阿斯顿马丁CEO谈新款Valen：全球最快前置引擎跑车

I am curious. Just talk to me about the specs real quick when we talk about the most powerful. Uh, I mean, I remember the vanquish. I mean, what was that? Something like 135, uh, horsepower. What are we talking about here? Uh, for the new gallon. Okay, so thanks for having us on the show. And the villain is more powerful than the vanquish. Its 850 and 1000m of torque. And I forget what those numbers are in imperial measurements, but a lot more than any car that we've done before.

So it's the fastest flows in the front engine call from us, but also from any other car company. It's the it's the world's fastest. Well, so give me a sense here, though. Um, I mean, why why did you feel the need to go from whatever that 835 up to the 150 plus? Uh, I mean, it's notable, but did you need to do that? Um, it's that segment of the marketplace. So the car is not all about the engine. The engine is absolutely the heart of the vehicle.

But if you take the whole concept of the car, it uses, uh, components, aluminium spaceframe technology and then a full carbon fibre body. It's way lighter than any of the 12 similar cars that we've ever built, apart from the Valkyrie hypercar, of course. Uh, and combined with this engine, uh, a GT, motorsport gearbox, a different rear axle ratio, the whole driving experience is completely different to any road car that we offer.

So it really is a specialist car at the top of our range for collectors and consoles. That's the whole point of the car. Well, let's talk about those collectors and connoisseurs. Only 150 out there. So that by default makes it, uh, uh, a collector's item. Uh, roughly, uh, $2 million each. So, uh, definitely, uh, you have to be not only a connoisseur, but also have deep pockets here. Uh, what is the goal, uh, of releasing a product like this?

Uh, overall for your business model? Uh, with Aston Martin as its, uh, relatively new CEO. I think it's absolutely essential for our future success. Um, we have a core range of cores that we're very proud of. We go from an SUV to a mid-engine hypercar to three amazing front engine jets. But we, one of the few brands in the world that can and have successfully in the past half the cars in the 1 to $3 million range. And it's significant volumes.

And the contribution we get from those cars is a real boost to the overall performance of the business. So we now have about 1000 customers worldwide to spend more than $1 million with us every year. And for those customers, we like to crate every two years or so. Something extraordinary, very collectible, very special. And at the leading edge of design technology and our capabilities. And this is one such example. You know, it's funny, I thought, V12 we're dying out here.

I mean, uh, yeah. Regulation, uh, Electrification, all the sort of push back there. And I know that this is obviously a somewhat niche product here, but I am curious as to whether this maybe is sort of a testament of the B12 maybe outliving, uh, all of those concerns and all of those forecasts about where it seemed like we were going a few, uh, a couple of years ago. You're right. I mean, the change in policies in many countries around the world in the last 24, 36 months has been pretty dramatic.

Uh, we're now in a situation where all of our future planning indicates that we can continue to sell the 12,000 versions of our cars through to 2035, in most countries and in most regions. Uh, we will, of course, make them compliant with the next level of emission standards that appear in 27, 28 calendar years. Uh, but we have a clear roadmap for the next nine years to still be able to offer 12 cylinder engines. The reason we do with this car is very clearly that for the the real collectors and the car enthusiasts of which this is the biggest collection in the world at Quail and Pebble Beach, they just love this kind of powertrain.

It may be close to the end of the this era of automotive history, and they want to make the most of it. We help them to do so. Uh, you're coming up on your, uh, two year anniversary, uh, as head of Aston Martin Lagonda, I am curious about the sense of, uh, how much sort of the path back to profitability for this company runs new cars, uh, like, uh, the new value line, uh, versus say, you know, the core that we all tend to think about with regards to the GP 12, etc. and vantage.

Yeah. Um, I think first of all, we need to be more profitable with our core product. So you probably recognize that over the past year and a half or so, we've made major strides to basically bring down the cost structure of the company so that we can be profitable and cash generative at a much lower volume than we previously planned. Uh, this isn't a retreat from growth. It's a different way of getting used to creating a solid foundation of a business with the core models.

To the Valhalla, of which this year will probably sell 500 cores at 1.4 $1.5 million. These cars then really gives it a turbocharge, if you pardon the pun, uh, to the financial performance of the company. So in the second half of this year, and certainly into next year, we should be in a position where we can demonstrate we've turned the corner, we can generate positive cash rather than burning cash. We can generate positive Ebit instead of negative Ebit.

However, on that path, with a volume per year of about 6000 sales, with a credible mix of the specials at the top end, and that's the basis for the new business model, at least for the next three years. Four years as we transition to the next generation of cars. Yes, we've definitely seen the revenue off the volume. Uh, obviously, uh, the loss is still there, But, uh, as you sort of work your way back to cash positive, I am curious about how you view the valuation of the stock, particularly given one of your main competitors in this luxury space.

Uh, Ferrari trades at a luxury multiple. Uh, certainly, uh, compared to where Aston has been trading, which is let's just be blunt, it kind of like a distressed, uh, carmaker. Yeah. Uh, and there's no question that the the performance of the shares has been pretty dramatic over the past. Well, 4 or 5 years, actually. Um, I think as soon as we demonstrate that we can deliver consistently from a financial point of view, the fundamentals are that we have restructured the cost structure.

We have got the product portfolio that can generate credible contributions. Uh, and with that cost structure and those contributions, we have a clear business plan and a roadmap to get to profitability and a much stronger business model. That's been the work of most of my last two years to get us a clearer strategy, a winning strategy that's not driven by achieving super high volumes, but instead getting a much more value based growth strategy rather than volume based.

That's been the change over the past 18 to 24 months. Talk to me, though, about the people you need to do that because as you were sort of trying to get costs under control, you did cut, uh, several hundred jobs and then you're launching these ambitious products, a product that is, you know, if not bespoke, certainly very close to it. And that requires a lot of human beings. I mean, it can all be automated and it can all be done, uh, by machines.

There's a obviously a lot of thought, uh, a lot of design, etcetera, that goes into that. So how do you maintain the craft and quality of a $2 million car, say, or even the more pedestrian, you know, 3 or $400,000 car while cutting back on such a huge amount of your workforce? Yeah. Um, it's the same conundrum that most businesses face in that situation. Uh, but the good news is actually as you improve quality, you need less people.

I'll give you a simple example. And we've used these numbers regularly in the past. When I first joined a couple of years ago, about 25% of the cars that we built came off the production line and then had to be reworked. Post-production. Uh, we've got that figure down to about