Article | Sina Technology Zhang Jun
Recently, HALOCHU was fined 40000 yuan for misleading consumers in the advertising of electric vehicles and went on a hot search. Many netizens teased that they bought a hot search advertisement for electric vehicles for 40000 yuan, saying, "It's good to have such a good operation."
It is reported that the reason for being fined is that the store of Halo Electric Vehicles publicized "more than 400 million fans' recommendations of Halo Electric Vehicles" and other content, mistaking the number of app users for "more than 400 million people have purchased Halo Electric Vehicles", which is suspected of breaking the law.
In fact, Halo Travel, which started as a bike sharing company, is giving priority to the electric vehicle business. At the end of 2021, Li Kaizhu, executive president and head of electric vehicle business of Halo Travel, announced the goal of becoming the first two wheel intelligent electric vehicle enterprise in the industry in the next three to five years. However, the data shows that in the sales ranking of two wheel electric vehicles in 2021, traditional brands such as Yadi and Emma still firmly hold the main market share, and the dream of the latecomer, Halo, is still far away.
Intentionally exaggerated propaganda?
Recently, Shanghai Junha Network Technology Co., Ltd. (a related company of Halo) was fined 40000 yuan by Hefei Market Supervision Administration (Hefei Intellectual Property Office) for misleading consumers due to advertising.
But the reason for being fined is not sharing bicycles, but two wheeled electric vehicles. The specific reason is that the company publicized the contents such as "400 million fans' recommendation of HALO" through the wall and wall light box of the car shop (electric vehicle business department) and the manual attached to the electric vehicle sold in the store, identified the number of users using the "HALO Trip" app as the number of recommendations, and publicized it on specific occasions, so that consumers mistakenly believed that more than 400 million people had purchased HALO electric vehicles Use and recommend that the above behaviors violate the Anti unfair Competition Law.
Hello said that it has actively rectified and paid the fine in full. At the end of 2021, Halo Electric has stopped using this slogan in its stores, but the replacement of offline stores' promotional materials has lagged behind, leading to some stores still leaving relevant slogans. Under the supervision and guidance of the Hefei regulatory department, the stores that were punished this time have completed the rectification and replaced the corresponding slogans. Halo Electric will make a comprehensive inventory of offline stores and urge the completion of rapid rectification.
At the same time, many netizens said that they had just learned that there was also an electric car business in Halo.
In fact, in July 2020, Halo officially entered the two wheel electric vehicle business of its own brand, focusing on intelligence. Users of HalloTrip App can indeed import users for HalloTrip. According to the prospectus previously submitted by Halo, in 2020, 63.2% of new users of Halo electric vehicles will get the service from Halo bicycle. However, this advertisement directly promoted 400 million App users as electric vehicle users, which undoubtedly has the suspicion of deliberately exaggerating.
In addition, some netizens think the fine of 40000 yuan is too low. "The fine is too small. The fine is 40000 yuan. The last hot search was cheaper than advertising."
After years of continuous losses, it is urgent to reverse the financial data?
Halo has entered the field of two wheel electric vehicles. On the one hand, the bike sharing business has been saturated, and the share of several leading enterprises has gradually stabilized. It is urgent to find new growth points; On the other hand, the new national standard of electric bicycles was announced in 2018. After the new national standard was officially implemented, electric vehicles that do not meet the new national standard will not be able to be produced and sold again, which means that the industry will usher in a dividend of stock upgrading.
Hello has certain advantages in entering the two wheel electric vehicle.
In addition to App diversion, the user operation experience and supply chain capability of Halo on shared bicycles and shared e-bikes can be reused on two wheel electric vehicles; One disadvantage is that at the channel end, traditional electric vehicle brands such as Yadi and Emma have built a huge offline sales network, which is not available to Halo.
Hello chose to start with online channels and promote the integration of online and offline channels, that is, "placing orders online and picking up cars offline". Li Kaizhu once revealed at the end of 2021 that the number of stores of Halo electric vehicles has exceeded 3000 and the sales volume has exceeded 600000.
Despite the rapid growth, the number and sales volume of this store have not yet posed a substantial threat to traditional electric vehicle enterprises. Public data shows that in 2021, the store size of Yadi, Emma and Xinri will be 28000, 20000 and 12000 respectively, and the sales volume of two wheeled electric vehicles in that year will be 13.8 million, 8 million and 2.1 million respectively.
In addition, traditional brands such as Yadi are also making up for the main selling points of intelligent Halo electric vehicles.
In 2021, Yadi launched a new high-end brand VFLY, one of its main selling points is intelligence, including smart display screen, AI intelligent voice assistant, car machine interconnection, etc; At the same time, Yadi also applies intelligent technology to other series of products.
Li Kaizhu's goal for Haruo is to become the first two wheel intelligent electric vehicle enterprise in the industry in the next three to five years, and also to become a leader in the entire two wheel electric vehicle industry; In addition, we hope that the electric vehicle business will be larger than the shared business in the next two to three years or three to five years.
According to the financial data of the first quarter of 2021, its revenue exceeded 1.4 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 104%; The revenue from two rounds of sharing increased from 621 million to 1.17 billion, up 89% year on year; The revenue of Sunwind increased from 64 million yuan to 168 million yuan, up 162% year on year; The overall revenue contribution of new businesses, including household electric vehicles, is 70 million yuan, approaching the level of 2020.
From the perspective of business data, the revenue from the electric vehicle business of Halo is indeed growing rapidly, but there is still a huge gap between its size and the traditional businesses such as sharing two wheels and free wheeling.
Another constraint is that even Haruo, which has suffered losses for several years, urgently needs to reverse its financial data before going public. This is also a big challenge for Halo electric vehicles, which need to invest heavily in production, offline layout, price subsidies and other aspects to compete for the market.
