With the warmth of spring, Jia Yueting ushered in a new financier.

Today, Jia Yueting car company Faraday Future Faraday Future ("FF") signed an agreement with US Nasdaq-listed company The9 Ltd ("Nine cities") to set up a joint venture company focused on the research, development, production and sale of luxury intelligent Internet electric vehicles in China.

In addition, nine cities injected capital into the joint venture companyUp to 600 million US dollars (about 4 billion yuan).

After being separated from Evergrande, Jia Yueting's car-building story finally came to an end.

FF and Nine cities each own 50% of the joint venture company.Will be produced in China, sell and operate FF's Internet intelligent luxury electric vehiclesBrand new model V9.Officials say it is a brand new model aimed at the consumer market of luxury electric cars based on the technology platform of FF 91.

FF will restart the Sino-US market planning, the future domestic factory production capacity will reach 300000 units, plans to achieve pre-production car production line and booking sales within next year. In addition, FF also announced that it will take the company public around next year.

Jia Yueting has lost his first-mover advantage and may not be so easy to return to the Chinese market.

Sell land, lay off staff and save yourself.

Jia Yueting won another Chinese financier.

Today, FF officially announced its new joint venture partner, Nine cities.

The9 Ltd, prior to acting "World of Warcraft", revenue skyrocketed, and successfully listed on NASDAQ.

However, with the "World of Warcraft" agency turned to NetEase, Inc, the development of Nine cities almost stagnated. After the World of Warcraft license agreement expired in June 2009, the total net revenue of nine cities was in the third quarter of that year.It plummeted 94% from the previous year.

For Jiucheng, which becomes rich as a game agent, it is an important transformation to build a car jointly with Jia Yueting.

Zhu Jun, chairman and CEO of Nine cities, said: "Nine cities will also take this opportunity to take a solid step forward in the transformation of high-tech diversified companies."

At present, the nine cities have completely abandoned the game business, and began to tell the story of the block chain last year.

In early February last year, Nine cities announced that it had partnered with solar energy companies to carry out the blockchain business of solar distributed power generation; in April last year, Nine cities announced that it had set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to promote the blockchain technical service business.

But for Jia Yueting, this is an opportunity to "save lives".

Earlier, Jia Yueting, who was caught in a financial crisis, revealed the financing needs of FF at an internal meeting:

Completed by the first quarter of this yearA+ round financing of about 500 million US dollarsTo complete the mass production delivery of FF 91 and support the research and development of FF 81

Completed by the end of this yearA $700 million round of financing for Pre-IPOIPO next year.

In the absence of new capital injection, Jia Yueting chose to lay off staff and sell land.

Last year, when Evergrande invested in Jia Yueting, FF announced that it had more than 1000 employees worldwide. By the end of this month, there were only 400 people left in FF, a reduction of more than half.

In addition, Jia Yueting has recently sold his assets many times to save himself.

On March 8th, at its US headquarters in Los Angeles, 8Bing FF was successfully sold for $29 million. On March 14, FF announced the sale of more than 5000 acres of industrial land in North Las Vegas at a price of 40 million. FF insiders told Bongo thatThe land is still unsold.

This time, in cooperation with FF, Nine cities will inject up to US $600 million into the joint venture, which can basically meet the capital needs of FF in the stage of mass production.

But there is still a problem facing Jia Yueting.The essential difference between this deal and Jia Yueting's previous two deals with Sunac and Evergrande is that Nine cities uses the money publicly raised by American listed companies to take back China and Jia Yueting to set up a joint venture.

Therefore, whether the US $600 million can be raised in the early stage depends on whether American investors will buy it.

Jia Yueting's "returning to China"

Which holes do you want to step on?

The9 Ltd's pre-market share price after the joint venture was announced.The increase is close to70%。It can be seen that the US capital market is full of expectations for bilateral cooperation. But if both sides want to build cars in China, it's not as simple as spending money.

First of all, it is necessary to take care of the production land.

Jia Yueting's original Guangzhou production land is now owned by Evergrande.Mogan Mountain project with only the original Letv car left.. Referring to the injection of China-related "production base assets" mentioned in the announcement, there is a good chance that the land used to make a valuation of US $600m is Mogan Mountain project.

The annual output of the base is expected to reach 300000 vehicles, which will be realized in two phases.

Secondly, production qualification is a hurdle in front of Jia Yueting.

Jia Yueting needs to spend more money if he is qualified through acquisition.

Last year, the car Hejia that Li wanted to set up spent 650 million yuan to buy Lifan Automobile and indirectly obtained the production qualification. Baiteng spent 800 million yuan to acquire FAW Xiali and acquired the qualification indirectly.

If you apply for qualifications on your own, Jia Yueting will be included in the list of unfaithful persons or affect the examination and approval.

Earlier, during the cooperation with Evergrande, a letter from Nansha District of Guangzhou stated that Jia Yueting, the "unfaithful executor", was still the CEO of FF, which had an extremely negative impact on FF's China business and Nansha factory project.

If you choose OEM, Jia Yueting's personal reputation may be difficult to find a partner.

