Xia Yiping, CEO of Jiyue Automobile, is most likely a master of "werewolf killing".He is well versed in the way of "werewolf" disguise - in terms of posture, he must act innocent and be good at deflecting blame, and in terms of stance, he must disguise his identity and side with the "civilians".In this werewolf killing game, Xia Yiping, who personally "drove" Jiyue into the deep pit, always acted "silly, naive and aggrieved", claiming that he had been working hard, and then blamed the company's collapse entirely on shareholders for not "renewing".


But in fact, shareholders whose investments have been in vain are all victims and scapegoats of this crisis, as are employees who have been laid off and suppliers whose payments have been defaulted.

In particular, the two major shareholders, Baidu and Geely, not only lost billions of real money in investment, but were also owed billions in service fees. They even had to take responsibility for and deal with the aftermath of this mess. They were really "taken advantage of"!

Just on the afternoon of the 13th, Baidu and Geely, who had been "dumped" by Xia Yiping before, took the initiative to stand up and issued a joint statement: they had solved the issues of employee social security payment and compensation for resigned employees as soon as possible; they promised to be responsible for maintaining the normal use, after-sales and maintenance of user vehicles in the future.


And the review has taught us a lesson about the tens of billions of extremely dangerous situations,The shareholders’ “insufficient money” is just a symptom, while the team’s “incompetent people” is the truth.

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7 billion big hole, shareholders no longer want to be taken advantage of

Regarding the company’s flash collapse, Jiyue revealed that it was caused by Baidu’s “withdrawal” of 3 billion yuan. But according to late reports, Baidu insiders said there was no such investment.

Normally, investment decisions must be made after auditing and accounting. According to Caixin, Baidu sent a financial team to Jiyue in October this year to conduct due diligence, and found that Jiyue faced a financial hole of up to 7 billion yuan.

You know, those who are also new forcesXiaomi Motors' delivery target this year is 130,000 vehicles, and it only loses 500 million per month; in contrast, Jiyue Motors' cumulative delivery volume is only 14,000 vehicles, and it loses 7 billion a year.

Not only were the losses high, but there were also a puddle of unexplained bad debts. CFO Liu Jining, who had frequently appeared on behalf of Jiyue before, had been out of contact for several months. It was said that he had "money" to Singapore and took the company's account books with him, causing investigations and audits to fall into an endless loop.

It was the poor financial performance that scared away shareholders——Baidu and Geely refused to renew to avoid wasting investment again, which was also a rational choice.

How was the 7 billion hole formed?

According to Jiyue people who revealed to the 21st Century Business Herald, R&D costs were 3 billion yuan, marketing costs were 3 billion yuan, and administrative expenses were 1 billion yuan. Calculated in this way, on average,The marketing cost of a car is as high as more than 200,000 yuan. It is somewhat unreasonable for Jiyue to waste money like this!

In terms of marketing, even Li Auto, which is already profitable, is quite stingy. Its CEO Li Xiang once said that the market expense rate of Ideal Brand is only 0.6%, and he has to personally approve expenses of tens of thousands of yuan. Tesla even cut advertising expenditures directly to 0, and did not even set up an advertising team.

On the other hand, Jiyue's high marketing and other expenses have not resulted in considerable sales.

Previously, Xia Yiping had claimed that his weekly live broadcasts, coupled with store live broadcasts, brought hundreds of millions of natural traffic in August alone, and there was no purchase of streams.However, Tech Planet and Zhejiang Xingtang Culture’s reminder letters totaling nearly 40 million yuan publicly slapped Xia Yiping in the face.According to insiders, Jiyue’s third-party fees for operating and streaming live broadcasts and short videos this year exceeded 50 million. Such high fees only brought in a mere 400,000 followers on the Douyin account.

Even from November to December this year, when employees’ social security was still unavailable, Xia Yiping’s solo show was still in full swing, including live broadcasts, car show speeches, and Ted solo shows.Use the company's last life-saving money to finance your personal image.


Not only are marketing expenses high, but the extravagance and waste in channel construction is also staggering.

