2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 1085 Final Chapter
"You're 40 years old, why are you still acting like a child?"

Gu Qingqing shook off the snow and gave Tan Jincheng a sullen laugh. Liu Yifei, who was sitting next to her in the corridor, was also giggling.

In the courtyard, Tan Jincheng was having a snowball fight with his sister and two children.

"Hehe, throw it."

She winked at Tan Jinyue and greeted her in Ningbo dialect. There was still one person under the corridor who hadn't been hit yet. Tan Jinyue chuckled and threw a small snowball at Liu Yifei.

Tan Jinchuan and Tan Jinqin noticed their aunt's actions and, disregarding everything else, ran a few steps and charged at their mother and Aunt Liu, causing chaos in the courtyard.

"Haha, come down and play! It's not easy to see heavy snow."

After a while of activities, Tan Jincheng was in a good mood. Due to some work arrangements, he would be spending the Spring Festival in the capital this year, so he brought Gu Qingqing and the little ones from his family over and decided to spend the Spring Festival here.

Their family also owns property in Beijing, and they live in the same neighborhood as Liu Yifei, so Liu Yifei often comes to visit.

"Let's go down and smash them too."

The two who couldn't escape under the corridor were also seized by a playful mood, and the courtyard became increasingly chaotic. They were all after Tan Jincheng, and since two fists couldn't fight four hands, Boss Tan had no choice but to beg for mercy.

"In the blink of an eye, the children have all grown up."

After playing in the yard for a while, fearing the children might catch a cold, Tan Jincheng called a halt. After a quick wash, Tan Jincheng remarked with some emotion.

"That's right. When I first met Jin Yue, she was just a little kid. By the way, does she have a boyfriend now?"

21-year-old Tan Jinyue has grown into a graceful young woman. The Tan family has always been well-off, and Tan Jinyue has been living a life of luxury since childhood. At 1.7 meters tall, she looks even taller than her brother.

"How would I know? I guess I'm pregnant."

The one asking the questions was Liu Yifei, but he really didn't know whether his sister had a boyfriend or not. He had arranged for people to protect his family members secretly, but he wouldn't interfere in their lives. There were definitely people pursuing Tan Jinyue at school, but he couldn't be bothered to know the specifics.

"As her older brother, aren't you afraid she'll run into a jerk?"

Tan Jincheng's answer surprised Liu Yifei. She could tell that Tan Jincheng was not lying. However, as far as she knew, Tan Jincheng still cared about his family.

"Heh, it's still uncertain who's the scumbag."

There's no clear line between whether a man or a woman is a "scumbag" or not; it mainly depends on who has more power. Given Tan Jincheng's wealth and status, most men wouldn't even have the courage to pursue his sister.

"That's true; by the way, how are your ET9s selling?"

The ET9 launch event at the end of November was fairly standard, but the S800 launch event the next day caused quite a bit of controversy with its large grille. It's a car in the 1000 million yuan price range, a sixth-generation fighter jet in the automotive world, and a medical-grade cockpit.

The marketing approach for the medical-grade cockpit, in particular, has been jokingly suggested by netizens as a proposal to include it in medical insurance, as this promotional method is rather abstract.

However, the biggest controversy is the test that was compared to Maybach. The key point is that this Maybach was rented, and the owner was not notified of the violent test, which led to the owner's complaint and the veiled criticism from Mercedes executives.

After the press conference, social media was filled with jokes and all sorts of negative comments flooded the internet.

On the surface, it seems that the S800 launch event was a disaster for Dazui, but in reality, this is where Dazui's cleverness lies: he quickly grabbed the spotlight through high-profile technology demonstrations and controversial marketing.

To put it bluntly, very few of those criticizing the S800 on the internet can actually afford it, while those who spend millions on the S800 don't need to consider these things at all; they simply don't care.

This is a covert battle between car companies. Weilai's brand power is no less than that of Chrysanthemum, while JAC is far inferior. The two companies held their launch events one after the other, and both are luxury cars. The S800 needs more hype to attract attention because the price has not been announced.

