ATM card position battle: who is the next domestic Tesla?

 On April 22, 2014, at Beijing Jiuxianqiao Hengtong Business Park, Musk delivered the keys to the first eight Model S owners in China, and Li Xiang got one of them.

"This car not only allows me to experience the best electric car in the world, but also provides an important weight for me to choose an electric car as a mental preparation for my third venture." Driving this Model After the SP85 drove 40,000 kilometers, Li Xiang firmed up his idea of ​​building a car.

Li Xiang is not the only one who is ready to move.

He Xiaopeng couldn't sit still after hearing that Tesla had opened up all patents. Two months later, he founded Xiaopeng Motors together with Xia Heng, He Tao and Yang Chunlei. In 2017, he simply resigned from Ali's senior management position and chose all in.

Li Bin, known as the "Godfather of Travel", has to take the lead. Around 2014, he has already started to build a "dream team" for the upcoming NIO. In March 2015, Weilai took the lead in launching the A round of financing, starting the battle to defend the position of domestic electric vehicles.

When Tesla stepped into China, it was like a kind of fire thrown into the dry forest, and the domestic enthusiasm for car building was instantly ignited. China's "Tesla" has also become a hot spot for capital pursuit.

After experiencing the brutal fight of hundreds of new car-building forces, it has won the favor of Ali, Tencent, and Meituan. Xiaopeng, Weilai, and ideals stand out. After the knockout, ATM has taken the opportunity to complete the new energy vehicle parking station and continue to maintain the mobile Internet. Big boss status.

The car-building war came to an end. With the good time when Tesla's stock price skyrocketed, the three companies submitted prospectuses and went public in the United States. ATMs ushered in a bumper season.

Suddenly looking back, the new car-building forces that are pinching up in front of the stage, the decision of who wins or loses still belongs to the ATM.

Tencent bets on "Nio" traffic entrance

Building a car is a chore. Not only is the cycle long, it is also a bottomless pit to burn money. Li Bin’s phrase "If you don't have 20 billion, don't even think about building a car" is an excellent comment.

"Autonomous driving technology will bring about tremendous changes to people's lives and even the social structure." Su Kuifeng, general manager of Tencent's autonomous driving, made such a judgment in an interview with the media and made a declaration: "Tencent must participate in the changes. In the torrent."

Starting from social life, most of the money is made in asset-light businesses such as advertising and games. The "dirty work" and "heavy work" of automobiles are almost insulated from the previous Tencent, but this does not mean that Tencent wants to "get in the car" The mood is not urgent.

On June 24, 2020, Tencent Smart Travel held an online new product launch event. Among many new products, there are two in-vehicle apps-Tencent E-book and Tencent AiquTing, and it also released a WeChat mini program architecture. Tencent small scene of the ecological open platform.

Although it firmly controls the social highlands of PC and mobile, Tencent is not worry-free, and its traffic suffers from byte beating. Tencent's 2019 annual report shows that its advertising revenue was 68.4 billion yuan, an increase of 18% year-on-year, while the Bytedance advertising revenue in the same period has reached about 120 billion yuan.

Since 2020, Tencent has made several attempts on WeChat, nothing more than digging into traffic to relieve anxiety. But instead of making a fuss about stock, it is better to expand new traffic scenarios.

Smart mobility is one of Tencent's favored areas, and the simplest and rude way for deep participation is to invest money to build cars and form capital binding.

Starting from Weilai's A-2 round of financing, Tencent has followed all the way. Entering 2020, Tencent increased its stake in Weilai twice in less than a month, raising its shareholding ratio from 15.1% to 16.3%, becoming the second largest shareholder of Weilai, second only to Li Bin's 47.0%.

Since 2020, Wei reached to stock rose 560% from the lowest point of October 2, 2019 of 1.19 US computing yuan , a year, its share price rose more than 2000%, Tencent earned a harsh One stroke.

With Weilai's first-mover advantage and current brand influence, Tencent has steadily received admission tickets for this smart travel scene. But in fact, Tencent has always had multiple plans in this process.

