The Hyundai Coolpad, which has been modified twice for the first two prototypes of the Ranger electric car, is now gathering dust in the workshop. (Southern Weekly reporter Huang Jinping/photo)
A 28-year-old Internet kid wants to build China’s Tesla. Not only did he find investors, assemble a team, but he actually built two prototypes. In the wave of Internet crossover car building, such crazy car builders are increasing.
Huang Xiuyuan, 28, bought a Tesla Model S in Shanghai six months ago. He’s not for opening, he’s for dismantling.
He and his buddies launched a project called Ranger Electric Car in March 2014, aiming to be the “Tesla of China.” Before that, Huang xiuyuan had three Internet start-up experiences, the last one was at Baidu.
Huang xiuyuan first talked to someone about making electric cars while eating skewers with his friend Zhou Yuan in Beijing in October 2013. Zhou yuan immediately told him two things: “First, you can’t do it; And two, if one day you do it, it will be really, really awesome.” Zhou is the founder of Zhihu, an online question-and-answer community.
Subsequently, Huang Xiuyuan actually found two angel investors, real guns and knives to do up, and the ranger electric car plan posted in zhihu community. Did not expect to attract another investor – Shanghai heart game co-founder and CEO Huang Yimeng.
After two dinners and a tour of youxia’s offices and workshops, Mr. Huang decided to invest 15 million renminbi in the company. The youxia electric vehicle office is located in Shanghai’s Xuhui District Wisdom Line Pioneer Park, and the workshop is located in an old warehouse in Songjiang Xinqiao Town, 24 kilometers away.
“It would be crazy for a small Internet company with no experience to try to do electric cars.” Huang Yimeng told southern Weekend reporters said.
“Just to be one of them is enough.”
As he took a break from picking up his card at the entrance of the expressway, Huang xiuyuan said to southern Weekly: “As a media major, I used to chat up strangers in the park to practice my communication skills, but now I don’t want to talk at all.
Since the launch of the company in March 2014, he has been constantly meeting people and looking for potential start-up partners. On his only holiday weekend, he decided to go to hangzhou for a hot spring, only to meet two people there. He was tired of telling his story to everyone he met.
In June 2009, graduated from communication university of China network transmission professional Huang Xiuyuan, family don’t agree with his graduation namely entrepreneurial ideas, he simply quit douban front-end designers work, father had to lend him 100000 yuan, rented a house in Beijing writing code, study how to get the goods, and two high school classmates made a footwear B2C website. When they found that warehousing required money and they could not convince investors to invest $2 million, they turned the company into a shopping guide website.
In the summer of 2010, unable to make ends meet and unable to see a surge in traffic, they sold their website to Shenzhou Tai Yue for 300,000 yuan, hoping to use it to import traffic. And Shenzhou Tai Yue decided to transform the website, Huang Xiuyuan is not optimistic, with the team to leave, and find investors began the second business, made music APP. The APP had nearly 400,000 users within a month of its launch, but soon investors decided music was unprofitable and asked the team to switch to vending machines. Huang and his team left altogether.
For the third time, Huang xiuyuan and his team found new investors and focused on short video aggregation platform after trying seven or eight projects, doing shopping sharing like Pinterest, discount collection, short video recommendation and so on. Most of the stake was sold to Baidu in 2013, and Mr. Huang and his team stayed there for a while.
After that, the three earliest venture partners were divided into three ways: one person left behind the phone fee recharge service project; One went to do music teaching APP; Huang xiuyuan wants to make electric cars.
“Every time you start a business, the general direction is right, but the end is always bad,” said Innovation Works investment director Huang Xiuyuan. After the sale of the guide site, similar sites in the United States, and then in China, the music APP was not good, but then the music APP is popular again.
In Huang xiuyuan’s opinion, starting a business on his own is indeed a problem. At the beginning, his team did not have enough contacts and experience. For example, when making music, his team only took 45% of the stock, so investors asked him to change his business.
