Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Behind them are Chinese.

author| Rongxi Wang Lei

Pretty bald.

Nikkei News has just revealed that HW Electro, a Japanese electric car start-up, is about to go to NASDAQ to apply for an IPO.

Compared with the environment of new energy vehicles in China and the United States, Japan's attitude towards electric vehicles has always been ambiguous. Toyota, as the leader, also gave a clear attitude_not optimistic about the development of electric vehicles.

Toyota, Honda such giants have always been difficult to turn around, but that does not mean that Japanese trams do not have a living environment.

HW Electro understands the off-peak competition and focuses on the small commercial electric vehicle market. And tracing back to the development history of this new Japanese car, there are actually many Chinese behind it.

01. Although the "reverse output" made in China is a Japanese automobile enterprise, the shadow of "made in China" has been revealed everywhere from the founder to the platform technology.

The company, HW Electro, is a start-up company that mainly develops light commercial trucks. Founded in 2019 and April 2021, it became the first Japanese company to obtain a license number for imported small EV commercial vehicles.

At the Tokyo Auto Salon held in January 2019, Elemo, its first prototype model, was unveiled at the booth of a tire manufacturer called Good Ride.

Interestingly, at that time, it was only an appearance, and there was no plan to sell it in Japan, but simply showed that his car used a tire of Good Ride.

The Chinese name of Good Ride Tire is Good Luck Tire. Headquartered in Hangzhou, Good Ride Tire is one of the top 500 domestic manufacturers. It ranked 8th among the world tire manufacturers at the time of exhibition. It is also a sub-brand of Zhongce Rubber, the largest tire manufacturer in China. It also has a household name brand-Chaoyang Tire.

The founder of HW Electro was Xiao Weicheng, then president of Good Luck Tire Japan.

Xiao Weicheng was born in China Taiwan Province. When he was 2 years old, he followed his family to Japan and finally settled in Japan. As president of Good Luck Tire Japan, he also formed a Good Ride racing team.

The opportunity to decide to establish a tram company was a power outage in an earthquake in northern Osaka in 2018. Although it was only a few hours, Xiao Weicheng said that he felt very uneasy when wandering around the streets with power failure and his mobile phone battery was exhausted, and he also realized the importance of electric vehicles.

It was because of this idea that Xiao Weicheng founded HW Electro.

At the time of its establishment, Japan had only Mitsubishi's "minicave meve" for small commercial electric vehicles, and there were also light trucks imported from overseas DHL subsidiaries, so there was indeed a market at that time.

However, Xiao Weicheng, who started from scratch, did not have enough funds to distribute upstream and downstream. In order to control funds, he thought of the idea of introducing platform models and then transforming them for sales.

At the Tokyo Auto Salon in 2019, HW Electro's prototype vehicle Elemo, which is based on the electric vehicle platform of American company CENNTRO, was exhibited.

CENNTRO, located in the United States, is interesting. It is a company that specializes in developing platform models and then developing electric cars that meet the needs of various countries. For example, ARYO, an American electric car manufacturer, has used this platform to develop mobile vaccination vehicles.

CENNTRO, although headquartered in the United States, also has a Chinese name, Hengyuan Electric Vehicle Group, which was founded in 2013 by Wang Zuguang and several Internet industry figures.

Yes, Chinese too.

Wang Zuguang is a serial entrepreneur in the science and technology field. He graduated from the University of Illinois in the United States and obtained a double master's degree in computer electrical engineering. The most well-known titles are "Father of PHS" and "Founder of China's First NASDAQ Listed Enterprise."

After returning to China in the 1990s, he founded Unitech Telecom (UT Starcom) together with Xue Manzi and Lu Hongliang. In March 2000, UT Starcom became one of the first enterprises listed on NASDAQ in China and successfully launched the optical ring system and wireless ring system.

The core team of Hengyuan Group has held senior management positions in domestic and foreign enterprises, including Google China, Merrill Lynch Bank, Volvo Group, etc. The company's angel investors include Kai-Fu Lee, Xue Manzi, Xu Xiaoping and other technology tycoons.

HW Electro's prototype Metro is based on Hengyuan Electric Vehicle Group's "Rongda Intelligent Manufacturing" platform.

This platform integrates service providers in the fields of R & D, design, production, suppliers, financial services and maintenance of electric vehicles to help new car companies realize light assets.

When this car was exhibited in the car salon, it even used the Chinese name of Meitu. After it was introduced into Japan, it was changed to its own name by HW Electro.

In other words, it is to take a good car made in China, make a little rectification, and then sell it in the Japanese market. Of course, the process of introducing it into Japan also took some "kung fu".

