Dual Qualification Preservation Urgent: Can Taiyi's 3 Billion Really Save Nezha?

"Saving Nezha relies on Taiyi Zhenren." After news emerged that Zhejiang Taiyi Shenglian Enterprise Management Partnership intends to invest 3 billion yuan to take over Nezha Auto's parent company, Hozon New Energy, this joke quickly spread in the auto industry. The name is indeed coincidentally scripted like a play - Taiyi Zhenren saves Nezha, a myth stepping into reality.

But myth is myth, business is business. The number 3 billion is not a large figure against Nezha's debts. Hozon New Energy creditors declared total claims exceeding 26 billion yuan; of the 3 billion investment, only 1.167 billion is used to repay claims and bankruptcy expenses, while the remaining 1.833 billion goes to supplement working capital. This is like a debtor who declared 2.6 million in debt, someone offered 300,000 yuan to participate in restructuring, while most remaining debts still need to be handled themselves.

So the question arises: Why can a car manufacturer that has been out of production for nearly two years, with cumulative losses of 18.3 billion yuan over three years and unable to even pay wages, still make capital throw open 3 billion?

What exactly does 3 billion buy?

First, look at the operating entity of this transaction. Zhejiang Taiyi Shenglian was established in April 2026, specifically for this restructuring, with the actual controller being Ye Ji, chairman of Shanzi High-Tech. According to the latest clarification announcement, Shanzi High-Tech and Taiyi Shenglian have no equity control relationship; the listed company has not directly or indirectly participated in this Nezha Auto restructuring investment, it is not consolidated, and profits, losses, and risks of restructuring will not be included in the listed company's statements. This investment is currently still at the intent stage, and whether it can finally be implemented depends on creditor voting and court rulings. In other words, this entry is Ye Ji operating independently via an external platform, and risk isolation was prepared from the beginning.

In fact, Ye Ji has been laying out car manufacturing for a long time. In 2023, Shanzi High-Tech acquired Xingtai Longgang, obtained the whole vehicle production qualification for Hebei Hongxing Automobile, and launched mass-produced models in July 2024. However, the products on this manufacturing line are concentrated in logistics vehicles and export markets, without entering the mainstream passenger car market. For Ye Ji who wants to do scaled car manufacturing, he has always lacked a complete passenger car "entry ticket".

Within the market, targets that can make up for this shortcoming are extremely scarce, and Nezha Auto just happens to hold this "ticket". Hozon New Energy obtained dual vehicle manufacturing access qualifications from the NDRC and MIIT in 2017 and 2018 respectively, which is the scarce "dual qualification" for new energy vehicle manufacturing in the industry. In 2023, the MIIT tightened outsourcing rules, requiring both sides of the outsourcing cooperation to possess production qualifications, completely raising the barriers to entry for the industry. By today, there is almost no possibility of landing a new application for car manufacturing qualifications. To enter the game, one can only enter via a shortcut by acquiring existing qualification entities.

Taiyi Shenglian also wrote very straightforwardly in the restructuring draft: the management team "has rich automotive industry operation experience and bankruptcy restructuring experience". The core objective of this investment is "to maintain 'dual manufacturing qualifications'". Hozon New Energy's administrators also specifically emphasized this point when recruiting trustees; if the dual qualifications cannot be protected, Nezha will lose the key chips to attract investment.

Besides qualifications, Nezha has also left three factories and a brand awareness. A 350 mu factory in Tongxiang, Zhejiang, and production bases in Yichun, Jiangxi, and Nanning, Guangxi, with a total annual production capacity design of 300,000 units. At the brand level, Nezha topped the EV startups sales champion with a delivery volume of 152,000 units in 2022, cumulatively accumulating over 440,000 global owners. These assets alone have limited value, but packaged together, for companies wanting to quickly enter the new energy track, it is indeed a time-saving shortcut.

Of course, while capital sees entry opportunities, creditors' situation is not so glamorous. Hozon New Energy ordinary claims are about 11.7 billion yuan, involving over 1,600 households, with a repayment rate for the part under 800,000 yuan being about 12%, while parts exceeding 800,000 yuan directly implement debt-for-equity swap. Priority claims are about 2.2 billion yuan, paying only interest for the first three years, and repaying principal starting from the fourth year. Local state-owned asset losses are even heavier; the Yichun state-owned asset platform's nearly 2 billion yuan equity investment and 300 million yuan infrastructure support investment from local state-owned enterprises are basically hard to recover in this restructuring plan.

