Editor View
On the evening of July 30th, Beijing time, Ideal Motors (LI.US) was listed on Nasdaq. This is the US$2.4 billion IPO of iQiyi on Nasdaq in March 2018. Gram’s largest IPO. Jingwei China is a staunch supporter of the ideal car in the development process. In 2017, Jingwei China led the investment in the B round of the ideal car, and then continued to increase the number of B+ rounds and C rounds. It is the largest ideal car besides the ideal team and Meituan Wangxing Of institutional investors.
There was thunderous applause at the listing ceremony and countless people contributed to it. Ideal founder Li Xiang thanked 3 people when delivering the C speech. In the list of TOP 3 are Ideal Auto CFO Li Tie and Jingwei China’s founding partner Zhang Ying , Hebei user Hao Yifei. Wang Xing and TT Zhang Yiming are not listed. The media have written articles to speculate on the role play and functions of the three to stand out in the golden star delegation of the ideal car. Are they on the list? Everyone knows that Li Xiangke has never had a headache. As a second-time bell ringer, no one believes that this is Li Xiang’s brainstorm, but must be a thoughtful rehearsal.
Zhang Ying is the founding managing partner of Matrix Partners China. Since its establishment in 2008, Zhang Ying has led Matrix China to focus on China’s new economy and invested in companies including Didi Chuxing, Momo (NASDAQ: MOMO), Ele.me, Shanghai Kaiying (SZ: 002517), Guazi, Cheetah Mobile (NYSE: CMCM), Yuantiku, Bona Pictures (NASDAQ: BONA), 36氪 and other well-known companies. On October 29, 2019, Zhang Ying has just been selected into the list of “The 30 Most Influential Investors in China in 2019”.
The following is from the full text of the link broadcast by the official official account of “Jingwei Venture Capital Low-key News”, the original title is “Ideal to go public, Li Xiang: “I will trade a 100 billion dollar company”, “CEO Search Engine” Executive Editor Long Yu Zhang Ying, the founding partner of Xuanjing Jingwei Venture Capital, reposted this article after her consent and authorization. Founders are welcome to pay attention to “Jingwei Venture Capital”. For more founder videos, please pay attention to the video number of “Jingwei College”.
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I
Li Xiangzeng, the founder of Ideal Auto, said in a previous public interview that Jingwei is the first first-line fund that Ideal Auto has come into contact with. His sincere help, suggestions and no troubles left him deep in his memory. “First, we feel that Jingwei is really good for us; second, we sometimes have some persistence of our own, but maybe only half of the world. Like Zhang Ying and Huadong, if they are not very experienced in this field, they say We may not believe that the latter things are actually very helpful to our team. And the benefits that these things bring to us, in addition to the capital circle, are also very helpful to the supplier system and the recruitment system. If we Missing this thing will actually reduce resources a lot.”
Zhang Ying, the founding managing partner of Jingwei China, said, “New energy vehicles are a huge opportunity and a booming market. Money, people, and national policies are all gathered together. At the moment, China’s new car-making forces have just begun. It is a big blue ocean to remove those companies that do not make products with great care. In the near future, when the supply chain of new energy vehicles is further improved, the overall advantage of China’s industrial chain will be even greater, except for the huge The opportunity for industrial upgrading in the Chinese market will also create many opportunities for export overseas. Some people will say cold words about new energy vehicles today because they have not taken the time to experience these vehicles seriously.
In our opinion, taking the analogy of mobile phones, this is the change of feature phones and smart phones, and this change will become more intuitive and obvious in the future. At the same time, we are also very optimistic about the ideal team’s perception of the product and determination of the excellent technology path. They know exactly what consumers need. In addition, Li Xiang strives to spend his money on the cutting edge, creating the highest capital utilization rate in the industry.
For early investors, the most important thing is always people. A good founder is more than everything. The founder, Li Xiang, has a geek spirit. He is a grassroots entrepreneur. He started his own business since his third year of high school and constantly iterated himself. For more mature repeat entrepreneurs like Li Xiang, when dealing with them, you know that their vision is very ambitious, and they are capable, rich, and resourceful. As investors, they can’t help but help and empower themselves in places where they don’t make trouble. To accompany them, this sense of accomplishment cannot be brought by much money.
As an early stage investment, in the financial chain, it is actually the most difficult to make money compared with the mid-to-late stage and secondary markets. But on the contrary, we have gained the most. This kind of interaction with the founder and the company and growth for several years or even more than ten years are also the greatest value and significance for us. ”
At the beginning of 2019, in the hundreds of millions of classes, Li Xiang once said, “Any company must be result-oriented, and our result-oriented is to win the battle. What is the real victory? The ideal victory is the IPO in the United States in 2022. , Maybe earlier.” More than a year has passed, and the ideal victory has arrived, and two years ahead of schedule.
II
Ideal Auto was founded in July 2015, formerly known as Che Hejia, founded by serial entrepreneur Li Xiang. He once founded the world’s most visited automobile website Auto Home (NYSE: ATHM). As an entrepreneur born in the 1980s, from Paobao.com to the car home to the ideal car, Li Xiang is an outlier in the eyes of ordinary people. After all, there are very few people who have succeeded in starting a business and have a certain foundation and have invested 80% of their money in a new field to start a business. Ideal Automobile is Li Xiang’s third venture. He said, “I have already traded a tens of billions of dollars in a company, and I hope to trade another 100 billion of dollars in a company.”