After leaving Baidu, he thinks the automobile industry is facing two inflection points of intelligence and electrification. Although it is very difficult, Internet companies can improve a lot of things. In addition, “cars are very profitable, you see now the advertising is in the car companies.”
Mr. Huang wanted Mr. Wei to introduce him to Mr. Lei because Xiaomi had plans to build cars. Wei Jianguo is one of the angel investors of Huang xiuyuan’s third venture.
Wei later recalled to southern Weekend that the two of them were chatting in a Beijing cafe one day in late October 2013. At first, they were talking about other projects, and he was surprised when Huang popped the idea out of the blue. Coincidentally, Wei had ordered a Tesla three months earlier.
Wei jianguo first met Huang Xiuyuan in 2012. At that time, wang Ke, his investment partner and the founder of Pocket Shopping, introduced him to him, “My friend, who is nearly 90 years old, is very good.” Wei Jianguo was born in the 1970s. He found that the 25-year-old was very stable and persuasive. He would stand on the other side and say what’s in it for you. What’s more, he has tried all kinds of Internet products, and his team has followed him forward and backward, which is not easy.
Wei jianguo suggested huang xiuyuan do it himself. Because there is a precedent of Tesla in foreign countries, China will not only have one auto factory, but at least four or five brands targeted at different market positioning. “It is not necessary to become the first or second, as long as you can become one of them, there is still an opportunity.”
Wei jianguo called Wang Ke in the cafe, wang Ke was also very supportive. Huang Xiuyuan immediately responded, “If you give me one month to find out the market situation, I will give you an accurate report on the feasibility of the project.
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The ranger electric car team disassembles the tesla ModelS shell. (Southern Weekly reporter Huang Jinping/photo)
“I’m going to dig people up.”
Three weeks later, after summarizing the situation of major manufacturers and suppliers that he could find in the market, he went to Wei Jianguo and said, “Rest assured, I will do this well.”
Huang Xiuyuan later told the Southern Weekend reporter that he needed to judge whether the matter could be done first, and did not want to find out halfway that it could not be done.
He didn’t get his driver’s license until mid-2013. The first car he bought was a Honda Accord, which was not an option for most young people, and he chose it simply because “it had the fewest buttons in its price range.” It was also around this time that he first heard about Tesla’s electric car from Chinese media reports.
At first, Huang xiuyuan wanted to work on a car operating system. But the functions he wanted his car to do, such as pre-heating, were not something that cars could do. In addition, the mobile phone industry was positioned as a mobile operating system only lewa, Dim sum, and finally died miserably, while OPPO, Meizu, Xiaomi and other mobile phone manufacturers are alive and well. Do a car, it is best to do the operating system and the car together.
From October 2013 to February 2014, he was talking to people in the auto industry.
Wei jianguo and Wang Ke proposed that the first step is to make a modified car model that has performance and can run.
Mr Huang estimates it will take about rmb3m to build a Demo car. In December 2013, Wei Jianguo and Wang Ke, as the first round of angels, invested 3 million YUAN in the Ranger electric vehicle project. At that time, neither side had any evaluation data. Wei jianguo said, “If the car can be made, it is worth that much money. If it can’t be made, or if it is made badly, the money will be wasted, simple as that.”
In wei jianguo, a point of view, auto industry base already very mature, many industry talents, have more advantages than the web startups, because not only is a BAT in the Internet industry (baidu, ali, tencent), and there are many small Internet companies are to talent, very short of people, but in the field of electric vehicles so that a new, better talent find. Wei jianguo believes that a group of talented people in place, this is not difficult, but if “others are not willing to play with you, it will not work.”
The most complicated and difficult thing for Huang was getting people to trust him and want to join the team.
After the investment, Huang Xiuyuan told Wang Ke, I’m going to dig people. Wang Ke was surprised how a person who was completely unfamiliar with cars could dig people in the auto industry. In a clumsy move, Huang searched for “car engineer” and “car designer” on weibo and then sent them private messages. He found that when he sent 20 personal messages, one or two people responded, and then he set them up to meet and talk to them offline. He said he met a lot of great people.
