Wang Xing, a Luo Yonghao model, is strong, selling more than Tesla. Why does Li want to be an online celebrity?

"Riding a Car" is a car column under the Entrepreneurship State. In this issue, we will launch a series of cover reports on "overtaking in changing lanes", and discuss the opportunities and challenges of innovation, entrepreneurship and venture capital in China automobile industry from four dimensions: electrification, networking, intelligence and enjoyment.

Author | Big Wet Brother

Edit | and Yi Rong

Shooting | Zhang Yong

Design | Li

"Do the right thing, not the easy thing."

This is the judgment of Li Xiang and Li, the founders of car home. Different from ordinary businessmen, he has many unique labels: high school education, online opinion leader, and post-80 s entrepreneurs.

The essence of entrepreneurship is that entrepreneurs reorganize resources through innovative ways and change the operation mode of the original industrial chain. But no one can predict the prophet and come to the conclusion that he must be right. On the road of development, Li Xiang chose the inaccessible track of extended-range electric vehicles, and set the company's direction in the more challenging and unknown field of autonomous driving.

"Whether it is products, sales or back-end supply chain, we actually regard ourselves as pioneers of an industry, and we are doing things that lead the times." Shen Yanan, co-founder and president of Li, said in an exclusive interview with Entrepreneurship.

At 9: 30 pm on July 30, 2020, Li was officially listed on the stock exchange at the issue price of 1 1.5 USD/share. For Li Xilai, the listing of the company is only a new starting point-the starting point of the market value of 100 billion.

Li thinks it's not musk.

The ideal is not Tesla either

Someone said: "Tesla and Lee have one thing in common, and both have an online celebrity boss."

Li is Li Xiang's third entrepreneurial project and the second listed company he founded. Except for the first founding of bubble net to catch up with the earliest wave of Internet entrepreneurship, the second founding of car home and the third founding of Li all appeared as "rising stars".

Elon musk, CEO of Tesla, is also a serial entrepreneur, but he is used to the image of "pioneer". From online payment of PalPay to Tesla, an electric car, to Space Exploration Technology, a private space company, Musk will choose unmanned roads on almost every track.

Although their entrepreneurial experiences and personal characteristics are different, Shen Yanan, co-founder and president of Li, said that the biggest similarity between them is their ability to think independently.

"Musk's views and ideas are often different from ordinary people, different from the so-called traditional wisdom. Actually, so is Li Xiang. Some people have a hard time chatting with him because his ideas are always different from yours. Because he thinks independently, it may be beneficial not to go to college. "

He also used a "28 theory" to explain this difference: "We are 80% based on traditional wisdom, and the teacher has already told you this. As long as you remember that these are correct, you will develop another 20% on this basis. This is a traditional concept. "

Shen Yanan said that Li wants to return to zero and think about the problem from the root: Who is the customer? What are the customers' needs? "Making new decisions on the basis of the original results are often wrong. The current market and customers are changing rapidly, and it is wrong to make decisions based on those original ideas. "

Musk also used "first principle" to explain: "We use first principle instead of analogical thinking to think about problems. In life, we always tend to compare with others, and we also follow what others have done or are doing. The result of this development can only produce small iterative development. "

Simply put, it means "go back to the essence of things and rethink what to do."

Li co-founder and president Shen Yanan (Photo: Entrepreneurship)

When the door to building a car was opened to Li Xiang, he did not start from the track of pure electric vehicles like those entrepreneurs who had taken the first step in China, but re-chose a path to solve the pain point of the current industry-extended-range electric vehicles.

Generally speaking, it is to add a fuel generator to the electric car to generate electricity, but in the end, the motor drives the car and the fuel engine does not drive it. On a medium and large SUV with a length of 5 meters and a width of nearly 2 meters, the advantages of both pure electric vehicles and fuel vehicles are combined to avoid the problems of short battery life and high fuel consumption.

In fact, Li is different in the whole field of new energy vehicles, but Shen Yanan has his own opinion: "Everyone says that we should learn from Tesla, beat China's Tesla and be China's Tesla. Tesla makes pure trams, studies batteries and makes motors, and we also study batteries and make motors. Assuming that 80% of what Tesla did was right, I would change that 20%. This is traditional wisdom. "

In fact, most domestic pure electric manufacturers do this. On the original path, try to innovate in battery life, and strive for battery life to open Tesla in one fell swoop. For example, Tesla's domestic Model 3 has a minimum price of about 270,000, but its battery life is only 445 kilometers. The same price is about 270,000, and Guangzhou Automobile New Energy AionLX has a battery life of 650 kilometers.

Although I won the parameters, I lost the sales volume. In the first half of this year, domestic sales of new energy vehicles, the first Model 3 sold 45,000 vehicles, the second BYD Qin EV sold 20,000 vehicles, and the third GAC New Energy AionS sold 1.7 million vehicles. Simple calculation, the second and third place is not as good as Tesla.