In 2015, Tencent first invested in Harmony Motors with Foxconn and established a new company " Harmony Futeng ", which is the predecessor of Byton and Aichi. In 2017, Tencent bought a 5% stake in Tesla for US$1.78 billion, and even invested in Weimar Motors, which Baidu has chosen.

"One is to observe and understand the industry, and the other is to build closer cooperation through investment." A head of Tencent's travel business once classified the two types of investments in an interview.

Compared with investing in Weilai, Tencent seems to have little say in its investments in Weimar and Tesla, but this wide-ranging investment method still brings many benefits to Tencent.

For example, in-vehicle maps. In 2018, Tesla's built-in map data service provider was changed from NavInfo to Tencent Maps. Tencent continued to obtain traffic access through investment. While capital harvesting, it also became possible for software to access new terminals.

Meituan pulls "ideal" into the circle

When Tencent blessed Weilai, Weilai's investor Li Xiang was working on his ideal car .

However, he was not as lucky as Li Bin. Financing was stretched and he could only try to reduce expenses. Even employees must choose the lowest discount to buy economy class on business trips, and economy hotels must be of the same sex.

The reason for this is not only related to the general environment of capital contraction in 2019, but also the non-mainstream range-increasing technology route adopted by Ideal Auto. In the opinion of some people in the industry, program extension is more of a transitional choice. Some investment institutions are very hesitant when they hear their ideals not to be pure electric.

"In the past 4 years, we have been asked by shareholders and shareholder LPs all day, why do you want extended-range electric systems? Why has no one succeeded in extended-range electric systems in the past?" In a public speech, Li Xiang couldn't help but complain. Calling this kind of pressure, the ideal has undertaken for nearly 4 years.

In 4 years, Li Xiang bluntly said that he had seen hundreds of institutions "but no one invested money", "I had a collapsed immune system and was sick for three months."

At that time, Tencent had already bet on Weilai, and Ali invested in Xiaopeng, leaving Li Xiang's Internet "thigh" only Meituan.

At that time, Wang Xing launched Meituan Taxi , which was very hot with Didi. It seemed that he was bound to win the travel market, and Meituan was willing to give up on a market of 100 billion yuan like new energy.

In 2019, Wang Xing finally made a move. After two large-scale capital injections in a year, the ideal finally got rid of the embarrassment of financing. The first time was in August. By pledge of Meituan stock, Wang Xing personally put out 28.50 million U.S. dollars, and Dragon Ball Capital put out another 15 million U.S. dollars, a total of 300 million U.S. dollars invested in the ideal C round of financing.

For the second time, starting in May 2020, Wang Xing and Li Xiangmi will meet to discuss the D round of financing. Then at the end of June, the ideal D round of $550 million in financing was finalized, and Meituan led the investment of $500 million.

Adding the two rounds, Meituan has invested a total of US$800 million in Ideal. According to the Prospectus of Ideal Auto, Li Xiang is the largest shareholder with 25.1% of the shares and 70.3% of the voting rights; Wang Xing and his related party Meituan hold a total of 23.5% and have 9.3% of the voting rights. Ideal second and third largest shareholder.

It is not surprising that Wang Xing frequently speaks to support his ideals.

In just a few years, Meituan has spent several times in the field of travel. Acquired Mobike at a sky-high price of US$2.7 billion, invested US$1.5 billion in a strategic investment in Indonesia's shared travel service provider Go-Jek, and even went head-to-head with Didi to set up a travel business unit for online ride-hailing. The research and development of unmanned delivery vehicles began in 2016. In 2019, more than 80% of Meituan’s takeaway commissions went to riders.

As a super platform that covers eating, drinking and having fun, travel is an indispensable part of Meituan's territory. Meituan’s early investor, Xu Xin, founder of Capital Today, once said that about 30% of users take a taxi to eat, which overlaps with Meituan’s users.

