Text丨Sina Technology Zhou Wenmeng

At a critical point in time when it was difficult for Gaohe to save itself, Jia Yueting stabbed Ding Lei, founder of Gaohe, with a “knife” in the back.

He sued Ding Lei and the Gaohe Auto behind him in court through a lawsuit, claiming that Ding Lei had stolen FF's intellectual property rights, technical data, and trade secrets with the intention of “taking his life” in the midst of Gaohe's illness. But soon, Ding Lei denied the accusations.

Back and forth, the friendship of the former allies completely disappeared; all that was left was a mess after the shopping mall failed.

According to industry insiders, Jia Yueting's approach “clearly depended on some of the fixed assets after the bankruptcy and restructuring of Gaohe Auto,” but now, apart from emptying artillery to gain traffic, “it is likely that there will be no new progress.”

Once one of the earliest car builders in China, Ding Lei and Jia Yueting were also pioneers who first proposed “creating a closed loop in the automobile ecosystem” in China, but now the concept proposed by the two has already been successfully implemented by other car companies, yet their respective car companies are on the verge of bankruptcy. They can only gain attention by tearing each other apart.

On the other hand, what is “chicken and vegetables peck each other” like?

In July 2015, Ding Lei joined LeTV Auto and became the co-founder of LeTV Supercars, the global vice chairman and CEO of China and Asia Pacific. He and Jia Yueting, the founder of LeTV Holding Group in the business world at the time, called his brother and brother, “suffocated by dreams.” However, the good times did not last long. With LeTV's financial crisis two years later, Ding Lei abandoned Jia Yueting, decided to build his own car, and founded Gaohe Auto with government financial support.

According to previous news from people familiar with the matter, Ding Lei initially got a full set of FF91 design data after parting ways with LeTV. When Gaohe launched the HiHi X, many people thought it was the FF 91, because not only are they highly similar in appearance, but they are also all very similar in terms of steel and aluminum body, air suspension, and interior layout. However, after the release of Gaohe HiPhI X until Gaohe Thunderstorm, Jia Yueting rarely criticized or abused Gaohe Auto. After leaving LeTV, Ding Lei was also invited as a strategic advisor to the LeTV Ecological Research Institute for a long time to continue supporting the development of LeTV's automotive ecosystem.

However, now, seeing that Gaohe's operating capital is difficult, Jia Yueting, who is on the other side of the ocean, is no longer silent. First, in his circle of friends, he mocked Gaohe as a “disgrace to the industry,” then FF and its Chinese subsidiary filed a lawsuit against Gaohe Motors in the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court of Guangdong Province, China on the grounds of infringing trade secrets and unfair competition. It's a complete “take advantage of your illness and take your life” posture.

Regarding Jia Yueting's remarks, Ding Lei did not choose to remain silent. Yesterday afternoon, in response to FF and Jia Yueting's plagiarism accusations, Ding Lei responded, “I am very shocked and outraged. There has never been any infringement on the trade secrets or intellectual property rights of LeTV and FF.” At the same time, it stated, “We will file a lawsuit with the court relating to Jia Yueting's infringement of the right to reputation to clarify the facts.”

Back and forth, the two disregarded each other's accusations and were ridiculed by the industry as “pecking each other.”

According to Zhang Xiang, an automotive industry analyst and visiting professor at the Yellow River University of Science and Technology, Jia Yueting and Faraday's future move “is clearly a hot topic act of throwing air cannons.” After all, standing at the beginning of this year, Gaohe Auto, as the first company on the verge of stopping work and going bankrupt, is itself a topic of conversation. Previously, the lawsuit may have had no effect, but now this point in time is not the same. “Gaohe will probably go bankrupt and go out of business in just two months. If Jia Yueting doesn't hurry up and file a lawsuit, he won't have a chance in the future.”

However, such a dying struggle is unlikely to yield good results. On the one hand, “the outside world no longer has any expectations for Jia Yueting. After not returning home for a long time, his personal reputation has been highly consumed. He is constrained by the jurisdiction of the prosecution court, and there is no way to know if he can file a case.” On the other hand, from the lawsuit to the formal filing of the case in court, there is still a 3-6 month buffer period for responding to the lawsuit. In the meantime, Gaohe Auto may have also gotten out of trouble.

“Geely has also sued Weimar before, but there were no results. In the end, they were all unsuccessful. The biggest effect was to hit hot spots.” According to Zhang Xiang, “Jia Yueting himself is in the quagmire. The act of suing Gaohe Auto is more of a dying struggle. After all, if he doesn't sue, everyone will probably have forgotten him.”

What lessons should Chinese car companies learn?

As one of the earliest domestic car entrepreneurs, Ding Lei and Jia Yueting, are also the first seniors in the country to propose an “automobile ecology.” But now, neither of them is developing their car business very well.

At the end of 2023, Gaohe Auto announced that it would stop work and production due to operational difficulties. As of February of this year, six months after production was stopped, Ding Lei, the founder of Gaohe, appeared at the Shanghai headquarters for the first time and personally apologized to the employees. He bluntly stated that the window for Gaohe to turn over was up to three months. At the same time, he stated that the next 3 months would be very difficult, and that he was trying to reverse the situation.

Compared to Ding Lei, Jia Yueting's situation is also very critical. The new project Faraday spent more than 20 billion yuan to build cars in the future, but only 10 cars were delivered in 9 years. What is even more embarrassing is that he, worried about a tens of billion dollar business, was sued by the landlord to take back the building at the beginning of this year because Faraday's future Los Angeles headquarters defaulted on 91,000 US dollars in rent and maintenance costs.

From industry pioneers to industry “martyrs,” Ding Lei and Jia Yueting are both only one step away.

According to Zhang Xiang, behind Jia Yueting and Ding Lei's defeat step by step, one common denominator is that they want to build luxury cars, but super luxury cars are not ordinary models. “In the current situation where cars like Ferrari and Rolls Royce make their own hematopoiesis, choosing this path determines that it is difficult for these two companies to have their own hematopoietic ability.”

On the one hand, there are only a few people who can afford luxury models. This means that the segment capacity of the luxury car market itself is very small, making it difficult for companies to obtain hematopoietic capacity. On the other hand, in a situation where the reshuffle of the domestic automobile industry intensifies and the industry continues to focus on leading positions, competition among car companies is intensifying, and “price wars” are rising one after another. The future of GAAC and Faraday, which lack the support of mid-range and low-end models, is bound to lack more and more markets.

According to data from the China Automobile Association, the year-on-year growth rate of NEV sales in China dropped sharply from 93.4% in 2022 to 37.9% in 2023. UBS Group predicts that the growth rate of electric vehicle sales in the US will decrease to 11% this year from 47% in 2023. Global sales of new energy vehicles have left the trend of rapid growth.

“Because cars are bought far less frequently than consumer goods such as mobile phones, as long as you can sell one more car, others will sell one less car. This is also the reason why various brands offer 'price reduction sales' at the beginning of the year.” A person in the automotive industry told Sina Technology. According to this source, phenomena such as Apple abandoning cars and the shutdown of Gaohe Auto this year all indicate that the NEV market will surely enter a “you die and I live” situation in 2024.

After all, this situation is not good news for GAOC, which was stabbed again by Jia Yueting. Perhaps for Ding Lei, selling Gaohe at a good price might be a good way out right now. And for domestic car companies today, this is probably the best inspiration — at a time when the internal price situation in the car market is severe, don't forget to add affordable models in addition to high-end models. After all, this is the key to opening up market sales.