From "Gas cars are Nokia" to "Never invest in EVs again": What exactly did Zhou Hongyi figure out after losing 1.9 billion yuan?

The same Zhou Hongyi has two completely different faces.

At the 2024 Beijing Auto Show, he climbed onto the car roof to become the "oldest car model", and bluntly told the media that even the most luxurious fuel car is just like a Nokia feature phone, which will be eliminated by smart electric vehicles sooner or later.

At that time, he also took out his Maybach S600 that had been with him for nine years for live auction, starting at 600 yuan, with 780,000 people watching, and finally the deal was closed at 9.9 million yuan. Back then, he was the most enthusiastic advocate for domestic new energy vehicles.

On September 15, 2026, at the International Summit on Large-scale Application of BeiDou, a reporter asked him whether he would still invest in new energy vehicles, and he answered bluntly: "I have already suffered a loss once, and I will definitely not invest in new energy vehicles anymore." He immediately added that AI and embodied intelligence have greater opportunities, and suggested entrepreneurs to develop Agents.

Behind these two faces, what exactly did Zhou Hongyi finally understand after losing the 1.9 billion yuan as tuition fee?

Zhou Hongyi was once popular in the automotive circle, but his fall is the most typical case

Zhou Hongyi became a social media celebrity in the automotive circle in the past two years, which dates back to his comment on Yu Chengdong's mobile phone bracket incident in 2024.

At that time, Yu Chengdong pointed out at the press conference that he did not understand why some cars still needed mobile phone brackets before, and it turned out that their cars had poor navigation performance.

This remark caused great controversy at that time, and most users did not agree with Yu Chengdong's point of view.

Zhou Hongyi played a smart trick then, saying: "Although the in-car navigation experience is good now, many car owners still prefer to use mobile navigation. If you use the in-car navigation instead of the mobile phone bracket, your mobile phone may be taken away by your girlfriend to play with or check, so the mobile phone must not leave your sight for a second."

After this round of comments, many netizens thought that "Boss Zhou really understands men" and "Your 360 really understands security".

After Zhou Hongyi tasted the sweetness of the traffic in the automotive circle for the first time, he later released a "Red Shirt Car Selling Call", saying that he would sell the Maybach 600 that had accompanied him for 9 years and switch to new energy vehicles.

Since then, a large number of car companies have queued up to send cars to Zhou Hongyi for experience. We can always see Zhou Hongyi's figure at many test drive events of car companies.

Soon, Zhou Hongyi became a social media celebrity in the automotive circle. Many car companies came to him for test drives, Zhou Hongyi once test drove an 8 million yuan Cullinan, and bluntly said that domestic electric vehicles can easily beat it.

The origin of Zhou Hongyi and Neta dates back to 2021. In that year, 360 announced that it planned to invest a total of 2.9 billion yuan in Hozon New Energy, the parent company of Neta. After the full implementation, it would hold 16.5% of the shares, becoming the largest shareholder except the management team, with 1.9 billion yuan actually paid in advance.

He not only paid money, but also personally took the lead as the "product manager" of Neta, forming a "product manager CP" with the then CEO Zhang Yong, and talking about "technology equality" everywhere.

Neta did bring him glory for a time. In 2022, Neta delivered 152,000 vehicles, topping the sales list of new car-making forces that year.

Then the situation took a sharp turn for the worse. The prospectus shows that Neta lost 4.84 billion yuan in 2021, 6.666 billion yuan in 2022, and 6.808 billion yuan in 2023, with a cumulative loss of more than 18.3 billion yuan in three years, and its operating cash flow was negative for a long time.

Interestingly, 360 had sensed something wrong as early as mid-2022, and transferred the equity corresponding to the unpaid capital contribution of 1 billion yuan at 0 yuan, giving up the remaining capital increase. At that time, the media calculated that the 1 billion yuan sent to Neta was only enough to burn for four months.

Later, there were wage arrears, suppliers demanding payment, and nearly 500,000 car owners could not find parts for car repair, until the news of "resurrection" spread in the past two years.

This is not a simple story of "investing in a bad company". This company once topped the sales list, stood on the trend, but still fell to pieces in the end. Where exactly is the problem?

The real root cause: using the spear of the Internet to pierce the shield of the manufacturing industry

Zhou Hongyi's generation is the generation that achieved great success in the consumer Internet industry. They firmly believe in a set of methods: burning money to subsidize to attract users, exchanging losses for scale, relying on network effects to achieve winner-takes-all, and finally cashing out after listing.