An employee broke the news that in August 2022, Jiyue spent a huge amount of money to acquire a store in Taikoo Li, Sanlitun, Beijing, as a user experience center, with a monthly rent of more than 2 million yuan. However, due to lack of supporting facilities for decoration and marketing, the opening was delayed for more than three months, and the rent of 6 million was wasted.

The above-mentioned waste is not an isolated case. The rent of Jiyue Yintai Image Store in the west of Hangzhou is almost 700,000 yuan a month, while the rent of a store of the same size next door is only 300,000 yuan, which is more than twice as expensive.

Also spending money crazily are administrative expenses.From a horizontal comparison, Xpeng Motors has more than 10,000 employees. In the first three quarters of this year, sales and administrative expenses were approximately 4.59 billion yuan, and 100,000 new cars were delivered. Jiyue has less than 5,000 employees and sold more than 10,000 vehicles. The corresponding sales and administrative expenses were as high as 4 billion yuan, and the cost of a single vehicle was nearly 10 times that of the former!

In addition, Jiyue still owes money to many other suppliers. The cumulative financial leakage of up to 7 billion has become an unbearable burden for shareholders. As shareholders of Baidu and Geely, rather than continuing to throw money in vain, it is a rational choice to stop losses in time.

In this werewolf killing, shareholders are the biggest victims. According to the "Bad Review" report, insiders revealed that Jiyue currently owes Baidu 1 billion in cloud service fees and Geely more than 3 billion in production and manufacturing expenses. Adding the previously announced investment amount, the cumulative losses of the two shareholders alone are as high as tens of billions.

Not only that, Baidu and Geely have also promised to spend money to solve the problems of employees’ social security payment and aftermath of resigned employees, and are responsible for maintaining the normal use, after-sales and maintenance of users’ vehicles. This compensation fee is also expensive.

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The appearance of "not enough money" and the truth of "people are not good enough"

As a start-up company, why was Jiyue so lavish that it eventually ran out of funds?In fact, the shortage of money is a symptom, and human problems are the truth.

The company's business models include ToC, ToB,ToG can be used, but Xia Yiping seems to be determined to "ToVC". If he doesn't do it himself, he blames shareholders for not "renewing".

Although Jiyue is invested by Baidu and Geely, it is independent of them. As the CEO of an independent company, Xia Yiping should assume financing responsibilities. Previously, when Weilai was in financial crisis, Li Bin looked for money everywhere and finally led the company out of the quagmire.

But Xia Yiping spends money generously and doesn't seem to be active in finding money. Instead, he chooses to lie down and let it go.He once said to his colleagues, "Baidu is our major shareholder, and everyone must have confidence." His current meaning seems to be, "It's okay to make a mistake, Baidu will take care of it anyway." After the shareholders were unwilling to continue spending money, he suspected of moral kidnapping, blaming the old shareholders for not contributing money.

There are also some clues emerging in specific matters other than financing.

For example, Xia Yiping claimed that he was a minority shareholder and had no decision-making power. But in fact, as the CEO, he dominates the company's management. According to "Bad Review", Xia Yiping is relatively clear-cut in terms of management style. He personally decides on all departments including marketing, production and research, hardware, and software.

Especially the marketing system that costs billions. In January this year, Xia Yiping made a major overhaul of the company's marketing and sales system, with him taking the No. 1 position and personally taking the lead.

However, after spending 4 billion on sales and administrative expenses, the company's organizational construction was in a mess. An insider broke the news, "The company's personnel structure changes very frequently, including the sales director to the person in charge of marketing platform marketing. They change every few months and redo another set of standards. For example, the very kryptonian marketing director came over some time ago, overturned the previous things, and ended up leaving after a month."

Moreover, as a start-up company established for two or three years, Jiyue has many mountains and its internal management is not transparent. Why did Jiyue eventually collapse and not even be able to pay employees’ social security? The reason is,Xia Yiping did not seem to trust the team, so he did not tell the truth frankly. As a result, the functional departments did not have early warning of the financial crisis and did not formulate corresponding plans.According to an insider in charge of external relations at Jiyue, "Information about Xia Yiping's participation in the board of directors is never brought back for sharing. The people around him are more like his hands and feet."

