Hengchi 5 rushed offline, Hengda returned to blood？

(Text/Zhang Jiadong, Editor/Ma Yuanyuan)

Hengda, the real estate leader at its peak, has suddenly encountered "Waterloo" after the real estate industry was cold last year. As of September this year, 38 of Hengda’s 706 guaranteed real estate projects across the country have not resumed work.

Although Evergrande recently announced that the hearing of its liquidation petition will be postponed until November 2022, the market and Evergrande need good news.

According to Hengda’s official information, on September 16, Hengchi 5, the first model of Hengchi Automobile, was officially mass-produced at the Tianjin factory and began offline delivery in October.

In early 2019, in response to the rising tide of new energy in China, Hengda began to lay out the new energy automobile industry. But at the beginning of its establishment, Hengchi Automobile did not go well. According to the 2020 financial report, "Hengda Automobile", which was renamed from "Hengda Health", had revenue of 15.487 billion yuan that year, but of which revenue such as health care and medical beauty accounted for nearly 99%. New energy vehicle services such as lithium battery sales, technical services, and auto component sales contributed only 1%.

This data is completely different from Hengda’s investment in the new energy automobile industry. According to the management of Hengchi Automobile, as of March 2021, the company’s cumulative investment in the new energy automobile industry has exceeded 47.40 billion yuan. However, Hengchi Automobile has always attributed the company’s losses to the fact that it has not yet entered the mass production delivery period, so it cannot recover the upfront investment cost.

In August 2020, Hengchi released six products at one time, covering all levels from A to D, across the coupe, sedan, SUV, MPV, crossover and other market segments, and simultaneously announced its own layout in power batteries, electric drive systems, intelligent networking and autonomous driving.

Entering 2021, Hengda’s car manufacturing business began to accelerate. In February, Hengchi conducted a three-week winter calibration test in Yakeshi, Hulunbuir, and three new models of Hengchi 7, Hengchi 8, and Hengchi 9 were officially released. In March, Hengchi Automobile announced the establishment of a joint venture with Tencent to jointly develop an in-vehicle intelligent operating system with independent intellectual property rights. On March 25, Hengchi Automobile joined hands with Tencent and Baidu to jointly build the H-SMART OS Hengchi Intelligent Networking System, which took one year and 11 months to develop.

In order to make up for its own gap in the automotive industry, Hengchi Automobile has introduced more than 2,000 international top scientific research talents in three years, established the Global Research Institute and the Global Battery Research Institute. Adopting a global integrated research and development model, introducing international advanced technologies, and working with world-class leaders such as Magna and EDAC to jointly develop models.

If it weren’t for the sudden "rout" in the real estate market, Hengchi Automobile should have started its own marketization road earlier. However, it is precisely because of the collapse of the pillar industry that Hengchi Automobile, as the group’s largest investment in recent years and the project closest to marketization, has been regarded by the outside world as the biggest blood bag for Evergrande to stop losses and recover.

Hengchi 5 Single Rider Savior

In January this year, Hengchi Automobile announced that the first car of Hengchi 5 was officially launched, 12 days earlier than originally planned, becoming the first model of Hengchi Automobile to go into mass production. Half a year later, under the pressure of a broken capital chain, Hengchi Automobile officially announced the news of the pre-sale of Hengchi 5 and began to enter the market.

Now that the mass production of Hengchi 5 is offline in the Tianjin factory, it not only breaks the rumors that the Tianjin factory is shut down, but also pushes Hengchi further into the "examination room".

From full category coverage to three years of sharpening a sword, the birth of Hengchi 5 was accompanied by Hengda’s helplessness in the capital chain, but it also demonstrated Hengda’s emphasis on new energy vehicles.

Three years ago, when Xu Jiayin stepped into the automotive industry from real estate as a "little white", few people were optimistic about the future of Hengchi Automobile. Even if it took only one year to bring six concept cars to the stage, the industry still put words such as lack of heritage and sloppiness on the head of Hengchi Automobile.

However, when Hengchi 5 opened the pre-sale, the car circle has undergone a 180 ° change in the wind evaluation of this car. The pre-sale price of 179,000 yuan; the CLTC comprehensive battery life of 602km; the personalized intelligent cockpit design; the L2 + level intelligent driver assistance system; and the blessing of global leading suppliers such as Magna, EDAK, Bosch, etc., accurately cut into the pure electric SUV market positioning and product performance within 200,000 yuan, all showing the determination of Hengchi Automobile to fire the first shot.