In this logic, loss is called "strategic loss". As long as the market share and daily active users increase, the capital market will queue up to pay.

His investment in Neta is essentially applying this Internet formula of "light assets, fast iteration, traffic explosion" to the automotive industry. In their imagination, electric vehicles are "smart phones on four wheels", software defines everything, and traditional car companies are all Nokias that will be hit by dimensionality reduction.

But the law of the manufacturing industry is just the opposite.

For Internet products, the marginal cost of serving one more user is close to zero; for selling one more car, it requires real costs for batteries, steel, production line working hours, as well as the quality guarantee and after-sales service in the next few years.

For Neta, in 2022, the year when it sold the most vehicles and won the sales championship, it lost 6.6 billion yuan. The more it sold, the more it lost. The scale did not dilute the cost, but amplified the bleeding point instead.

Cars have no network effect, and they will not become cheaper just because there are more users. Any short board in supply chain, manufacturing yield, quality control and offline channels can be fatal. The moment when the cash flow turns negative is not a "strategic loss", but a direct death.

You can find OEMs to produce mobile phones and adopt an asset-light model, but you can't do that for cars. If a mobile phone crashes, you can restart it. If a car has a problem, it will lead to recalls even casualties. The barrier of manufacturing and safety is thicker than any line of code.

Back then, Zhou Hongyi even publicly told Zhang Yong to "learn from Lei Jun", but he just failed to understand the most critical point of Lei Jun:

Xiaomi seems to be an Internet company, but when it builds cars, it builds its own factories, devotes itself to integrated die-casting and batteries, and Lei Jun himself spends all his time on the production line. Lei Jun learned the traffic advantage of the Internet, but never compromised on the "heavy asset" principle.

What everyone saw later is: the ones that really survived are either manufacturing veterans like BYD, or new car-making forces that insist on building their own production capacity.

The second echelon that was matured by Internet capital, took the low-price "technology equality" route, and relied on rounds of financing to survive, including WM, HiPhi, Ji Yue, Neta... were all stranded in large numbers when the tide receded.

The words of big shots are usually a function of their position

Looking back, Zhou Hongyi once belittled fuel cars as Nokias, and now he says he will never touch electric vehicles again. Which sentence is true?

The answer is: neither of them needs to be taken seriously, because many entrepreneurs on the stage often express their own emotions, interests and positions.

When he shouted "fuel cars are Nokias", he was the second largest shareholder of Neta and a hands-on product manager, and every word was marketing for his 1.9 billion yuan investment.

That 9.9 million yuan Maybach auction, that "oldest car model" who climbed on the car roof, were all behind the promotion of his own new energy vehicles and the whole track.

If you take the advertisement as an evaluation and the shareholder's speech as the industry bible, you are too deep into the play.

And now he says "I will never invest in electric vehicles again", which is also his position - he was hurt badly by this project, he needs to give an account to the capital and to himself, and then turn around to tell the new story of AI and embodied intelligence.

This sentence does not mean that the new energy industry is no longer viable, but that "his set of methods, the target he invested in" is no longer viable.

So for ordinary people, when choosing between fuel cars and electric vehicles, don't listen to the impromptu speeches of big shots, check whether you have a home charging pile, whether you often drive long distances, whether you care about the residual value and the convenience of maintenance, and whether the car can work well in the cold winter in northern China. The words of big shots follow their investment positions, and your money should follow your own car usage scenarios.

This 1.9 billion yuan drew an end to the cross-border car building of Internet capital

A big Internet shot who once strongly supported new energy stated that he would never touch electric vehicles again, which does not mean that new energy has no investment value, but that the romantic period of Internet capital's cross-border car building is over.

In the future, capital will be colder and more selective towards new forces: they will only recognize the leading players who have already got through the manufacturing and cash flow operation. It will be more and more difficult for the second echelon to get money by PPT and sales stories. The industry will accelerate to concentrate on a few players, and the old script of "telling stories - burning money - rushing sales - waiting for listing" is invalid .

Zhou Hongyi's next stop is embodied intelligence and robots, which are also hard bones with heavy assets and long return cycles.

If Zhou Hongyi only remembers that "he lost money in car building", but does not remember "why he lost" - not respecting manufacturing, not respecting the cycle, not respecting cash flow, then this 1.9 billion yuan tuition fee