In March 2014, he simply packed his bags, drove from Beijing to Shanghai with his girlfriend and an engineer, and set up the company.
“Do a crazy thing to do.”
Huang Xiuyuan pulled to the first person is decisive step. In October 2013, Mr. Huang texted him: ‘I want to make cars. Do you want to do it with me?
Step decisive quickly back to the information, a word: good.
‘If I want to do something awesome, everyone should be awesome,’ Mr. Huang told southern Weekend. In Huang Xiuyuan’s eye, step decisive is what he anticipates “very cow” stylist.
Buguo Duan, a year younger than Huang, was born in 1988 and is known in UI (user interface) design circles as the “God of steps”. He started his career in Game UI Design in Suzhou, then moved to Baidu to do interface Design for mobile products, before joining designer studio ARK Design. Huang xiuyuan liked his design so much that he added QQ to each other five years ago and met in Beijing in 2013.
Bu told Southern Weekend that although he likes cars very much, when Huang xiuyuan said he wanted to make electric cars, he actually had no idea about it. He thought it was cool and interesting, but he didn’t think about how to do it, whether there would be any bottlenecks or problems.
He believes that designers have very few opportunities to turn their work into a career, because life is too comfortable, it is easy to enter the state of retirement. He thought Huang xiuyuan was “reliable” and was willing to do things with him. One thing is for sure: “Whatever I can control, I will do the best I can. That’s enough. Then we all work together.”
Bu is now mainly responsible for the brand design and UI design of the operating system of Youxia electric vehicle. He is also the first start-up partner of Youxia electric vehicle. The second venture partner is Xing Hui, who was the architect in charge of ROM development of Le Frog and the architect in charge of OPPO ColorOS. Huang xiuyuan sent him messages on Weibo, one a day, and a week later he finally responded, leaving a wechat account. On November 8, 2014, Xing Hui came to Shanghai to attend a classmate’s wedding and dropped by the ranger electric car office.
Xing Hui is a burly young man from Hebei province who was born in 1986.
“I think it’s very interesting. It’s a basis for discussion.” The first time they met, Xing Hui felt Huang Xiuyuan was very honest. “I hate it when people come to you and tell you that you have a three -, five -, ten – year plan. Huang xiuyuan told him that we would build a car together before June 2015, and then decide how to go after seeing how much money we could get.
After the first chat, Xing Hui did not give a clear answer, only that we need to get to know each other more. Xing Hui is very cautious. He has met many entrepreneurs and investors. His father’s family once had an unpleasant experience with partners in business, and he himself has participated in many project opportunities. The quality of the partners is also important.
Xing Hui feel Huang Xiuyuan has a dream, is not the result in the car. And his previous several entrepreneurial experience, to a certain extent, is also the endorsement of the electric vehicle project.
The next weekend, they met again in Shanghai for a chat; The third weekend, they met in Shenzhen, basically finalized.
“It’s a crazy thing to do,” Xing told Southern Weekend, who submitted his resignation papers a day before he turned 28. I looked at all the opportunities and found that the source here is the craziest.”
“After I got here, the operating system was done, and as the design draft advanced, the structural system and its partners came in and were advancing, the braking system had found a solution.” Xing Hui felt that this thing is actually reliable.
The LOGO that Buzhou originally designed for the Ranger electric car was an X, representing the unknown future of the start-up team. Half a year later, he designed a new LOGO, a round letter Y, take the ranger’s initials, take a curved, three-dimensional shape.
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On December 15, 2014, the ranger electric car team was carrying the clay model table just delivered to the office downstairs. On the right is Huang Xiuyuan. (Southern Weekly reporter Huang Jinping/photo)
25% is reserved for people in the auto industry
Not all of ranger’s members are as young as the first three. The oldest is a man born in his 60s. Huang Xiuyuan poached him from Cisco, “he started to write code in 1997, in this industry for more than ten years, do not pay some price is poached.”