For the Japanese market, commercial vehicles manufactured abroad are often unable to withstand the harsh weather conditions in Japan (high temperature and humidity, snow areas are also many) and high-intensity use conditions such as urban congestion. In order to obtain approval in Japan, it is necessary to investigate whether each part meets the standard.

Of course, HW Electro also needs to change some parts to adapt to the Japanese driving environment, such as optimizing leg space and adding 100V/ 1500W sockets and pedal misuse prevention systems.

In April 2021, HW Electro became the first Japanese company to obtain a license plate number for imported small EV commercial vehicles, and since then HW Electro's first model "Elemo" has officially entered the market.

In summary, HW Electro does not have much core technology.

02. Does Japan still have to rely on the Chinese for new cars? HW Electro's business model is not unique in Japan.

Folofly, a Japanese electric vehicle start-up founded in 2021, has the same development path as HW Electro, but Folofly is more thorough.

Folofly founder Hiroyasu Koma initially aimed at the pure electric sports car business, but later the sports car business lost too much money and began to adjust its business direction, finally choosing the small commercial vehicle market.

However, Japan has very high requirements for obtaining license plates. It needs to pass hundreds of parts inspection projects to meet the safety standards stipulated by Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, which requires a lot of capital and manpower.

How can we maximize savings?

"There is a good way to use China's power. "Yukang Oma had business dealings with Chinese automobile enterprises before, Folofly also took advantage of the situation to take a shortcut-to find Chinese automobile enterprises to contract, using the inspection data of Chinese manufacturers can greatly reduce production and operation costs.

Its first model is produced by Dongfeng Xiaokang Automobile, a subsidiary of China Dongfeng Motor Group.

Folofly introduced commercial trams, mainly for "last mile" logistics distribution, and signed a contract with Japanese logistics giant SBS Holdings. The model has a load of 1 ton and a standard endurance of 300 kilometers. More importantly, the import cost of each vehicle is only 3.8 million yen (equivalent to 192,000 yuan), which is equivalent to the cost of oil vehicles.

Folofly said that the current cooperative electric truck is based on the transformation of oil vehicles sold in the Chinese market, adding anti-lock systems and other systems, but overall the changes are not significant. According to Folofly at the time, production in China can control the price of each car below 4 million yen, and the same car is developed and produced in Japan with a price tag of at least 10 million yen.

In June last year, Folofly launched its second small commercial pure electric truck, also made by Dongfeng Xiaokang Automobile, at a price of about 3.8 million yen.

Previously, Japanese companies had provided technology to local companies to sell cars in the Chinese market. However, under the new industry rules of electric vehicles, this pattern has been completely reversed.

In fact, the early Japanese electric car market was not as hip as it is now.

More than 70 years ago, Nissan launched the first electric vehicle TAMA. In 1983, Nissan launched the world's first AC asynchronous motor electric vehicle-Nissan MarchEV. By 2010, the world's first mass-produced electric vehicle equipped with permanent magnet synchronous motor LEAF was released.

Nissan Leaf also became the world's best-selling electric car for a time, winning the global sales crown for eight consecutive years.

But with the arrival of Tesla Model 3, Nissan Leaf gradually fell behind as a sign of Japanese trams. In addition, in recent years, the global automobile industry has changed suddenly, and the pattern of "one super and many strong" of independent new energy automobile enterprises has gradually formed. In addition to BYD, Geely, GAC and other traditional automobile enterprises have also begun to incubate new brands. Their strength and status have long been different from those ten years ago.

At present, China's new energy automobile brands are trying their best to grab the next round of tickets. The competition in urban NOA, laser radar, chip computing power and other fields is particularly fierce. On the contrary, Japanese automobile enterprises are hesitant, and from time to time they also make shocking remarks to counter the current achievements of electric vehicles.

Not long ago, sony honda Mobility president isumi kawanishi raved that electric cars in china don't have technological surprises, like putting together icons for smartphones.

Different from HW Electro and Folofly, Sony Honda Mobile Travel Company is an out-and-out Japanese new force to build cars. It is jointly built by Sony and Honda. It can be said that it is the only seedling of Japanese new cars.

But the prototype of its first model, AFEELA, was unveiled only in October this year and will not be available for mass production until 2026.

At present, the competition situation in the domestic new energy automobile industry is almost calculated according to the sky. If you don't pay attention, you will be left behind. No one knows what kind of opponent Sony electric vehicle will encounter in three years.

But no matter what kind of car Sony Honda hands over, it is certain that when Sichuan Chuan Quan starts bombarding Chinese electric cars, Chinese electric cars have already won.

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: SuperEV-Lab (ID: SuperEV-Lab), author: Rongxi Wang Lei

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