The impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the global automobile industry is still fermenting. Affected by the epidemic, global car companies have taken measures to stop production to varying degrees, and the sudden drop in automobile consumption demand has caused them heavy losses.
For some car companies, the loss may not be limited to the inability to produce and sell cars. On March 24th, the International Olympic Committee announced that the Tokyo Olympic Games would be postponed to next year due to the epidemic. According to Japanese economists' calculations, the losses brought to Japan by the postponement of the Olympic Games will exceed 40 billion yuan. The bulk of the losses will fall on the sponsors of the Olympic Games, with Toyota, the top sponsor, bearing the brunt.
However, despite both losses, in March, when the epidemic spread and global economic activities fell into a quagmire, Toyota has been walking, extensively seeking cooperation and throwing money. When "new infrastructure" has become a hot word in China, it seems that this Japanese car company, which has always been conservative, is also actively planning "Toyota-style new infrastructure".
one
On March 25th, BYD Toyota Electric Vehicle Technology Co., Ltd., which is held by Toyota and BYD, was formally established in Shenzhen. At this time, it was only three months and one week before the two sides signed the cooperation agreement on pure electric vehicles on June 7 last year. For car companies that emphasize "prudence, research and research", such a project progress speed is really rare-considering that the epidemic has disrupted the normal work order, such a speed is even more rare.
According to the industrial and commercial registration, the business scope of BYD Toyota Joint Venture Company is: "(1)? Design and development of pure electric vehicles and their derivatives, pure electric vehicles and their derivatives parts; (2)? Import and export, sales, after-sales service and related consultation of pure electric vehicles and their derivative auto parts and assemblies. " In fact, this refers to the powertrain of pure electric vehicles, that is, the "three electricity" including batteries, electric drives and electronic controls.
More information shows that the pure electric vehicle that the two parties cooperate with will be produced by Toyota's factory, and the logo will still be Toyota. The facts also reflect that Toyota is indeed preparing for the production of pure electric vehicles.
At the beginning of March, according to the government's public information, FAW Toyota will build a new energy vehicle production plant in Tianjin, with a planned annual production capacity of 200,000 pure electric vehicles. With a total investment of 8.5 billion yuan, the project is said to "produce vehicles outside the TGNA framework" and "make significant progress before the end of 2020".
According to the previously announced global strategy, Toyota will introduce 65,438+00 pure electric vehicles to China within five years from 2020, six of which are based on e-TNGA architecture.
For Toyota, which was addicted to hybrid technology before and didn't invest deeply in pure electric vehicles, cooperation with BYD is a good choice, whether it is seeking a solution to meet the domestic "double points" or a double insurance on the road of electrification transformation. For BYD, this is also a good opportunity to learn from Toyota's lean production management model. So it is not difficult to understand that this kind of cooperation can be promoted at the speed of light.
Of course, Toyota is not only concerned about electrification. On March 24th, the day before the establishment of BYD Toyota Electric Vehicle Joint Venture Company, Toyota and NTT, Japan's largest communication operator, announced that they would invest 200 billion yen (about 654.38+0.8 billion US dollars) in each other by way of share exchange. The purpose of this investment is to promote the construction of smart cities.
At the CES show in 2020, Toyota put forward the name Woven? City's smart city project plans to transform the closed Fuji factory into a small smart city in 2020 to verify advanced technologies such as autonomous driving, mobile travel services, artificial intelligence and robots. Among them, the most suitable for Toyota's needs is obviously autonomous driving and mobile travel services.
In fact, on 20 17, Toyota and NTT have reached a cooperative relationship on in-vehicle 5G technology, trying to use it to empower autonomous driving.
Woven on 202 1? In the context of the upcoming construction of the city, the powerful NTT will be brought into the cooperative relationship again by means of stock exchange, and Toyota will also have an additional fulcrum for the transformation of travel service companies.
Toyota autopilot has more than one external fulcrum. On February 26th, Toyota invested $400 million in China driverless taxi startup Sima Xiaoxing.