Mr Huang’s hiring principle is “no salary cut plus stock”. “We’ve got five or six people coming in at a pay cut. We’ll only ask you to take a pay cut if it’s too high for us to afford, but we won’t make it difficult for people to join us. Basically you get paid what you got at your last company.”
‘Lei Jun was very generous,’ Mr. Huang said. ‘At the beginning, he only got more than 30%. Two other venture partners got more than 10%, and several other partners had several points.’ He believes that Xiaomi’s success has a lot to do with the ownership structure. “People are strong and the company belongs to everyone.”
In the angel round of investment of Ranger Electric Vehicle, 35% shares are reserved for the company team, which is rare among startups. Huang Xiuyuan explained that the automobile industry is a big one, which needs a lot of talented people. It is difficult to recruit people if you don’t leave a little more. Now 10% of the reserved shares have been taken out, and 25% are left, “this is definitely not for me, but for people in the automobile industry.”
But ranger electric car has not yet joined the automotive industry partner level figures. After all, cars have to start from manufacturing. You want to make cars, not Internet. ‘The problem with the Ranger is that it costs too much money to make a car,’ Mr. Huang said. They are usually very concerned about the follow-up mass production, and Huang xiuyuan can not give an answer. While there are autobots who are willing to help out, they can’t get them to join their startup teams.
After visiting gm research, Huang finally understood some of the reasons. No other Internet company has a better research and development environment.
So far, two prototypes of the Ranger electric bike have been produced, costing about 700,000 yuan. By December 2014, the company had spent more than 6 million yuan.
The first Demo of the Ranger electric car was the cheapest sports car bought at the used-car market for 50, 000 yuan, a red Hyundai Coolpad.
In May 2014, it took them two months to convert the petrol car to lead acid batteries and 5kW motor drive, achieving a top speed of 30km/h. A month later, using an 18650 battery pack and a 30-kilowatt motor, they converted it into an electric car with a top speed of 100 km/h and a range of 250 km.
The two prototypes were made possible thanks to Zhang Junhua, who was the first autobot to join the Ranger. He used to work for Geely Automobile and then moved to another supplier company to do structural design.
In Zhang Junhua’s opinion, the domestic manufacturing industry has developed to a certain stage, and many things do not need to be done by yourself, which is very suitable for electric vehicles. “We just need to make a plan, and the following manufacturing can be solved by suppliers.”
Some of their parts are directly purchased from Taobao and Alibaba, and there is no shortcut. They just call each other to ask and compare.
The battery pack was chosen for the second version of the Ranger electric car. They didn’t have a Tesla battery pack to refer to, but the range requirement and the size of the battery in the trunk. At that time, there was no domestic supplier of the whole battery pack scheme, but they did it by themselves.
Now, they’re working on a battery pack for a third prototype, which is closer to tesla’s.
In July 2014, they bought a white Tesla Model S in a one-off buyout from a rental car dealer and then completely dismantled it. According to Huang, the third prototype will be based on the Tesla Model S chassis, and “we can’t afford to develop it from start to finish”. However, the body will be redesigned, the size of the body is similar, the appearance is definitely different, the on-board system is new. “We solve the whole r&d and design by ourselves. We have the capability and will not outsource it. Core capabilities such as battery packs are also made by ourselves.”
“We spent too much time styling it and wanted it to come out as a beautiful car.” Huang Xiuyuan said.
Ranger electric car is still recruiting body, structure engineer, but they are also considering “people come in to work, can work”. Out of 100 automotive engineers, only five are likely to be truly useful. More people, maybe not so efficient. Zhang junhua cited the example of Italian supercar Pagani, which produces only a few cars a year and sells for 10 million yuan. Their r & D team is only 5 people, 1 person is responsible for modeling design, 4 people do structural design.
“Too bad not to fight this war.”
In May 2014, huang Xiuyuan gave a talk on cars at an activity themed “Daydreaming about new cars” held in Geek Park. After he finished his talk on cars, he found that the audience was very excited, but the experts were disrespectful and thought you were too small. From then on, he decided not to go out and say anything. “Let’s get down to something.”
