When seeing the news that lvchi's business license was revoked, as a former employee of the company, Wu Gong was not surprised. "This enterprise died two or three years ago." Not long ago, an administrative punishment brought lvchi back to the public's view after a long silence. The main content is that lvchi failed to open business for more than six months without justified reasons, and the company registration authority revoked its business license.
The last time lvchi attracted people's attention was in April 2021, when Shanghai Qingpu District People's court announced that it accepted the bankruptcy liquidation case of lvchi Automobile Technology Group Co., Ltd.
Earlier, lvchi had been plagued with many diseases: arrears of wages and loans, departure of the founder, takeover of state-owned assets
Lvchi automobile was founded in 2016. Although it is later than Wei Xiaoli, it is also an earlier group of new car building forces in China from the perspective of time line. The founder with a professional background was favored by many investors. At that time, he also wanted to build a super run in China. But in the end, none of the cars drove out of the PPT.
"The company didn't focus on making cars." Wu Gong said that lvchi had a great voice in the early stage and said that it would challenge traditional car enterprises such as Volkswagen and Volvo, but the company did not focus on building new cars, but did everything possible to run horses and enclosure.
Up to now, Wu Gong still believes that his working experience in lvchi automobile is an indelible "stain" in his career development.
01 "MLM" brainwashing, just for money
Wu Gong has been engaged in human resources work for more than 20 years. Before lvchi automobile, he has been working in automobile accessories The original intention of working in the company and joining lvchi automobile is to participate in this unprecedented wave of new car manufacturing. Lvchi car also gave him a very good treatment, making him responsible for the overall planning of human resources and administration, and his salary is higher than his family.
However, the fact is not as beautiful as expected. In addition to being responsible for human resources, cooperating with financing is also Wu Gong's key work.
Six years ago, the tide of new forces surged, and a large amount of hot money poured into this field. Stepping on this east wind, lvchi also began to raise funds wantonly. "At that time, lvchi often contracted the hotel for a lecture." Wu Gong said that there are both rich investors and social workers.
In order to increase the fund-raising efforts, lvchi has a special training team within the company. The training content is to talk about the future of the company and the rate of return. There is only one purpose of training, that is to do financing publicity.
There are many ways to attract investors, such as selling lvchi's original shares, and lvchi promises tens or hundreds of times of earnings in the future. There is another mode, that is, lvchi's shared travel project "lvchi travel", which raises funds by recruiting City partners.
For example, if you spend 250000 on a new energy vehicle, which is operated on the company's platform, you can obtain vehicle operation income, vehicle welfare and even equity dividends. The high rate of return is also very eye-catching.
At that time, Wu Gong often accompanied the company's team to various hotels for publicity. Soon, he realized a problem: raising social funds publicly was obviously a "MLM" activity, and lvchi's car making behavior was also like an outright scam.
The signal of dilapidation first came from the host of lvchi's "gold Lord".
In 2017, Yan Wensheng, a former vice chairman of the board of directors of Zhongneng Dongdao group, was arrested on suspicion of contract fraud. It was revealed that he committed fraud in the form of share subscription lending, with a total amount of 3.5 billion yuan. Lvchi automobile was jointly established by Zhongneng Dongdao group and other enterprises.
For this enterprise, the illegal raising of private capital is also familiar. In 2015, China Energy host once claimed to cooperate with Sichuan Mustang to develop "Mustang u-energy" electric vehicles. At that time, it attracted a lot of private capital, and Yang Yonghui was one of the victims.
At that time, Zhongneng host invested 40000 yuan to 10000 shares, which convinced Yang Yonghui that he would achieve "wealth freedom" due to the development of the company. Yang Yonghui took out his only 100000 savings and bet on Zhongneng host. After becoming a shareholder of the company, Yang Yonghui often followed the company to hold investment fairs all over the country. And in order to get back her 100000, she had to pull people she knew to invest in the enterprise.
With the exposure of the fund-raising fraud, Yang Yonghui's dream of making a fortune was also dashed.
Although since then, lvchi has tried its best to get rid of the relationship with the China Energy host, the "MLM" fund-raising has also brainwashed many company employees.
In 2019, lvchi began to default on employees' wages. After realizing this problem at that time, Wu Gong left the company before the real explosion.
Wu Gong retired, but the employees who were "brainwashed" by the lvchi propaganda meeting were not so lucky.
A former employee of lvchi told chaodian laboratory that at that time, many newly graduated college students or young people with little work experience believed that lvchi could develop and grow. Even if the company can't pay wages, we should advance and retreat with the company. "Many people waited until half a year or more, and finally they had to leave the company."
02 the car was not built, so I owe a lot of debt
The other side of the rapid encirclement of money is the complete neglect of the car making business.
In January 2018, lvchi automobile released the "Uranus" and the first mass production SUV model positioning pure electric super running. At the same time, it should enter the medium and high-end new energy vehicle market through three platforms: urban vehicle platform, mainstream platform and super platform. In June of the same year, lvchi announced that it would build its own production base in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, with a planned annual production capacity of 200000 vehicles.
That year was the highlight time of lvchi car, at least on the surface.
According to the official statement, positioning the "Uranus" of luxury sedan, the wind resistance coefficient is 0.3cd, the peak torque is 900nm, and the acceleration of 100km takes only 3.5 seconds. In addition, micro cars, SUVs, MPVS and medium and large sedans will be listed later. The ambitious plan seems to cover the whole high-end market of new energy sources.
