Geely Automotive officials announced the spin-off of the electric car business, the polar krypton brand will be officially released in April.

In the release of the expected 2020 performance at the same time, the previous attention of the industry Geely electric vehicle business split, independent issues, also surfaced.

"Geely is in the process of transforming from 3.0 to 4.0, which had a certain impact on Geely's performance last year." While reflecting on last year's performance, an Conghui, chairman of Geely Automobile Group and polar krypton company, said in an exclusive interview with the Financial Associated Press that Geely will firmly promote the rapid development of the two blue Geely action plans to build core competitiveness in the field of intelligent energy saving and new energy and intelligent pure electricity.

According to the plan, the new intelligent pure electric brand Polar Krypton (Zeekr), will be officially launched in April this year, and will launch the pre-sale of its first model at the Shanghai auto show this month.

It has been planned to split the electric car for a long time.

On March 23rd, Geely Motor announced that in 2020, Geely Motor had an annual income of 92.1 billion yuan (RMB, the same below), a net profit of 5.57 billion yuan, a profit attributable to shareholders of 5.53 billion yuan, and a cash balance of 19 billion yuan at the end of the period.

Although the main financial indicators have declined to varying degrees compared with 2019, with the gradual iteration of intelligent products in the era of Geely 4.0 comprehensive architecture in the second half of last year, sales and revenue have rebounded significantly. Among them, sales rose 49% in the second half of last year, revenue rose 50%, and net profit rose 40%.

"it should be said that Geely's performance in 2020 is expected. In addition to epidemic factors, rising prices of major raw materials, shortage of chips, and the decline of the national subsidy policy for new energy vehicles are also the main reasons for Geely's declining performance in 2020." Some industry insiders believe that the relatively weak new energy vehicle plate has become a bigger drag on Geely.

According to the data, the overall sales of the domestic automobile market in 2020 were 25.31 million, down 1.9 percent from the same period last year, while the annual sales of new energy vehicles reached 1.367 million, an increase of 10.9 percent over the same period last year. However, Geely has failed to offset the impact of factors such as the epidemic through the rapid growth of the new energy vehicle market.

"the polar krypton car announced by Geely and the financial report together can be seen as an inevitable move for Geely to strengthen the new energy vehicle sector." The above analyst said.

However, an Conghui does not agree with this judgment, in his view, the establishment of polar krypton is "natural."

"We were already considering a split of the electric car business five years ago, but the conditions were not ripe at that time." An Conghui revealed that Geely officially entered the stage of comprehensive architecture car construction on the basis of the CMA platform in 2016, and has fully taken into account the arrival of the era of electric cars. "our plan at that time was to re-create a pure electric platform for intelligence, but we understand that this pure electric architecture needs to be shared by more 'moments'."

The implication is that the cost of investing in a huge intelligent pure electricity platform is a realistic factor that Geely has to consider.

In September last year, the 18 billion yuan Geely vast structure (SEA) was officially released, and the split of the electric vehicle business has become increasingly clear. However, due to the consideration of trade secrets, at that time, the business, which will operate independently in the future, was temporarily "hidden" under the Lecker brand. In September of the same year, with the release of SEA, LinkedIn ZERO CONCEPT was also officially unveiled. The Lectra Zero is the first pure electric model under the SEA architecture, and according to Geely's announcement, it will be the first model of the newly formed polar krypton brand to be pre-sold at the Shanghai Auto Show in April this year.

"the release of the SEA architecture indicates that Geely is ready to provide intelligent high-end pure electric 'spot' products for the market." According to Geely insiders, in the six months since the launch of SEA, the number of cooperative brands has increased from 7 last year to more than 8 this year, and more than 16 models have been developed.

This means that through the expansion of the "moments", SEA's current R & D cost of up to 20 billion yuan has been further shared, which, to a certain extent, ensures the competitiveness of the polar krypton brand in the early days of its birth.

Ecosphere energizes polar krypton

"at this stage, there are three dimensions to measure an enterprise-the product side, the user side and the capital side." An Conghui analyzed the coming polar krypton brand from three dimensions. Among them, on the product side, polar krypton brand models were born in the SEA architecture, including Volvo, smart and Baidu, Foxconn, providing a strong endorsement for its product power; on the user side, polar krypton will be built into a "user-oriented enterprise" integrated with customers.

"the business model of the traditional automobile industry is B2B2C. Later, we talked about maintaining zero-distance communication with customers, but now with the progress of technology, enterprises and customers are integrated with each other." An Conghui further clarified her understanding of polar krypton on the client side.

According to Geely Motor's announcement on March 22, Polar Krypton was formed by 51% and 49% of Hong Kong listed companies Geely Motor and Geely Holdings Group, respectively. According to a reporter from the Financial Associated Press, Geely Holdings's 49% stake in Polar Krypton is composed of Geely Holdings, employee shareholding platform and user rights platform, but the specific proportion is unknown.

On the capital side, an Conghui believes that today's enterprises are not only simple financing for the capital market, but also transform the traditional automobile industry into a technology company with the expansion of the industrial boundary. thus it has a stronger relationship with the capital market while changing the valuation system.

Since the end of last year, with the transformation of the valuation system of the automobile industry from traditional manufacturing to technology enterprises in the capital market, the market capitalization of Tesla and new car manufacturers such as Weilai and Xiaopeng has been constantly refreshed. Due to the layout of Geely Group in the field of science and technology in recent years, polar krypton will further strengthen its scientific and technological attributes while vertically integrating the supply chain in the future, which will undoubtedly help to strengthen its docking with the capital market.

According to the Financial Associated Press reporter, in the future, polar krypton will make full use of the "science and technology ecology" circle created by Geely Holdings Group in recent years to vertically integrate the industrial chain. Among them, in the field of three electric systems, the three electric system technology of Weirui Electric vehicle Technology Company will be used; in the field of self-driving, the first product of polar krypton is the world's first model equipped with Mobileye SuperVision system; and in the field of Smart Internet, polar krypton will use core technology's 7nm process chip SE1000 in the future. In addition, there are also corresponding arrangements in power batteries, travel ecology, energy supplement system and block chain technology, low-orbit satellite navigation and vehicle networking.

"in the future, the automobile industry must open up the industrial chain vertically. There is no way. These must be done by ourselves." An Conghui said.

An Conghui's judgment came after Volkswagen Group announced a huge business transformation plan, including investing nearly 10 billion euros to build six battery plants in Europe and recruiting 10,000 software technicians. to develop applications. "compared with new car-building enterprises, the biggest advantage of traditional automobile enterprises lies in scale." Volkswagen Group CEO Dis said.

According to the latest statement by Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Group, about Geely's new energy vehicle business, Geely will form two major layouts: "Blue Geely Action 1" and "Blue Geely Action 2". The first action plan focuses on intelligent energy-saving and hybrid technology models, while the second action plan is intelligent pure electric vehicles.

"Polar Krypton is part of Blue Geely Action II. Through the systematic and large-scale advantages of the whole group, Polar Krypton will become the most competitive enterprise in the intelligent pure electric car market." An Conghui looked forward to the future of polar krypton.