While Huang Xiuyuan is “behind closed doors”, more and more people are pouring into the ranks of car makers.
On July 19, 2014, Shanghai Horizon Automobile Technology Co., LTD., a brand new automobile enterprise, appeared in Shanghai Automobile Museum and held a huge open source vehicle manufacturing theme summit.
A month later, He Yi, former deputy editor-in-chief of Sohu and general manager of the automotive division, announced that he would join leEco’s automotive team to lead the Internet of vehicles project. On December 9, 2014, Jia Yueting, founder of LeEco, announced in his micro blog that leEco was officially entering electric vehicles, aiming to “replicate leEco’s successful model of vertical integration to redefine cars”.
In October 2014, Li Wanqiang, co-founder and vice president of Xiaomi Technology, announced that he would go to Silicon Valley to prepare new products, which was considered to be a new energy vehicle project. More than a month later, the spy photos of “Xiaomi Car priced at 39,000 yuan” were released.
Heartbeat game CEO Huang Yimeng believes that the early start of the enterprise has more opportunity to make a satisfactory sample car.
Huang’s interest in electric cars began when he drove a Tesla. He started out looking at Tesla as a trendy novelty, but when he got the tesla he ordered in May 2014, he realized it was too much of a revolution for conventional cars.
Before driving a Tesla, Huang had BMWS, Porsches, Bentleys and Lamborghinis in his garage. After driving a Tesla, he sold the Lamborghini, thinking it was worthless. Another of his founding partners bought a new Porsche 911 just two or three months before he bought a Tesla, but stopped driving it after a few days because he thought it was much less like driving a Tesla.
“We do the Internet, the user experience is particularly big. Traditional cars follow fixed things, but some things are not needed in terms of user experience, such as hand brakes. Tesla doesn’t have hand brakes. When a car stops, it just stops. Tesla doesn’t have the concept of unlocking a traditional car. It locks as long as you walk and drive, and opens when you get close to the car.”
After Tesla entered China, Huang observed it for some time and wanted to try to do it himself. After a long discussion with his partners, they decided that they could not do it by themselves because they had their own game business. “It’s a bigger adventure to actually do it.” He told southern Weekly reporters.
Huang remembered that he had read about such a team working on electric cars on the Internet. One day, he found Huang xiuyuan on Zhihu.
Huang Yimeng investment ranger, but also because he missed the opportunity to invest in the hammer mobile phone.
In April 2013, Mr. Huang talked to Mr. Luo about investing, twice, but ultimately didn’t, for reasons similar to the electric car situation. Huang yimeng was sure that there was a lot of room for Android phones at that time, xiaomi and others had imperfections, and high-end phones like Luo’s positioning would certainly have a market. However, he was concerned that Luo and his team had no experience in mobile phone manufacturing.
At that time point, Huang yimeng people’s judgment of Lao Luo is that their team can not do it. But a year later, Luo worked hard to build the team.
“To some extent, we have to believe in the opportunities in this industry. When you find a good direction, when you have a determined founder who is very committed to doing something, when the thing itself is the direction of the industry that many people agree with, it is easy to gather people together,” huang said.
At the beginning, Huang yimeng and Huang Xiuyuan each give a valuation, Huang Xiuyuan opened the price is 10 million, Huang Yimeng said that can; Turn head Huang Xiuyuan and team discuss again, feel too cheap.
Five minutes later, Huang Yimeng called, “15 million, ok.”
Huang told Southern Weekend that the valuation is based on having enough money to build the prototype. “We don’t really care about 10 million yuan or 15 million yuan. In fact, the core is not how much the valuation, the key is whether things succeed or not, if it can succeed, no matter how high the valuation is not high, if not, it is no different from nothing.”
In Wei jianguo’s view, just like Jack Ma beat eBay in those days, China has a certain advantage, can do well in electric cars, it is a pity not to fight this battle. Maybe the Internet companies led the charge, and then everyone followed. “Do you think so?”