Weimar Freeman Shen： To be the first new car with positive gross profit margin in the world, and I will take photos with Li Bin next time.

In June, Weimar, a manufacturer of intelligent electric vehicles in China, handed over a monthly sales record of 2,028 units.

This not only made last month the best selling month of Weimar in 2020, but also increased the overall sales volume to four consecutive months.

Even affected by the epidemic environment, the pace of nationwide expansion of Weimar offline stores has not stopped: the landing of 18 retail channels in 15 cities has made more potential consumers have the possibility of field experience.

Standing in the summer of 2020, looking back at the winter when Weimar was founded five years ago, a magnificent history of the popularization of intelligent electric vehicles in China jumped to the page.

Weimar has grown into the epitome and index of practicality in China’s new car-making circles.

In September 2018, Weimar started the mass delivery of the first production model EX5.

Twenty-one months later, in July, 2020, Weimar EX5 welcomed its 30,000 th owner, and at the same time made itself the second single vehicle to enter the "30,000 Club" after Tesla Model 3 in the smart electric vehicle market in China.

Freeman Shen, founder, chairman and CEO of Weimar, was not satisfied with this length of time.

"The first 30,000 units are a little slow," he said. "I hope the second 30,000 units and the first 100,000 units can arrive earlier."

In fact, the acceleration of Weimar EX5 climbing the delivery peak of 30,000 units is not slow at all. This is a down-to-earth enterprise with the initial intention of "safety, reliability, stable quality, excellent experience and reasonable cost".

Delivery speed is a consideration dimension, but it is not the only assessment indicator.

"Compared with the desperate pursuit of rapid sales growth, Weimar chose to achieve high-quality sustainable growth on the basis of firmly consolidating the user base." In an interview with Interface News, Freeman Shen said, "Users have to use a car for a long time, and then fall down after a year or two, which is not in line with Weimar’s concept of building a car."

For Weimar, the delivery of 30,000 units is both a bold comma and a new beginning.

Near this milestone, Weimar will pour a small celebration wine, but it won’t stay long.

Freeman Shen told the interface news frankly that Weimar had passed the initial stage of "0 to 1" and stepped into the stage of "1 to 10,000".

The gradual increase in delivery volume makes Freeman Shen hopeful that the company’s gross profit margin will turn positive and he will start self-hematopoiesis.

Unlike the brilliant barbarian who is obsessed with space and rockets on the other side of the ocean. Freeman Shen is a Capricorn, and he is more used to coping with changes with the engineer’s thinking and calm and restrained mind.

"Tesla’s gross profit margin is still negative," Freeman Shen said. "Weimar’s capital utilization rate is very high, and it has done better than Tesla at the same development stage. Spend the same money and produce more. The same output costs less. It is really difficult for the net interest rate to turn positive, but Weimar is expected to become the world’s first new car-making enterprise with positive gross profit margin. "

This needs to find the future increment. Freeman Shen believes that "the largest part of the market segment of China Automobile is the 150,000-250,000 file that Weimar is doing, and this market segment is still expanding."

Take more photos with friends.

Compared with Li Xiang and He Xiaopeng, who performed skillfully in the spotlight, Freeman Shen wanted to build a good car.

"He Xiaopeng is my younger brother in South China Institute of Technology, and Li Bin often communicates with me," Freeman Shen said with a smile. "But I don’t like taking pictures and I don’t want to bask in them. You must always bring a photographer when you go out in the future. "

Freeman Shen doesn’t agree with the rumor that "Wei came to Tucki to hold an ideal group, and didn’t take Weimar to play".

"We are all friends," Freeman Shen said. "Now the market is very small. The total sales of new power car companies accounted for 6% last year, and this year it has just reached 15%. There is no point in competing with each other. We should join hands to make the cake bigger. "

In Freeman Shen’s eyes, Weimar, Weilai and Tucki can form a "WWP" team of local smart electric vehicles in China to confront overseas behemoths. The courage to raise the sword of killing dragons comes from excellent products.

In Weimar’s values, good products are the first guiding principle of team behavior forever. Such a solid and simple idea is accompanied by every kilometer in the process of sustainable survival and development based on 100,000 units and one million units.

"The most difficult thing for smart electric vehicles is that they have the characteristics of both industrial products and consumer goods." Freeman Shen said, "Friends’ Internet genes are very strong. They have rich experience in marketing, making explosions and iterating. Weimar needs to learn from them in this respect."

"Weimar is more balanced. Mature industrial products can be built through system strength, and the current model level is higher than some joint venture brands. " Freeman Shen concluded, "In the past six months, Weimar has also made great efforts in marketing. For example, Imagination Day in May is a circle."

According to the data released by Weimar, the online live broadcast of "Imagination Day on May 10th" was watched by more than 120 million people, and the highest number of online users exceeded 5.6 million, interacting with more than 400,000 netizens online. At the end of 2019, compared with 2018, the average age of Weimar car owners dropped by 4 years.

At this point, Weimar’s first brand "fireworks" for the Z era was put into the air.

China intelligent electric vehicle has two sides: A and B.

On the A side, Weilai received 7 billion financing from Hefei Municipal Government, and the ideal accumulated disclosure financing amount exceeded 11 billion yuan. On the B side, Bojun Automobile has no land to sell, and Byten has been shut down indefinitely and Sai Lin has been shut down, weeping in the cold corner.

A large part of the ups and downs of joys and sorrows comes from financing.

However, Weimar’s attitude towards financing is very certain.

"Even if a penny is not melted, we can still develop steadily for many years. Because Weimar’s cash flow is relatively stable. "

"It was really planned to carry out the D round of financing overseas, but the epidemic broke out suddenly, and the current progress is subject to certain resistance. Many large domestic funds are interested in us. "

Financing is retreating, but the big hearts of Freeman Shen and Weimar are not retreating.

Regarding the fact that local governments favor new cars, Freeman Shen thinks that "it is the law of the development of the automobile industry".

"The largest shareholder of the Volkswagen Group is the government of Lower Saxony, Germany. Toyota is more exaggerated, and its headquarters is called Toyota City. " Freeman Shen said, "The subsidies received by the top ten new car-making forces in China together are not as good as the fraction that Tesla got from the US government. These are normal business practices."

No matter making a car or interviewing, Freeman Shen’s "real" character will always be displayed boldly and naturally. Every time he said something "out of line", he would habitually add "I’m telling the truth again". Every time he asks about the annual sales target, he always turns to emphasize "sustainable management ability".

Freeman Shen and Weimar are not used to representing the car-making industry with multiple exaggerations. Because in engineering male’s mind, the cars built are good enough to be hard currency.