Shen Yanan believes that the ceiling of the electric vehicle industry at this stage is charging facilities, not batteries and battery life. "The battery breakthrough is now a process of gradual improvement. There won't be an order of magnitude leap before the real solid-state battery. It is a process of gradual optimization. "

Back to the essence, why does Tesla want to be a pure electric car? The answer he gave was: "Because 90% of Tesla users in the United States have household charging piles, Tesla only needs to solve the charging problem in expressway and destinations through super charging stations."

But putting the charging problem in China is completely different: "In China, there may be 10% and 15% people who finally have the charging conditions, but most people don't have the charging conditions. Even if he has a charging pile at home, he should consider charging when running long distances. " He added.

In addition to the insufficient number of charging piles, there are still many challenges in efficiency and charging speed. Shen Yanan gave an example: "For example, a car needs to be charged for at least one hour, and the energy replenishment efficiency is about one thirtieth of that of a gas station. There are over 660 gas stations in Beijing. It will take 30 times to replace all these gas stations in Beijing with charging stations. Where can I find enough places to build charging stations in Beijing? "

In addition, the improvement of charging speed is technology-driven. Through the solid-state battery and the high-voltage platform of the car itself, the voltage platform of 800V or even higher (usually 300 400V in the market at present) can be realized. "Once the technology is feasible, the efficiency difference between refueling and charging will be reduced by an order of magnitude and increased by about 6 times, thus accelerating the business model of charging facilities and its laying speed."

Shen Yanan also called it version 2.0: "We are also making technical reserves ourselves, but we will not make pure trams before this maturity."

Experience the revolution of smart phones.

Break into the smart car track

For a high-threshold industry like automobile, only in the period of technological change will the entrepreneurial window open. At the end of 20 14, Tesla Model S entered the China market, and Li Xiang, who was still in car home, wanted to be the first owner. Realizing the arrival of smart car transformation, in addition to Li Xiang, there is also his co-founder Shen Yanan.

When it comes to joining Li Yanhong, Shen Yanan, co-founder and president of Li Yanhong, explained that the reason seems simple. He said, "There are two things about starting a business. One is to watch the track, and the other is to watch people."

From mobile phones to cars, the new track is wide enough. In addition, although Shen Yanan has the work experience of Lenovo, Accenture and ZTE, and also has the academic background of Shanghai Jiaotong University and Edinburgh University, he decided to find an old driver for the first time. "It would be better to drive with an old driver." He said.

On may 1 20 15, Shen Yanan and Li will meet. They had a good talk and finally decided to drive a car together. "I'm afraid this should also be the most correct decision I made in the history of my career." Shen Yanan said.

Li co-founder and president Shen Yanan (Photo: Entrepreneurship)

Many people compare today's Tesla with that of Apple. Shen Yanan, who has worked in Lenovo for 9 years, believes that the development of smart electric vehicle industry today is very similar to the development of smart phones in that year:

First of all, the market forms are similar.

"When developing smart phones in the past, the best-selling mobile phone was actually Nokia's mid-range machine, but when Apple came out, it was actually a mid-to high-end machine. There are ultra-high-end Vertu and large-screen thousand-yuan ultra-low-end machines produced by Shenzhen Huaqiang North. "

Shen Yanan believes that the dumbbell-shaped market form presented in the early days of smart phones is just similar to the current electric vehicle industry. You can see the clue from the sales in August 2020. On the hot-selling list, Tesla Model 3 ranked first with 1. 1.8 million vehicles, while the second place was Hong Guang MINI EV with a starting price of only 28,800 yuan.

Second, the supply chain reconfiguration is similar.

"From the perspective of supply chain, there will be changes brought by new cross-industry entrants. For example, there are actually many people who don't make mobile phones, such as making glass and making parts to enter the mobile phone industry. "

In fact, we can see that in today's automobile industry, not only Bosch and Chinese mainland of Tier 1 are transforming into smart cars, but even Huawei has joined the competition of intelligent networked cars and directly entered three incremental fields: software platform, ecological platform and hardware platform.

Finally, the cooperation mode of supply chain.

The word OEM has existed in the era of smart phones. Although both Nokia and Motorola built their own factories at first, Apple later pushed the OEM model to a climax.

"It is impossible for a person to open 10 factories at the same time, but if you contract, 10 factories can produce for you, so it is explosive, which explains why mobile phones have a strong explosive period from non-smart phones to smart phones, and the supply chain can keep up."

In Shen Yanan's view, OEM does not mean higher efficiency. Self-built factories play a decisive role in quality control, but the advantage of OEM is explosive power.

"The biggest risk behind the sales outbreak lies in the supply chain."

Li Changzhou built his own factory.

He believes that compared with the previous supply chain of smart phones, it can be switched between different brands, and the rigidity of auto parts is stronger, and the suppliers of auto parts are attached to the traditional OEM. Even if the demand side breaks out quickly, the production capacity of the supply side may not be able to keep up with the outbreak.