Currently, FF is facing 11 new lawsuits brought by suppliers and contractors in the United States, demanding a total of nearly $80 million from FF. In addition, whether the advanced intelligent concept of FF can find a matching contract car company in China is also full of doubts.

In addition, domestic high-end electric cars can no longer be sold.

For example, NIO Inc. ES8, which locates high-end electric cars.

In January and February this year, NIO Inc. delivered only 1805 and 811 NIO Inc. ES8 units to users, and the sales forecast for the first quarter was adjusted to 3500-3800 units. Compared with 7980 in the fourth quarter of 2018, it has more than halved.

It is worth noting that NIO Inc. adopted the direct operation mode of "production on demand". In the case of sufficient orders, the pre-delivery is mainly limited by production capacity. In the last two months of 2018, ES8 production capacity climbed to more than 3000 units.

The actual delivery volume is lower than the capacity scale.It means that NIO Inc. ES8 may not have so many orders.The factory slowed down production to adapt to the slowdown in demand growth.

Moreover, the market share of high-end electric cars in the pure electric car market last year was very small.

The total sales of A00 class miniature pure electric vehicles is 375000, accounting for 49% of the pure electric vehicle market. The proportion of Class A small pure electric vehicles also reached 33%. Economical miniature and small pure electric vehicles are still the main force of the whole new energy vehicle market.

It is worth mentioning that the addition of nine cities, or will allow the positioning of high-end FF to adjust.

In addition, the joint venture will obtain exclusive production, marketing and sales rights for FF's new brand model V9, as well as payment of technology licensing fees to FF to promote related product development and mass production, which will help FF solve its current funding difficulties.

This is the first time that FF has mentioned the third model, V9.It is understood that it will adopt FF R & D platform technology VPA (variable electric drive chassis architecture). According to FF insiders: "although the exact car is not announced, but it is really a very imaginative car, is definitely the rigid needs of some people (that group of people)."

According to the previous game business in Nine cities, the target may be focused on the car purchase needs of middle-class people born in the 1970s and 1980s."Zhu Jun hopes to provide this group of people with something fun and inseparable in reality."FF insiders revealed to Bongo.

Tesla, Inc. 's domestic and German giants turned around.

There are not many opportunities left for Jia Yueting.

Last year, Tesla, Inc. 's Model 3 "slaughtered" sales list in the United States.

Data show that Tesla, Inc. sold 245000 electric vehicles in 2018, of which the Model 3 alone was sold.140000 vehicles. Sales of 100 million 138 million vehicles in the United StatesIt has become the highest-selling luxury brand model in the North American market.

In January this year, Tesla, Inc. CEO Elon Musk personally went to Shanghai to attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the super factory.

The plant will start small-scale production in the second half of 2019 at the earliest. Next year,The factory will achieve a production capacity of 150000 vehiclesEntry-level models Model 3 and Model Y will be produced here.

Model S Model X Model 3 Model Y

In order to maintain the "hegemonic position", the German Big three, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volkswagen have also announced a "switch to" electric cars.

Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released a list of new cars, including the EQC, the first pure electric model of Mercedes-Benz made in China. It is reported that the car NEDC range of 450km, will be equipped with dual 10.25inch full LCD screen and Mercedes-Benz's latest version of the MBUX system, is expected to sell for 500000 yuan.

Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Dis proposed on March 12: within ten yearsIt has launched 70 electric vehicles and produced more than 22 million electric vehicles.

BMW has also publicly announced that it will launch 25 new energy models worldwide by 2025.Accounts for 15% of the electric car market and 25% of the market.

Not long ago, BMW and Mercedes-Benz joined forces.Announced that the two sides would jointly invest 1 billion euros to form five new joint ventures.The areas covered include: online car-hailing, time-sharing rental, charging services, parking services, car rental, logistics and freight transportation, and many other future-oriented travel services.

It is worth noting that BMW Group has previously announced that it will increase its shareholding ratio in its joint venture in China, Volkswagen Group has also put this matter on the agenda, and Daimler is also increasing its bets on the Chinese market. Moreover, all three groups have plans to start producing pure electric vehicles in China this year and next year.

Audi, which is owned by Volkswagen Group, even announced that it will be held at the Shanghai Auto Show in April this year.Officially unveiled and pre-sold its first pure electric SUV-- Audi e-tron.

Zhang Wei, chairman of Cornerstone Capital, published a signed article in which he mentioned:There is no new energy car manufacturer in China that is worth investing in.Manufacturing opportunities are still in traditional manufacturers.

Zhang Wei also believes that in such a highly mature and globally competitive industry as automobile, traditional manufacturers who have accumulated more deeply in technology, R & D investment, brand awareness, and channel expansion have great advantages. I am afraid it is difficult to take the road of new power in car-building.

With the gradual withdrawal of subsidies for new energy vehicles, the reshuffle in this industry will be very cruel.2019 will be a closed year for the new power of car-building.

Write at the end

Although Jia Yueting has found a Chinese joint venture partner, it is still a big challenge to go back to China to build cars.

On the one hand, the pressure of factories, qualifications and market demand. On the other hand, there is competition from new forces such as Tesla, Inc. and NIO Inc.. But the most important thing is the strong turn of traditional car companies, because their "fists" are the most lethal.

I hope this time, he can realize his dream.