Joined the national army in 49 years? Another home appliance giant threw 740 million yuan to create a "car dream"

A few days ago, Midea Group spared no expense to acquire Hekang Xinneng for 740 million yuan. After nearly 20 years, it once again played a cross-border car. Coincidentally, however, just yesterday, the the State Council executive meeting decided to extend the purchase subsidy for new energy vehicles and exempt them from purchase tax for two years. Under the policy, new energy vehicles may also pick up. Today, when the global automobile industry is almost stagnant, it is still dangerous to "save money" to build a car. Is it because Midea has suffered enough from building a car before?

Midea entered the automobile industry for the second time.

This is not the first time that Midea has entered the automobile field. In 2003, Midea Group began to enter the field of commercial vehicles represented by buses. Subsequently, from 2004 to 2006, Midea Group successively acquired Yunnan Bus Factory, Yunnan Aerospace Shenzhou Automobile Co., Ltd. and Hunan Sanxiang Bus Group Co., Ltd. to build brand-new manufacturing bases in Kunming and Changsha. However, the road to making cars in the United States came to an abrupt end in a very short time. In 2008, due to poor management, Midea's car-making project was stopped. In the end, BYD officially took over the Changsha base of Midea bus for 60 million yuan.

Just four years ago, Dong Mingzhu, the head of Gree, planned to acquire the equity of Zhuhai Yinlong 100% at a consideration of1300 million yuan, and raised 9.7 billion yuan for Zhuhai Yinlong car-making project, but the acquisition failed. Looking back at other cross-border vehicles, Apple's Titan Plan, which was announced in 2023, is now confusing; Dyson's car "When I Wake Up" cost about 2 billion pounds. Repeated failures and huge losses have proved that it is really not easy to build a car across the border.

The large-scale entry of home appliance enterprises into new energy vehicles is largely related to their current transformation difficulties. With the disappearance of the demographic dividend, the growth rate of the home appliance industry is slow and gradually enters the downward channel. Taking the air-conditioning industry as an example, the overall production and sales growth rate of the air-conditioning industry slowed down in 20 19: in 20 19, China's air-conditioning output was 2190,000 units, up 6.7% year-on-year; The sales volume was 2,654,380,400 vehicles, up only 6% year-on-year. In contrast, in recent years, the rapid development of new energy vehicles has aroused widespread concern, so home appliance companies have turned their attention to the field of new energy vehicles, trying to find new profit growth points in this hot market.

Aim at the automobile industry chain

Midea Group said in the announcement that in addition to its advantages in industrial frequency converters and servo systems, the layout of energy-saving and environmental protection, new energy vehicles and other businesses of Hekang Xinneng has increased the diversity of Midea Group's business, and also provided an active and effective exploration basis for the expansion of Midea Group in new businesses and new models. However, Midea did not further explain what new businesses and new models Hekang Xinneng will bring in the business layout of energy saving, environmental protection and new energy vehicles.

People familiar with the automobile industry should know that building a car is not a simple matter, and it is not a matter of investing billions to produce a mass-produced car. Although the cross-border car-building tide has been very popular in the past two years, rationally speaking, building a car is a long and difficult thing. If nothing else, how many years does it take to form a brand? There are several new brands in the real sense. Not to mention the production car, but the future sales and quality control of the production car. Therefore, in fact, for a layman like Midea, the threshold for building a car is too high. Instead, it is better to seize the opportunity and share a piece of the trillion-dollar cake in the industrial chain.

From this perspective, the acquisition of Kangxinneng is undoubtedly a wise choice. After all, Hekang Xinneng has a place in the field of new energy vehicles. In the field of new energy vehicles, Hekang Xinneng mainly provides products and services such as powertrain, motor controller, auxiliary power system, intelligent charging pile for electric vehicles and construction of new energy vehicle rental platform. In terms of powertrain and key components of new energy vehicles, the related products of Kangxinneng have formed a supporting relationship with many domestic mainstream automakers such as FAW and Jianghuai.

In fact, as early as 20 16, Midea Group reached the first domestic strategic cooperation on smart home and car networking application with SAIC-GM Anjixing, and began to extend its reach to the car Internet. However, the cooperation between the two sides has not formed much influence in the industry. However, whether out of interest or in order to get a share in the automobile supply chain system, the "amateurs" who build cars have entered this market with high profile. After all, there are still dreams. What if it comes true?

-End-

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.