If the bottleneck is found, how to solve the problem is a topic that Li has been thinking about. "We should be prepared in advance. But we can't invest with our eyes closed, it's too wasteful. It is also a waste for you to invest too early. The best strategy is how you can react faster. "

Of course, many people will think that Li was born just to manufacture and sell an electric car to solve mileage anxiety. However, you should know that Li Xiang, the founder of Li, once wrote the initial intention of starting this company-"using technology to change travel and benefit more people."

Ideal ideal

Towards a market value of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Li Xiang once said, "I have made a billion-dollar company, and I really want to build a billion-dollar company."

In his eyes, autonomous driving is the road to hundreds of billions of dollars-building cars and selling cars desperately, hoping to get tickets for autonomous driving tracks in 2025 and make Li the world's largest autonomous driving operator by 2035.

"Those friends who think that Li Xiang's ideal is to trade hundreds of billions of dollars for a Li, you still underestimate an order of magnitude." Wang Xing said. In other words, Wang Xing believes that Li hopes to trade a company with a market value of trillions in the future. Before the IPO, founder Wang Xing and related parties of Meituan had sent Li a total of165438+300 million US dollars (about 7.9 billion yuan).

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and Li will fight three tough battles:

First of all, there are enough funds and resources.

"If you are still a small business, you can't actually participate in the second-stage autonomous driving competition." In Shen Yanan's view, the competition for autonomous driving in the next stage cannot rely solely on the continuous burning of money in the capital market. It is necessary to form a strong hematopoietic capacity before 2025 to have a chance to enter the second stage.

According to the prospectus, the most important investment in Li's early years was the current expenditure, with a cumulative investment of more than 2 billion yuan. Among them, R&D investment of 20 19 and 20 165438 is 700 million yuan and 790 million yuan respectively. But this is obviously just a drop in the bucket.

"The competition of smart electric vehicles is a short-board effect. Electrical technology can't be the best, but intelligence and network connection are poor. From the perspective of capital investment, you will see that our investment in autonomous driving will be higher and higher. "

According to Li's prediction, by 2023, the proportion of intelligent investment will exceed the sum of all other parts. Including the investment in developing models every year, it is less than the investment in intelligent autonomous driving.

Second, the data threshold is high.

"How well you can do autonomous driving has a lot to do with how much data you can collect. Because artificial intelligence is actually very simple, that is, you feed it more high-quality data, and it constantly trains itself. " Shen Yanan believes that the quality data of cars will be directly proportional to sales.

"To have enough data, there must be enough cars on the road, so this is one of our beliefs. Data is the basis of intelligence. The source of data cannot rely on fake data, or the data marked by others must be the data collected by their own cars, so the amount of our cars must be large. "

According to the retail data (ownership) released by China Automotive Data Terminal on June 12, the ownership of Li No.1 Middle School was 3,830 in September. According to the insurance data, in September, Li ONE surpassed Weilai ES6, BYD Tang DM, Tesla Model X and other models, becoming the first sales volume of new energy SUVs.

In terms of sales channels, the number of direct retail centers will increase from 35 at the end of September to nearly 60 this year. Broaden sales channels and occupy active and corresponding resources in market competition.

Chief technology officer Li

Moreover, the competition for talents.

"After 2025, the competition of autonomous driving will make this industry more oligopolistic."

On September 22, 2020, Li signed a tripartite strategic cooperation agreement with NVIDIA NVIDIA, an artificial intelligence computing company, and Desai Siwei, a partner of NVIDIA NVIDIA China. It will be the first to use the most powerful product in NVIDIA Orin system on one chip on the full-size extended-range intelligent SUV launched in 2022.

In Shen Yanan's eyes, by confirming the long-term joint relationship with the industry's head suppliers, we can clarify the company's development strategic direction in the next few years, and then deduce the use of talents and gather enough outstanding talents around the strategy. The rest is to gradually land through productization and be mentally prepared-to fight a protracted war.

Finally, Shen Yanan used a phrase "If you want to wear a crown, you must bear its weight first" to describe today's Li. "What we are doing now, whether it is sales, supply chain or autonomous driving, is to break through with the latest platform. There is no benchmark in front. "

He also revealed that some traditional automobile manufacturers initially decided to use NVIDIA's Orin chips, but because they will not be listed until after 2023, NVIDIA initially set the time for the chips to be listed in 2023, but now the appearance of Li has advanced this time to 2023. "We are not Olin's first customer, but we will be Olin's first listed customer in the world."

"From now on, all we have to do is lead." Shen Yanan said.

Write it at the end

When Li wanted to start a company, he named it Car and Home. Now he uses this name to explain his thinking about autonomous driving: in the future, the car will be a moving space, just like home. This may be his original ideal, and now he needs to lead a group of people to this ideal.