Although the strategic synergy between Ideal Auto and Meituan is still far away, whether it is from a strategic or cost perspective, the potential for end-of-end delivery of autonomous driving makes this business full of imagination.

Moreover, in Wang Xing's view, the appearance market itself is already sexy enough: "Those friends who think that Li Xiang's ideal is to trade a 100 billion dollar ideal car, you still underestimate it by an order of magnitude."

Ali brings "Xiaopeng" card slot

"Married to a white rose, the white one is a sticky rice stick on your clothes, and the red one is a cinnabar mole on your heart." On Western Valentine's Day in 2015, Kuai's and Didi merged and traveled since. It became the cinnabar mole that Ali said.

From the earliest ride-hailing battles, to the later shared bicycles, to today's new energy vehicles, Ali investment is everywhere. Even in 2019, when the travel market was lonely, Ali still failed to let go of his obsession with travel.

In the face of this protracted battle with Meituan, Ali needs to rely on a more complete and powerful ecology to support it. Since 2020, Ali has made drastic changes to Alipay and made changes to the structure and executives of local life service companies, which are clear signals.

In addition to the ecology, the AliOS operating system urgently needs terminals to run through to prepare for the upcoming autonomous driving, and the new energy vehicle's tuyere is right in front of it. Of course, Ali cannot miss it.

In June 2014, He Xiaopeng sold the first-hand UC Youshi to Ali for US$4.3 billion. Later, he successively served as president of Alibaba's mobile business group, chairman of Alibaba Games, and president of Tudou.

After experiencing Tesla, he made suggestions to Ali internally to join in making cars. A few months later, he teamed up with Xia Heng, He Tao, Yang Chunlei and others to establish Xiaopeng Motors.

The stall was supported, but He Xiaopeng did not choose all in at first. In the past few years from 2014 to 2017, Xiaopeng Automobile did not have much voice. Until August 22, 2017-UC's 13th birthday, He Xiaopeng resigned from Ali. Including Ali, the investment that has overlapped with He Xiaopeng in the past also quickly arrived in this period.

"If Xiaopeng is not all in, we will not vote even if the valuation is cheap." Morningside Capital once revealed that he is an investor. Morningside has invested in UC before, and started from the A-1 round of Xiaopeng Motors, with 4 consecutive rounds.

Ali's attitude may be similar. Starting from the A round, Ali has successively participated in Xiaopeng's B and C rounds of financing. Xiaopeng went public, and Ali subscribed for another $200 million. After Xiaopeng's IPO, Alibaba holds 19% of the Class A shares, accounting for 13.3% of Xiaopeng's total shares.

Relying on the advantages of its own industrial Internet, before investing in Xiaopeng, Ali has actually made many arrangements in the field of smart travel. August 2015, Ali and Ordnance Group with investment capital to establish Beidou positioning technology company Chihiro position , and in the subsequent 11 months, SAIC jointly build vehicles networking company Zebra network ......

 "Smart travel is expected to become the fastest growing and most imaginative industry sector in the future." At the Xpeng Motors Series B financing conference in January 2018, Cai Chongxin once revealed Ali's expectations for travel.

Conclusion

The difficulty of manufacturing new energy vehicles exceeds everyone's expectations.

At the 2016 LeTV annual meeting, Jia Yueting also appeared on the stage in Wukesong Stadium to sing "Yezi", but just over a year later, the host of the stage was replaced by Li Bin. Then in 2019, Weilai was also deeply caught in the stock price. An existential crisis of plummeting and lack of financing.

The industry is full of dangers, but in the face of considerable prospects, no one at ATM wants to let it go easily.

After all, new energy vehicles are a field that can create companies with a market value of 100 billion or even trillions. More importantly, for Ali and Meituan, travel has the meaning of filling the ecological closed loop; for Tencent, facing the mobile Internet era The growth of China is peaking, and it is more urgent to find new scenes, not to mention the beating of bytes behind him.

No one at ATM wants to lose on the starting line on the track of new energy vehicles.