"Sales are pretty good, it's definitely worth it for your endorsement this time."

Weilai has not publicly announced the pre-sale results of the ET9, but as Tan Jincheng said, it is selling quite well. Currently, the ET9 has received nearly 4000 orders, and by the time it is officially delivered in April, it should have no problem receiving 5000 intended orders.

Of these orders, 90% were for the high-end version, which starts at 88.8 yuan. Wealthy people really don't care about money; they have no interest in the basic version. With the optional extras, this million-yuan luxury car can be considered a success.

In terms of online traffic, Tan Jincheng's press conference was far inferior to Yu Dazui's. Yu Dazui made the S800 known to the entire internet, while the Weilai ET9 was almost completely suppressed by the various trending topics of the S800.

Later, the public relations department also approached him, wanting to modify the marketing model and increase public relations expenses, but Tan Jincheng rejected them all, saying there was no need for it. They had marketing budgets in the hundreds of billions, how much money would it take to compete with them for traffic?

Another point is that Tan Jincheng also wants to test the current brand influence of Weilai, and see if Weilai can win some orders with its own brand without large-scale investment.

It now appears that Wolai has truly established its brand image. According to recent research data from Wolai, its brand influence is now comparable to that of Tesla.

This is not only true in China, but also in Europe. Currently, Wingmax's sales in Europe are comparable to Tesla's. After its launch in France, Wingmax has indeed been very popular.

The revolutionary technological advantage has shocked French consumers. Since it is produced in the EU, it meets the eligibility requirements for subsidies and other benefits, so there is no discrimination against it. French consumers are very enthusiastic about purchasing this model.

After October, the EU imposed additional tariffs on new energy vehicle exports from domestic automakers, drawing opposition from Volkswagen and other automakers. Unlike North America and other countries, EU automakers are far more dependent on China.

With changes in the international environment and increased influence, trade frictions no longer only hurt our companies. Foreign companies also need to make money, and sometimes we don't even need to do much; they will start arguing among themselves.

However, due to the EU's tariff policies, automakers have accelerated their localization process worldwide, as only locally produced products can avoid many problems.

"Then get me one, I'll drive the ET9 from now on."

It's the end of January, and the Weilai ET9 has not yet officially started deliveries. Although there are some inventory cars, it's not easy to release them. Currently, only some cars used for testing are circulating in the market.

Another point is that Tan Jincheng has changed his car to the ET9. Apart from that, if you want to experience the ET9, you can only make an appointment at some offline stores.

"Okay, I'll have someone send one over after the New Year. You can help promote it more often."

Tan Jincheng thought about it for a moment and finally agreed. To be honest, these luxury cars are really profitable. The deposit alone is as high as 20,000 yuan. By the time of delivery, Wei Lai can get around 100 million yuan just from this deposit.

"Brother, I want to go shopping."

While the three were chatting, Tan Jinyue, who had changed her clothes, ran out. She was studying in Luzhou and knew not to cause trouble for her brother, so she rarely ran around and didn't have many opportunities to come to the capital.

"I have something to do. Why don't you ask your sister-in-law and the others to go shopping with you?"

Gu Qingqing smiled and said, "Okay, I have some free time right now. If you're home, you can take care of the child."

"We're going too."

"It's snowing, so don't wander around. I'll take you there when the snow stops."

"I'll go too. Let's get dressed up and go shopping together."

During the Spring Festival, people from other places go back to their hometowns in Beijing. The streets and shopping malls are relatively empty, so if you dress up a little, you don't have to worry about being recognized. Therefore, Liu Yifei also had a desire to go shopping.

"Alright, then you can go ahead."

With covert security, Tan Jincheng wasn't worried about anything happening. He had a remote meeting to handle soon and couldn't worry about these things.

With the arrival of the new year, Weilai faces even greater pressure. The market penetration rate of new energy vehicles has exceeded 50% for four consecutive months, and in just a few years, the domestic production capacity of new energy vehicles has exceeded 10 million vehicles. This speed of development is truly frightening.

