Set up "car companies" one after another. What medicine does Haier sell in Hulu?
The fiery market of new energy vehicles is attracting more and more enterprises to enter the market, and Haier, the home appliance giant, is no exception.
Enterprise investigation shows that not long ago, Haier established a Katechi Automobile Technology Development Co., Ltd. in Qingdao. Its legal representative is Ren Xian Cun, with a registered capital of 150 million yuan, and its business scope includes research and development of emerging energy technologies; Automobile sales; New energy vehicle sales; Retail of auto parts, etc.
Searching for the relevant terms of "Qingdao Katechi" in the enterprise search will also lead to "Qingdao Katechi Zhixing Automobile Technology Co., Ltd." and "Qingdao Katechi Innovation Technology Co., Ltd.". These car-related companies, without exception, have the participation of Haier.
In August this year, some media reported that "Haier is planning to build a car, enter the field of complete vehicles and launch its own brand of automobile products".
After just over three months, Haier set up a new company in full swing, which inevitably caused public suspicion. However, on November 28th, Haier officially denied these so-called rumors, and explained that relying on its kaos industrial Internet platform, the company is currently building an industrial Internet sub-platform in the automotive field with relevant automobile companies, aiming at empowering enterprises in the automotive industry chain to digitally transform.
In other words, Haier is more willing to cooperate with car companies and adopt the OEM model.
Haier curve car making
As we all know, building a car is a "burning money" project, and the return period is long. At the same time, Haier is not the only enterprise that makes cars across the border, and there are not many real successes. Even if the new car is mass-produced, it will face the market’s doubts.
Haier knows this well, so it chose the "lightweight" way to enter the automobile industry. Not only do you not need to invest too much in the early stage, but you can also make money more easily by taking advantage of the technical advantages of the whole car companies without establishing a production line.
However, Haier has obviously changed its strategy for entering the automobile industry. In the early days, Haier, as a "small white", focused more on investing in parts suppliers and car networking car service providers. These include Feichi Magnesium, Botai Internet of Vehicles, and Tongming Hi-Tech, an auto parts manufacturer.
Later, with accumulated experience, it began to formally enter the vehicle manufacturing industry. In March last year, Haier and SAIC signed a strategic cooperation, and the two sides will cooperate deeply in the fields of intelligent manufacturing transformation, smart car research and development and application, car home interconnection, new energy and intelligent vehicle application promotion.
On April 10th, Haier Group reached a cooperation with Chery, and reached the cooperation intention in the fields of automobile industry Internet platform and factory construction, smart industrial park supply chain and procurement digitalization.
In June, Haier signed a cooperation agreement with Geely again. According to the agreement, the two parties will cooperate in the Internet of Vehicles and smart home interconnection, marketing channels and marketing innovation models, finance and Internet of Things payment.
In the industry’s view, Haier did not directly build a car, but entered the automobile ecological chain. Through its industrial internet platform, it can connect automobile manufacturing-related enterprises and intelligently connect two life application scenarios, namely car and home, thus realizing the Internet of Everything, which is somewhat similar to Huawei now.
Market potential is the key?
From a macro point of view, Haier’s choice of "cross-border" is also somewhat helpless. On the one hand, the depression of the home appliance industry has put pressure on the entire home appliance industry. According to the semi-annual report on all categories of household appliances in 2022 released by AVC, the retail sales of household appliances in China reached 338.9 billion yuan in the first half of this year, down 9.3 percentage points year-on-year.
On the other hand, the rapid warming of the new energy vehicle market is in sharp contrast with the home furnishing industry. According to the latest data of China Automobile Association, in October this year, the monthly sales volume of new energy vehicles was 714,000, an increase of 81.7% year-on-year, with a market share of 28.5%. From January to October, the cumulative sales volume of new energy vehicles was 5.28 million, a year-on-year increase of 1.1 times, and the market share reached 24%.
At the same time, for the future development scale prospects of the two industries, there is also a significant difference in data. According to NTCysd data, in 2021, the market size of the global home appliance industry will be about 1,351.9 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 1,834 billion yuan in 2028. The industry estimates that the value created by the global automobile market every year is nearly 10 trillion US dollars, which is more than five times that of the home appliance industry.
Therefore, home appliance enterprises that tend to be "saturated" urgently need new profit growth points, and new energy vehicles just give an opportunity.
In addition, unlike fuel vehicles, smart cars have been integrated into the entire ecology of users, achieving a seamless connection between cars, homes and offices. As the second half to measure the success of the transformation, Haier has a natural genetic advantage.
As an important part of smart cars, Haier not only owns the world’s first scene ecological brand "Three-winged Bird", but also owns the platform of Haier Zhijia-Zhijia App. The number of daily users of this platform has reached tens of millions, and it is still growing. At the same time, Haier’s 300 experience stores are quite attractive to any car brand. This is why Geely’s Krypton brand was selected for display in Haier’s store immediately after the launch of "001".
It is worth mentioning that before Haier entered the automotive field, it was nothing new for home appliance companies to build cars. Midea, Hisense, Gree, Skyworth and other home appliance companies have already laid out the automobile industry. Just last month, Gree just got Tesla’s "chassis" order.
Therefore, for Haier, "building a car" is not an easy task, and the competitive pressure is still great.