It is reported that the cooperation between the two sides began with a road test in China last August. According to industry sources, Toyota is looking for a strong start-up company to prepare for the deployment of Robotaxi in Tokyo Olympic Games.
This investment makes Ma Xiao Zhixing's valuation reach $3 billion, making it the most highly valued driverless startup in Asia. Despite the postponement of the Tokyo Olympic Games, Ma Xiao Zhixing, which has made rapid technological progress, can still effectively complement Toyota's research and development strength of autonomous driving.
two
Intentionally or unintentionally, the fact finally presented to people is that Toyota is "unusually" active in the new field of automobile modernization in this month with poor external environment.
Generally speaking, when the industry environment deteriorates and consumer demand drops sharply, enterprises give priority to strategic contraction in order to ensure their survival-reducing their scale through measures such as layoffs, reducing foreign investment and getting rid of non-core assets, so as to survive in difficult times. After the financial crisis in 2008, Ford avoided bankruptcy in this way.
Under the situation that the epidemic broke out and the automobile industry became worse, it is more logical to hold the money tightly in your hand first. A typical example is that in the past two years, Ford and GM have successively contracted their businesses and withdrawn from non-core markets. When the American epidemic worsened, Ford and GM used credit lines of $654.38+05.4 billion and $654.38+06 billion, respectively, making their cash reserves exceed $30 billion. Obviously, the memory of bankruptcy or near bankruptcy tells GM and Ford that they should be afraid of the crisis.
However, when the industry is in the down cycle, it is meaningful for Toyota to expand strategically.
First of all, during the crisis, asset prices fell, with more holders and fewer bidders, making it easier to invest in good companies; At the same time, the government also tends to support large-scale infrastructure such as factories and smart cities-which allows Toyota to spend money more effectively.
Second, when competitors tend to shrink, it is a good time for Toyota to make up lessons for its conservative strategy. A typical example is the electric vehicle platform. Volkswagen's pure electric vehicle platform MEB has been put into mass production, and the general pure electric vehicle BEV3 platform has also revealed its true colors this month. In the past, Toyota was mainly hybrid, and its e-TNGA platform was essentially a sub-platform of TNGA, which gave up halfway in technical layout. BYD's open e-platform is also the exclusive platform for electric vehicles, with advanced three-electricity technology, which can be used as the "top" of effective force.
In addition, Toyota's abundant cash also supports its "bargain-hunting" at this time. At this time last year, Toyota's cash and equivalents reached US$ 42.737 billion (in contrast, Tesla, the world's second largest car company, had US$ 6.3 billion in cash as of June 5438+February last year? )。 As the richest car company in the world, Toyota's cash reserves have always been the first. At the same time, Toyota's asset-liability ratio remains at a safe level of around 60%. Therefore, in the case of a sluggish industry, Toyota still has the confidence and financial resources to do it.
In essence, Toyota's intensive action this month is counter-cyclical investment-turning the crisis of industry recession into opportunities.
Similarly, in the semiconductor industry, there are also cases of expansion during the downturn. In the field of storage semiconductors, there have been several cases where demand has declined and product supply exceeds demand, and Samsung will choose to increase production capacity during this period to further lower product prices. By using the price war many times, Samsung defeated the storage semiconductors in Europe, and also made Toshiba and other enterprises in Japan semi-disabled, becoming the boss of storage semiconductors.
However, in the automobile industry with different market logic, it is obvious that Toyota is not going to carry out a price war, but a technical war based on the longer-term future and supported by operational and financial capabilities.
Conclusion:
Last year, before the global stock market crisis was triggered by the epidemic, Buffett, 89, greatly increased his cash reserves and was questioned at that time. Now, people will no longer doubt the correctness of this move-Buffett has already prepared for the coming crisis, and now relying on Berkshire Hathaway's cash reserves of more than $654.38+02.2 billion, he has enough opportunities to buy a large number of high-quality assets.
There is no doubt that Buffett will once again practice "I am afraid when others are greedy;" I am greedy when others are afraid.
To some extent, Toyota's "conservative and radical" state in the transition to the new four modernizations is the best interpretation of this strategy.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.