It only took six years to go from an annual production of 100 million vehicles to 1000 million vehicles. The industry's rapid development is not necessarily a good thing. Overcapacity and the pressure on performance and profit crisis faced by upstream and downstream companies will have a significant impact.

The current situation is that there are more car sellers than car buyers. There are so many cars on the market that even emerging players like Geely can't survive. Despite having major shareholders like Geely and Baidu backing them, Geely suddenly went under.

The reshuffling is accelerating, and Wei Lai's current size is actually quite precarious. However, stopping it is impossible. What Tan Jincheng needs to do is optimize and streamline the existing industries, and adjust non-core businesses as much as possible. "The good days haven't lasted more than a few years, and now we have to start close combat. Doing business is really difficult these days."

In fact, the market boom period for new energy vehicles has not lasted long. Not many companies have actually made money. On the contrary, those that went bankrupt made a killing and then ran away. Among the new forces that went bankrupt, which one of them didn't frantically make money and then dump the mess on the local government and investors?

If we're talking about making money, the battery industry is actually very profitable. At its peak in 2022, some battery companies achieved profit margins of over 55%, making them far more comfortable than vehicle manufacturers.

"That's right. Good days don't last long, and we'll soon face all sorts of pressures."

With the domestic market in such a frenzy that cars can't fetch good prices, the only option is to aggressively expand into overseas markets, since profit margins in overseas markets are still quite good. For example, Wish Star can only achieve a gross profit margin of around 11% in China, while in Europe, the gross profit margin is as high as 20%.

In 2024, the total global automobile sales reached 9060 million units, a year-on-year decrease of about 0.5%, marking the first decline since the end of the special period. China sold a total of about 3144 million units, accounting for more than one-third of the total.

In terms of passenger vehicles, total sales in 2024 were approximately 2756 million units, with the average penetration rate of new energy vehicles exceeding 40% throughout the year, far exceeding the industry planning target of 20% for 2025.

The results were excellent, but the pressure on the company was not. Weilai was one of the best performing companies, but also one of the most stressed.

In 2024, Weilai sold a total of 427 million new energy vehicles, while surprisingly, it sold 76 gasoline vehicles, marking the first increase since the decline in sales of the Yuechi series.

With global sales of 503 million vehicles, the company barely met its adjusted sales expectations, making it the fifth largest automaker in the world, after Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai-Kia, and Stlantis.

That said, car companies' sales this year have been very evenly distributed, with only Toyota achieving sales of over 10 million units globally. However, compared to 2023, Toyota's sales are 107 million fewer units, while Volkswagen, which ranks second, is also down by 200,000 units.

These sales figures were mostly taken by domestic companies. This year, in addition to Weilai ranking fifth globally, Geely also took tenth place globally. For the first time, two domestic car companies appeared in the top ten list.

As for BYD, due to pressure from Weilai and pursuit from Geely, its sales were suppressed to less than 300 million units without a gasoline vehicle business, competing with Changan and Chery for the third position.

Five independent brands—Wuling, Geely, BYD, Changan, and Chery—have all sold more than 250 million vehicles. In contrast, Great Wall Motors, the king of private enterprises in the era of gasoline-powered vehicles, has seen its sales decline to the range of 100 million to 120 million vehicles, with its overall sales even lower than Wuling.

"We still need to develop the gasoline-powered vehicle business, which can also play a role in overseas exports."

Judging from this year's market landscape, there is still a large audience for gasoline-powered vehicles. BYD, which relies solely on electric vehicles, is clearly at a disadvantage. On the other hand, Geely, although its new energy vehicle business is still far behind BYD, has surpassed BYD due to its gasoline-powered vehicle sales.

Inspired by Chery, in the second half of last year, Yuechi Auto and Weilai Auto both tried to export some low-end models to Africa. And sure enough, gasoline-powered cars were much more popular; of course, the main reason is that the infrastructure there is too poor.

