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Wu Baojun, co-founder and president of Zero Motor, has resigned and will no longer have the post of president, Interface News reported on January 23. According to a report by the Financial Associated Press, people familiar with the matter revealed that Wu Baojun has not been involved in the operation of zero-running cars for a year, and this year he is mainly responsible for strategic and government affairs, and his departure will not affect the operation of zero-running cars.

Data show that Wu Baojun was born in 1970 and joined Peugeot in 1993, thus starting a career in the auto industry. From 1993 to 1998, Wu Baojun served as the Northeast Regional Manager of the sales Section of Guangzhou Peugeot Motor Co., Ltd.; since then, he has held positions in different positions such as Guangzhou Automobile Honda and Guangzhou Automobile Toyota. Among them, he served as head of the sales Department of Guangzhou Automobile Honda Motor Co., Ltd., from 1998 to 2004; from 2005 to 2012, he served as sales Minister and Minister of Planning and Marketing of Guangzhou Automobile Toyota Motor Co., Ltd. From 2012 to 2020, he served as vice president, director, president and chairman of Zhongcheng Automobile Insurance Co., Ltd.

In June 2020, Wu Baojun joined Zero Auto as co-founder and president of Zhejiang Zero running Technology Co., Ltd., responsible for zero-running automobile business development, marketing, manufacturing and supply chain work. In November 2023, the industry and commerce of Zero International Trade (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. changed. Wu Baojun stepped down as the legal representative and was replaced by Xu Jun.

After joining the zero-running car, Wu Baojun made a great contribution to the development of the zero-running car. In May 2020, zero-running cars only have a zero-running S01 model, and Wu Baojun's joining has established a more perfect marketing system for zero-running cars, seeking financing and obtaining production qualifications. According to the financial report, as of June 30, 2023, Wu Baojun held a total of 13.3065 million zero-running shares, accounting for 1.16% of the total share capital.

Data show that Zero Automobile, founded in 2015, is a technology-based intelligent electric vehicle brand of Zhejiang Zero Technology Co., Ltd., jointly invested by Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co., Ltd., is a new energy vehicle company focusing on the research and development, design, production and sales of new energy vehicles and auto parts and accessories.

According to the official website, zero-running cars currently on sale include zero-running S01, zero-running T03, zero-running C11, zero-running C01, zero-running C11 extended range a total of 5 models. In addition to the above models, Zero running C10 will also be launched. At present, the car has been pre-sold on January 10. The pre-price of the extended-range version is 15.18-181800 yuan, and the pre-price of the pure electric version is 15.58-185800 yuan. The new car will be officially delivered in March and compete with Deep Blue S7 and Ian AION V models after launch. As for the positioning of the product, Zhu Jiangming, founder, chairman and CEO of Zero, once said that the positioning of Zero is to "buy a car with a configuration of 30 to 400000 yuan at a price of 15 to 200000 yuan."

The latest figures show that 18618 zero-running cars were delivered in December 2023, a slight increase of 0.59% month-on-month and 119.22% year-on-year. It is worth mentioning that Zhu Jiangming, founder, chairman and CEO of Zero, once said: "if Zero's sales don't go up in 2023, there will be no hope behind it." In addition, Zhu Jiangming said in an open letter marking the eighth anniversary of the founding of Zero on December 24 that delivery of more than 20,000 vehicles may be achieved in December. Judging from the delivery data, Zero cars failed to meet this expectation.

Data show that a total of 144155 zero-running cars were delivered in 2023, an increase of 29.67 percent over the same period last year, ranking third among the new car-building companies, ahead of Xiaopeng, but lagging behind ideal cars and Xilai cars. Among the subdivided models, the C11 is a zero-running car model. Retail data show that the cumulative sales of the zero-running C11 in 2023 were 80616, accounting for 55.92% of the total sales (144155), followed by the T03 and C01, with sales of 38454 and 25085 respectively. Judging from the full-year delivery situation, in the car-building new power model camp, the delivery volume of zero-running cars is OK, but it failed to meet the previous annual sales target of 200000 vehicles, with an annual sales target of 72.08 per cent.

On January 10, at the Zero run Global self-Research Open Day, Zhu Jiangming said that the follow-up Zero Race will release the mainstream technology trend in January every year, and the product "whole family bucket" in March. On January 19, Zero announced that it had received more than HK $600 million in strategic investment, which will be allocated to R & D investment, marketing, production capacity, working capital and general corporate uses. The announcement shows that Zero Motor has entered into an H-share subscription agreement with Jinhua Industrial Fund and has conditionally agreed to allot and issue a total of not more than 200 million H shares at a subscription price of HK $43.8 per H share. At the same time, Zero Motor also signed a subscription agreement with Wuyi County Capital Investment Co., Ltd. It is understood that after the completion of the subscription, the proportion of shares held by Zero Motor's largest shareholder group will be reduced from 23.47% to 23.21%; the shareholding of Zero Motor founder Zhu Jiangming will be reduced from 6.93% to 6.85%; Stellantis, which had planned to invest about 1.5 billion euros in Zero cars, will increase its shares from 21.26% to 21.02%, while the public shareholding of Zero cars will be about 51.55%.

As for the development goals for the new year, Zhu Jiangming said that 2024 will be very challenging for all car companies, and sales and improving gross margins are important goals for zero cars in 2024. Among them, sales volume will be its top priority, saying that sales volume comes from the competitiveness of products and is closely related to cost, price, service and quality. Earlier, Zhu Jiangming said that the overall gross profit margin of zero-running cars reached 5% in 2024 and 10% in 2025. It should be noted that the current 150000 to 200000 yuan models are the most competitive price range in the market, and we might as well wait and see how zero-running cars will perform in the new year.

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