate the backward products and technologies, but this is undoubtedly a huge investment, and what Aichi needs most is capital. In addition to the lack of money, the channel construction of Aichi car is very slow. Although the location of offline stores is the same as "Wei Xiaoli", they all choose to open in the business circle, but there is a big difference in the number of people entering the store to see the car. From the industry's point of view, Zhang Yang is promoted to chairman or in order to solve this problem. After all, Zhang Yang is relatively clear about NIO's business model, but whether it can achieve results in an increasingly competitive environment is still unknown.

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