The reason why Weilai was able to reach the top five globally is because of the supplement of gasoline vehicles. If new energy vehicles are developed in this way, it is not impossible that they will one day pick up the gasoline vehicle business again. This industry has been played too far.

Take Great Wall Motors as an example. Great Wall Motors, which never really looked up to new energy vehicles, started to promote traffic culture when Xiaomi SU7 was launched, seemingly to promote new energy vehicles. But by the end of the year, Wei's opinion seemed to have changed.

Great Wall Motors has one advantage that other domestic automakers envy: its profit margin has consistently been the highest among domestic automakers. With a mature industrial chain and self-produced and self-sold parts, it captures a significant portion of the profits from gasoline-powered vehicles.

Although he can only sell a little over 100 million vehicles, he is living a pretty good life. Lao Wei often takes a group of off-road vehicle owners to go off-roading and generate traffic, which has also increased his popularity on the Internet.

Perhaps Lao Wei is right. Not striving for first place, but maintaining a mid-level position and living a comfortable life is the most important thing.

What Weilai needs to do now is to maintain the current status, get through the industry's infighting period, preserve its strength, and not deliberately pursue an increase in sales. Even if it loses its top position in the industry, it doesn't matter. It can wait for the right opportunity to build up its strength and make a final strike.

When announcing its total sales for 2024, Weilai also announced its sales forecast for 2025, which, contrary to external predictions, was only 450 million to 500 million vehicles for the whole year.

In the capital market, Tan Jincheng has also been very active. Benefiting from the recovery of A-shares, ByteDance and Tan Jincheng himself have frequently reduced their holdings of stocks. In the past, Tan Jincheng's shareholding in Inco Medical has now dropped to 15%.

In Hong Kong and US stocks, ByteDance's stock trading platform, Ocean Engine, has also been frequently active. Starting in January of this year, stocks such as Xiaomi, Xiaopeng, and Wenjie have all begun to be sold off. Xiaomi even announced a plan to sell up to 10 billion shares, which greatly frustrated Lei Jun.

Besides these overt measures, ByteDance has also accelerated the handling of its overseas assets. The stock price is not actually important to ByteDance at present. Accelerating the recovery of funds and preparing for the winter is the current strategy.

Domestic pricing, technology, overseas profits, reduced investment, and capital recovery will be the strategy for the next five years.

That said, Weilai's overseas business performed very well in 2024, with global sales of 62.87 vehicles, ranking third in domestic exports and accounting for 12.5% ​​of Weilai's total sales.

In terms of profit margins, the overseas market is indeed promising. As long as the service is good, cars that are not popular in China can sell very well overseas. Even the Zhidou is quite popular in some markets.

Domestic automakers are currently ramping up exports, experiencing the same thrill as multinational automakers in the past. However, to increase sales, building factories overseas and achieving localization has become essential. Currently, WILTE has plans to build a factory in Brazil.

Some investments are unavoidable. Throughout 2024, despite repeated contractions, Weilai still made considerable investments. In addition to the necessary increased R&D investment, factories in Ningbo and Luzhou, as well as the third and fourth phases of the project, were also put into operation as scheduled.

In addition, Weilai has built several racetracks. Since Xiaomi entered the market, racetracks that were previously ignored by the public have become a hot topic. The number of lap times has become one of the points of competition among car companies. It's really too much.

The winter testing in Mohe has been done by Weilai for many years, as have other car companies, but few have made a point of promoting it. Xiaomi, however, did something different. Lei Jun led a group of executives to Mohe to do a live broadcast, which made the project very popular.

Some projects that are clearly being carried out normally in private and are considered standard practice in the industry are being disrupted by them, forcing other companies to increase their public relations expenses and follow suit with publicity.

In Tan Jincheng's view, these peripheral marketing efforts are not very meaningful. Making car manufacturing transparent may seem like a sign of respect for users, but it is actually useless and only increases industry costs.