However, it turned out that none of these models had been built. "At that time, the company's requirement for models was to locate the high-end, which must be gorgeous enough." Wu Gong said that the purpose is to expand influence and raise more money.
At that time, most of the car making technology teams were temporarily established from other enterprises through high prices. "The people who really understand technology are very limited." This also led to the official data, although gorgeous, but the landing is not realistic, and the mass production of new cars is only in exchange for subsidies. "They deduct very carefully for subsidies, and the new car has almost no handling".
In May 2019, lvchi automobile signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Chang'an Automobile, that is to produce lvchi's first pure electric SUV through Chang'an Suzuki No. 2 factory. According to the plan, the new car will be launched in the second year, equipped with L2 Level 5 autopilot.
Lvchi once said that after the first round, B round and C round of 10 billion financing, it will be listed from 2021 to 2022. However, before the financing progress and mass production of new cars, lvchi has fallen into the situation of insolvency.
Previously, lvchi planned to invest 5.5 billion to build a factory in Jiangxi. Due to the lack of funds, the production base has long been overgrown with weeds. The cooperation project with Chang'an Suzuki also did not pay the latter, and the long production line has been empty.
In fact, as early as 2018, lvchi's "scam" has been exposed. At that time, some media exposed that lvchi car owed 27 million euros to the project of Italian i.de.a design company. Morali, CEO of i.de.a design company, also publicly said: "we suspect that the whole lvchi car project is a fraud."
Moreover, after the global launch ceremony of the pure electric concept vehicle Venere - "Venus" was held at the Geneva auto show that year, it should have appeared at the Beijing auto show in the same year, but due to the intensification of the contradiction between the two sides, "Venus" was detained in Italy by i.de.a.
In case of arrears of employees' wages, he tore off the last fig leaf of lvchi. In 2020, some media reported that lvchi had defaulted on employees' wages for more than half a year, and the company was completely paralyzed. The most serious thing is that all plants, sites and equipment of lvchi automobile are rented. The liquidation of light assets is far from enough to fill the arrears of loans and wages.
From the initial establishment to the defeat, it is almost an empty shell left by capital. After the tuyere, there is a chicken feather after all.
03 does lvchi not deserve to be a "new force for car making"?
When lvchi car was exposed to be delayed in salary, in 2020, Henan Guotou invested 60% in lvchi. The former is a state-owned enterprise in Henan Province. This action is also interpreted by the outside world as that state-owned assets are the bottom of lvchi.
After being taken over by state-owned assets, lvchi was cleaned up internally, and the core team was also eliminated.
Paradoxically, the subsequent lvchi almost completely disappeared, and the information about the company was basically blocked. Even the official website did not have any information, leaving the outside world with information about salary arrears and payment arrears.
It was not until a year later that the Shanghai Qingpu District People's court accepted the bankruptcy liquidation case of lvchi Automobile Technology Group Co., Ltd. that it gave lvchi an ultimatum. After a series of farces, lvchi automobile completely disappeared.
Some people say that what lvchi has done will always be nailed to the stigma of new power auto enterprises, including overtaking, OEM, self built factories and listing... Lvchi has almost drawn all the big cakes of new power auto enterprises, but in the end, the aura is scattered and the dream of building cars is broken.
It is worth noting that in the early stage of the new power wave, compared with other new power auto enterprises competing to get hot money, before Henan invested in shares, qixinbao data showed that lvchi auto financing information was "None". This means that lvchi automobile only relies on the company's registered capital of 1.3 billion yuan to maintain operation, which is destined not to turn up too much waves.
Up to now, the collapse of new power auto enterprises is nothing new. There are Byron automobile, which has burned out 8.4 billion yuan and has not yet built a car, and Bojun automobile, which has experienced six rounds of financing and finally went bankrupt and reorganized. Changjiang automobile entered bankruptcy liquidation after burning out 5.1 billion yuan invested by Li Jiacheng, and sailin automobile, which spent 5.6 billion yuan to build "elderly scooters", will also be auctioned publicly on May 30.
From a historical perspective, most enterprises want to catch the ride of new energy in the car making tide around 2015. However, few enterprises can calm down and build cars in the face of the interests of real gold and silver.
In fact, even if "Wei Xiaoli" stands out in the tide of new energy vehicle manufacturing, it has not got rid of the quagmire of loss at present. We have to admit the fact that car building not only needs round after round of financing support, but also needs enterprises to have enough awe of car building.
It is foreseeable that this final knockout has begun and will last for a long time.
However, the good news is that the new energy vehicle market is gradually returning to rationality after the initial period of chaos. In 2021, the sales volume of new energy vehicles increased by 169.1% year-on-year and the penetration rate reached 14.8%. By April this year, the retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles had reached 27.1%.
Under the competition law of survival of the fittest, some high-quality enterprises also began to play a positive effect gradually. At the same time, new forces such as Xiaomi and Baidu are also expanding the team of new energy vehicles, and traditional car enterprises are also incubating new brands to cope with the increasingly fierce market.
At this moment, the new energy market is still crowded, but the strength of players on the card table is becoming stronger and stronger. Whether successful or not, every contestant deserves respect, but if he has no awe of car making, he is destined to be eliminated by the market.
Lvchi is not the first, nor will it be the last.
(Note: Wu Gong is a pseudonym)