The domestic automobile market is no longer new for cross-border car-making. In the early years, most of the new power brands started in the Internet industry. In recent years, all walks of life hope to get a share in the automobile market. Not only do people who make mobile phones and color TVs keep pouring into the car circle, but even those who make sweeping robots and engage in real estate development are building cars.
Then, will the brand that makes air conditioners be absent? Of course not. Gree is the representative. Recently, Shanghai Gree Automobile Technology Co., Ltd. was established with a registered capital of 20 million RMB, and its business scope includes automobile parts research and development, automobile parts and accessories manufacturing, industrial robot manufacturing, industrial robot sales, intelligent robot research and development, etc. Obviously, Gree is already paving the way for building a car.
Has Dong Mingzhu learned a lesson from Gree’s second-hand car?
On the surface, Shanghai Gree Automobile Technology Co., Ltd. was established only recently, but in fact this is not the first time Gree has built a car. As early as 2016, Gree Electric was prepared to acquire 100% shares of Zhuhai Yinlong for 13 billion yuan. Although the acquisition was stalled due to the opposition of Gree shareholders, it also opened the prelude to Dong Mingzhu’s intention to build a car.
In desperation, Dong Mingzhu invested 1 billion yuan in his own name to acquire the shares of Zhuhai Yinlong, and after repeated capital increase, Dong Mingzhu’s shareholding ratio increased to 17.46%, which made Dong Mingzhu realize his dream of building a car. But after all, investment acquisition is only the beginning of the dream of building a car. If you want to survive in the automobile market, you must come up with satisfactory products.
From the product point of view, Guangtong, the first model after Dong Mingzhu’s shareholding in Zhuhai Yinlong, has been listed in 2017, and the voice of doubt is not small, not only the longest battery life is only 200km, but even the top speed is only 120km/h, so it is naturally difficult to measure the product strength without bright spots. Although the second model, Yinlong Effie, has increased its battery life to 450km, the price of over 400,000 yuan has also been directly taught by the market.
In the days to come, Yinlong Automobile was also in constant trouble. Even in 2018, it was exposed to negative news such as arrears in supplier payment and arrears in employee wages. In 2019, Gree intended to cooperate with Weimar to change the status quo of Yinlong Automobile, but soon Weimar went bankrupt and there was no following. In the end, Yinlong Automobile was renamed as "Gree Titanium" in 2021. In 2023, Gree Electric increased its shareholding in Gree Titanium to 72.47%, which was managed by Dong Mingzhu himself.
All of the above shows that Dong Mingzhu doesn’t know much about the automobile market, and building a car is far from as simple as Dong Mingzhu imagined. With the establishment of Shanghai Gree Automobile Technology Co., Ltd., the second car-making in Dong Mingzhu started. Behind this is not only Dong Mingzhu’s obsession with the dream of making cars, but also the huge profits in the automobile market, otherwise there would not be so many people trying to squeeze into the automobile market. However, has Dong Mingzhu learned the lesson of Yinlong’s failure?
It is not easy to build a car, and Dong Mingzhu’s dream of building a car will fail again
There is no denying that Gree is a leading enterprise in the air-conditioning industry, and its sales volume and influence are hard to match with those of its friends. Dong Mingzhu, who pushed Gree to the top with one hand, is naturally proud of making cars. He once bombarded domestic cars in public, but when he built them himself, he found that making cars was far from as simple as he thought.
Why did Yinlong fail? In fact, the technology is still too bad, and at the same time, Dong Mingzhu himself is arrogant, pulling the pricing of Yinlong’s products to a height that does not belong to it. What’s more, the models of Yinlong Automobile are "knockoffs" from any angle, but they are higher than the genuine ones in price. Is it because the Logo of Yinlong Automobile uses five rings more than the four rings of Audi?
If Dong Mingzhu paid attention to product building and technology research and development when it first built a car in 2016, perhaps the dream of building a car had already come true. But now it’s 2024. Can dreams that were not realized eight years ago be realized now? Compared with eight years ago, the involution of the current automobile market is completely out of one dimension. Except Xiaomi, the new power brands established in the past two years have failed to make waves without exception.
For the new power brands, there are actually only two ways to go, either relying on traditional automobile manufacturers, such as Deep Blue Automobile, Extreme Krypton Automobile and Intimate Automobile, and relying on traditional manufacturers such as Chang ‘an, Geely and SAIC respectively. There is neither a lack of technology nor a lack of R&D funds, and at the same time, brand awareness can be established. The other way is to become popular by marketing, just like Xiaomi Automobile, but the premise behind marketing is that the competitiveness of the product itself is not bad, and the quality cannot be too flawed. The most important thing is that the founder must be as influential as Lei Jun.
It’s a pity that there seems to be some gap between Dong Mingzhu and Lei Jun now, and Dong Mingzhu is not satisfactory in both personality charm and rigor in making cars. In addition, although Dong Mingzhu and Gree have 8 years of experience in building cars, they can hardly come up with the core technology. The only advantage may be car air conditioning. After all, this is Gree’s housekeeping skill.
Write at the end:
In the field of air-conditioning, Dong Mingzhu is undoubtedly successful, but the profit and development potential of the air-conditioning market are limited after all, so Dong Mingzhu hopes to enter more industries. However, judging from the results, almost all cross-border ventures in Dong Mingzhu have ended in failure, and both the former Gree mobile phone and the current Gree Titanium car have become jokes in the circle. So, do you think Dong Mingzhu’s dream of building a second car can come true?