Exactly because of the extreme contrast of interest structure in this transaction, the market maintains a rational attitude towards Nezha's rebirth. Some creditors judge: the possibility of this restructuring plan passing is very high, but whether Nezha Auto can truly resume mass production still needs observation.

The Truth Behind the "League of Resurrected"

Nezha is not the first new car brand to attempt "resurrection" via capital. In the past two years, WM Motor and HiPhi successively walked into bankruptcy reorganization. The three paths each had differences, but the underlying logic had similarities.

WM Motor took the model of local government participation coupled with industrial capital. In April 2025, the court approved WM Motor's restructuring plan, Shenzhen Xiangfei Automobile became the new shareholder, promising to invest over 10 billion yuan, planning to restart mass production of EX5 and E5 at the Wenzhou base. Xiangfei presented a development plan that was quite ambitious at the time, aiming to challenge annual production of 1 million units and revenue of 120 billion yuan by 2030. But until the end of 2025, WM Motor did not welcome scaled resumption of production.

HiPhi chose to introduce overseas capital and bind to local existing capacity. In May 2025, Lebanese electric vehicle company EV Electra established a new company with registered capital of $143 million, holding 69.8% shares. The capital side targeted Yancheng factory's existing capacity, car manufacturing qualifications, and the premium potential for going global of the HiPhi brand in the Middle East and European markets. However, by early 2026, the follow-up funds promised by EV Electra did not arrive on schedule, and the Yancheng base did not start large-scale resumption of work.

Reviewing these three cases, one can see a common trend: in restructuring plan planning, enterprises no longer prioritize participating in head-on competition in the domestic market, but instead turn their eyes to overseas or regional markets. Nezha's first phase plan for this restructuring is exactly resuming production of Nezha X targeting overseas, with an annual sales target of 10,000 units.

But this is exactly another difficulty. Thailand was once the market where Nezha's going global was most effective; in 2024, the full-year sales volume there was 7,969 units, ranking 3rd among global brands in the Thai new energy market. However, with the domestic parent company falling into debt crisis, dealers in Thailand shrank from over 60 to about 20, after-sales capability declined significantly, and the Thai Ministry of Finance even planned to sue the Nezha Thailand subsidiary through legal channels to recover subsidies of over 2 billion Baht issued since 2022.

However, in Nezha's "resurrection" story, the most subtle role is actually local state-owned assets. They were once the main funding source during Nezha's expansion phase, and under the current restructuring plan, most initial investments are hard to recover. Taiyi Shenglian invests 3 billion yuan to exchange for about 70.62% equity, original shareholders' equity is significantly diluted, value basically zeroed out. New capital takes over a complete car manufacturing qualification and production capacity assets at a lower cost, while losses and sunk costs accumulated over many past years are basically borne by original investors and creditors.

A detail worth noting is that Ye Ji is not attempting to take over Nezha for the first time. In June 2025, Shanzi High-Tech confirmed as intended strategic investor, and in September of the same year became the sole qualified restructuring intended party, at the time throwing out a 4.5 billion yuan restructuring plan. But because the original restructuring plan draft was not submitted on schedule, the Tongxiang court ruled to terminate the original restructuring procedure, Hozon New Energy once entered bankruptcy liquidation, and this 4.5 billion plan became void. The current 3 billion plan has shrunk by one-third compared to the beginning, and some creditors have publicly expressed dissatisfaction, believing the claim repayment rate of the plan is too low.

From the initial plan for Shanzi High-Tech related entities to sign up, to the quote compressing from 4.5 billion to 3 billion, then switching to the chairman Ye Ji's off-balance SPV operation, Ye Ji's strategy is adjusting, but the goal of obtaining whole vehicle passenger car qualifications and capacity has not changed. When car manufacturing qualifications become assets that can be individually assessed and packaged for trading, when local industrial funds' multi-year investments finally only get a 12% claim repayment rate. What is actually resurrected in this so-called "resurrection", the brand or a license with relabeled tags, different parties may have different answers in their minds.