Ideal Auto is a user-driven automotive technology company dedicated to creating more free smart electric vehicles for users through innovative technology. Ideal Auto is headquartered in Beijing and its own production base is located in Changzhou, Jiangsu. On October 18, 2018, after 40 months of research and development, Ideal Auto officially released the first intelligent electric vehicle large SUV without mileage anxiety-Ideal ONE. As the first smart electric vehicle of the ideal brand, Ideal ONE will adopt an innovative extended-range electric solution to solve the problem of mileage anxiety of electric vehicles from the product technology itself. The whole vehicle adopts a pure electric four-wheel drive electric platform, and through the efficient cooperation of a large-capacity battery pack and a high-power extended-range power generation system, it provides an NEDC comprehensive cruising range of more than 800 kilometers. Through a variety of energy replenishment solutions, a pure electric driving experience with zero emissions in the city and long-distance anxiety-free is achieved.
As a luxurious mid-to-large SUV, the ideal ONE has a body length of more than 5 meters, provides a luxurious space with 6 seats/7 seats, and leading safety and comfort configurations. In terms of intelligent technology, Ideal ONE uses an original four-screen to interact with the entire vehicle’s voice, and is equipped with a driving assistance system as standard, making the user’s driving experience safer and more convenient. Equipped with full-vehicle OTA function, the extended-range electric system and intelligent technology are constantly updated and perfected throughout the life cycle of the vehicle, and users can continue to enjoy the latest technology.
Compared with pure electric vehicles, the biggest advantage of Ideal ONE is that the extended-range electric drive mode solves the biggest problem of electric vehicles-mileage anxiety. Ideal ONE adopts a pure electric four-wheel drive electric platform, through the efficient cooperation of large-capacity battery pack and high-power extended-range power generation system, it provides 800 kilometers of NEDC comprehensive cruising range. Support fast charging, slow charging and refueling power generation three kinds of energy supplement solutions, so that customers can enjoy all the advantages of electric vehicles, while freeing them from the mileage anxiety usually associated with pure electric vehicles. In terms of sales volume, China is not only the world’s largest passenger car market, but also the largest new energy vehicle market. Ideal Auto believes that this solution will help the wider and earlier adoption of electric vehicles in China.
Compared with models of the same class, Ideal ONE closely follows its own positioning-the second medium-to-large SUV for Chinese families, closely following the actual needs of Chinese families in terms of interior space and battery life. As the consumption power of Chinese families increases, they tend to choose SUVs for daily commuting and weekend family trips. Ideal ONE will focus its strategy on the SUV segment with prices ranging from RMB 150,000 to RMB 500,000. Ideal ONE’s performance, functions and cab space are comparable to large high-end SUVs, but the price is close to compact high-end SUVs. As one of the most competitive SUV models in China, Ideal ONE is fully capable of seizing the huge growth opportunities in this segment of the market.
Ideal Auto has its own production qualifications and has built its own factory in Changzhou, Jiangsu. Independent research and development and independent production enable seamless collaboration between engineering and production teams, providing a key feedback loop for rapid production improvement and product quality improvement. By cooperating with industry-leading suppliers, Ideal Auto delivers high-quality products to users. Ideal Automobile Changzhou base has a designed annual production capacity of 100,000 vehicles, covering four workshops: stamping, welding, painting, and assembly. A large number of advanced technologies and equipment are used to ensure that the manufacturing quality of Ideal ONE reaches the luxury brand standard.
III
In November 2019, Ideal Motors started mass production of the first car Ideal ONE. In December of the same year, after four years and five months of research and development, trial production, testing and production preparations, the first product of Ideal Automobile, the ideal ONE, an extended-range intelligent electric vehicle, started mass delivery.
According to data from China Automobile Data Terminal, the sales volume of Ideal ONE has exceeded 10,000 since its launch in December last year. Sales from January to June this year accounted for 46% of the sales of the top ten medium and large SUV models, becoming the absolute leader in China’s new energy medium and large SUV market (including hybrid, plug-in hybrid, pure electric, and extended range electric).
Since the delivery, Ideal Car completed the delivery of the first 10,000 vehicles in just six and a half months, including the Spring Festival holiday and the special period of the epidemic, setting the fastest delivery of 10,000 vehicles for new models of Chinese and foreign manufacturers. The record for vehicles has become the fastest new car company in history to reach a delivery volume of 10,000 vehicles. As of June 30, more than 10473 Ideal ONEs have been delivered.
Li Xiang said, “The industry of smart electric vehicles is really difficult, and the team is growing really fast. Ideal ONE chose extended-range electric vehicles that everyone is not optimistic about. Four years of serious research and development, self-built factories, purchase qualifications, and direct sales are established. And service network, plus five years of personnel and management expenses, spent a total of US$1 billion to achieve positive operating cash flow and hematopoietic capacity. The cumulative delivery of more than 10,000 vehicles, the highest single-day sales in 18 cities exceeded 200 cars.”
On July 5th, Li Xiang, CEO of Ideal Auto, posted on social media that Ideal Auto had been operating for 5 years and its current operating cash flow was positive, with cash on the account exceeding US$1 billion. Before going public, Ideal Motor announced the company’s short-term and long-term goals. The short-term goal is to become the number one smart electric vehicle company in China; the long-term goal is to become the world’s largest autonomous driving operator. Smart cars are a vital new trend in China and even around the world. Cars will eventually become terminals for autonomous driving, the most important space for people to travel, and an important step for the Internet and digitalization to affect the physical world.