Users need safe, comfortable, and cost-effective transportation, not some fancy but empty things. Being in the same industry, Tan Jincheng has witnessed Lei Jun's marketing prowess firsthand.

Everyone says he has strong marketing skills, but compared to Lei Jun, he is indeed not good enough. However, Tan Jincheng is not envious of these. Since the end of the year, there has been more and more negative news about the SU7.

Most of these negative news stories concern vehicle quality and after-sales issues. In January, Xiaomi recalled 3.1 vehicles due to a defect in its smart parking system. Of the 13.5 Xiaomi cars sold throughout the year, 3.1 were recalled at the very beginning of the new car sales cycle, indicating a significant negative impact, especially given the high volume of traffic generated by the news.

Aside from vehicle quality issues, the biggest problem involving Xiaomi cars is user complaints. According to a car blogger in January, he placed an order for a Xiaomi SU7 on May 20, 2024, then canceled and reordered it.

At the time, customer service informed them that they could apply for a 360-day extension. However, in January, they were told that they had to pay the balance within a week, otherwise the order would be void. Ultimately, the order was cancelled and the deposit was not refunded, which sparked a dispute about the delivery process.

To be honest, Tan Jincheng doesn't quite understand this issue from a consumer's perspective. The order was placed on May 20th, and it still hasn't been delivered by January. They have to wait for a six-month delivery period, even though there are other similar models available on the market.

Today, Tan Jincheng feels more and more that traffic is a double-edged sword. While enjoying the benefits of traffic, one must also bear the damage it brings. When negative public opinion accumulates to a certain point, trouble is bound to happen sooner or later.

This is also one of the reasons why Tan Jincheng plans to significantly reduce his holdings of the company's stock. A large-scale reduction in holdings, disappearing from the top ten shareholders, has the benefit of not only recovering funds but also cutting ties with the company.

Tan Jincheng still vividly remembers the MINI EV ice cream incident. Wei Lai, who had been frequently interacting with Xiaomi for a long time, did not want to be affected again.

"From now on, everyone should just focus on making and selling cars properly, and not get involved in high-profile, high-profile battles between celebrities. Let's let our product strength and cost-effectiveness speak for themselves."

Just after the Spring Festival, Tan Jincheng, who had returned to work, issued such an instruction at the first internal meeting: Weilai should fully transition to a "low-profile" state in terms of investment, marketing, and other aspects.

For the next few years, before solid-state batteries are officially mass-produced, WIL will continue to implement this strategy; of course, this does not mean that WIL is easy to deal with. Like other companies, WIL's legal department is also very strong.

In reality, Xiaomi Auto and Weilai are not in much competition. Xiaomi has many orders, but its production capacity is limited. According to industry insiders, Xiaomi's production capacity problem may not be resolved until 2025.

The SU7 Ultra was launched at a price 28.5 yuan lower than the pre-sale price, once again igniting Xiaomi's popularity. It achieved its annual sales target in two hours and accumulated 3.5 orders in three days. How will it deliver?
The practice of placing large and small orders is becoming increasingly outrageous. Other car companies that have been watching from the sidelines seem to have realized these problems, so there weren't many competing products launched against Xiaomi in 2025.

Compared to Xiaomi, Huawei poses a greater threat. However, after the S800 launch event went wrong, Huawei has become much more low-key. Although its various series have been marketed, they have indeed been much quieter.

On the other hand, Tan Jincheng always thought something bad would happen to Lei Jun, and he didn't have to wait long. On the evening of March 29, a car accident message appeared on Douyin and then spread rapidly in a very short time.

"It's finally here. I just don't know if he can hold on."

When Tan Jincheng saw this news, it was already the 30th. The news had spread so widely that it could no longer be suppressed, which clearly indicated that there were multiple forces behind it.

"Let's go, let's ignore it and not kick him when he's down, let him be."

The divergence in reputation may be due to a single point or event. Today is Weilai's shareholders' meeting, and he has no interest in participating in such matters. Weilai's financial report for 2024 still shows very strong performance.

(End of this chapter)