During the live broadcast, Xia Yiping claimed to be a product manager many times, but Jiyue's product design was equally incredible.He talks about spending huge sums of money to eliminate door handles, no shift lever, no central island, full LCD large screen, etc. However, consumers do not buy these self-deprecating, non-mainstream and anti-human designs because they do not conform to their usual driving habits. In addition, Jiyue moved the A-pillar 65mm backward just to "make the body curve more beautiful." This seemingly insignificant change also cost a huge investment of 300 million.

At this year's Guangzhou Auto Show, Ji Yue's performance was even more surprising. While most car companies were busy introducing their new products and development plans, Ji Yue launched a short video list of car company executives during a press conference that lasted more than 20 minutes. The focus was on the touting of the executives' short video data and giving gold to individuals, completely putting the cart before the horse.

As for why Jiyue has been spending a lot of money on small things, spending money indiscriminately to accomplish things, burning more money and paying less for cars?In this regard, a person from the marketing department of Jiejieqian made a real-name complaint in WeChat Moments. These abnormal actions were because Xia Yiping was suspected of corruption.


"Colleagues must be very angry today." "When I asked to organize a media pitch based on the procurement process, he forced suppliers to come in; when his suppliers were not shortlisted, he refused to sign the framework; when his people took several pages of A4 paper and asked me to approve all the confusing accounts before I took office; when I witnessed with my own eyes that he specially approved payment of ten times the market price to him."

Although the above-mentioned accusations have not been verified by the judicial authorities, they are mutually corroborated with Jiyue's financial performance. Moreover, since the above-mentioned people dare to make real-name accusations, they will definitely not make groundless accusations.

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Who will deal with the aftermath of Jiyue's endgame?

After the crisis became public, Xia Yiping smiled broadly and looked very relaxed and relaxed in the face of anxious employees and suppliers. He kept shaking his legs when negotiating with employees. This "sense of relaxation" of being aloof, as if the employees and suppliers in trouble had nothing to do with him, which caused many employees and suppliers to feel chilled.

Many employees were furious and tortured Xia Yiping on the spot: Did you only know today that social security would be cut off? Why did you wait until today to talk about this? Why not inform everyone of the risks in advance? Can you publish the company's financial situation?


Xia Yiping's behavior of diverting the blame away from shareholders directly shocked economist Xiang Xiaotian, who criticized Xia Yiping for lacking basic legal knowledge.

According to the provisions of the Company Law, under the limited liability system of shareholders, shareholders bear corresponding liabilities to the company to the extent of their subscribed capital contribution. That is, shareholders do not have to bear unlimited joint and several liability for debts beyond the amount of their capital contribution.. Therefore, whether it is employees’ social security contributions, severance compensation, car owner after-sales service, etc., the first person responsible is Jiyue, not Baidu and Geely.

Even from a fairness point of view, after the investee company overturns, the shareholders are actually the ones who suffer the most. Moreover, if venture capital institutions are often required to bear unlimited joint and several liability, then no company or institution will dare to incubate entrepreneurial projects in the future.


Even so, Geely and Baidu took the initiative to take responsibility for their employees and car owners.This move is actually not based on the legal obligations of shareholders, but more out of the dignity of a large public company.

As for the subsequent after-sales maintenance issues for Jiyue car owners, it is more realistic and feasible for Geely to be responsible for it in the future. Firstly, Jiyue Automobile is built based on Geely SEA's vast architecture and can adapt parts. Secondly, Geely, as a leading car company, has complete after-sales outlets and service capabilities.

In addition, does Jiyue still have the value to be revitalized, and who should take over? Geely, which has car manufacturing qualifications, is actually a more suitable successor. Moreover, Geely has always been able to build a brand matrix with ease.

In Jiyue's flash crash crisis, which resulted in tens of billions of losses, there were no winners, only losers. The investments and ideals of shareholders, the careers and incomes of employees, and the interests of suppliers were all in vain. But it was clear who was the blame-shifter and who was the decent person.