Why hasn't NIO made a profit yet? Qin Lihong a PPT sacrifice out of the original heart! 【Yuguan Car Market】

It is impossible for shareholders not to want to be profitable, but more important than profitability is long-term development.

On December 5, at the press conference of NIO, Qin Lihong announced a PPT on the competitiveness of the NIO system, revealing for the first time to the outside world the thinking of NIO in the competitiveness of the system. It can be said that this is also the original intention of Weilai Automobile in the past seven years of ups and downs and the underlying logic of sticking to losses.

Qin Lihong revealed: This PPT was first made by Li Bin, Zhou Xin and three of him in 2015, and it is also a page of 8 PPT when Wei carried out the A+ round of financing, until today, a word has not been changed, although it adds up to 100 words, but this is Weilai's basic judgment of the current situation, recognizing the changes in this industry, and why Weilai, as a start-up brand, chooses to do so many things.

From 2014 to the present, 7 years of ups and downs, but Qin Lihong said that because Weilai firmly believes that it is a large, mainstream, long-term track, it will not stop or reduce investment in order to make a profit, at the press conference, Qin Lihong repeatedly talked about the "unity of knowledge and action" and talked about the original intention of Weilai Automobile.

Weilai is fighting car 3.0

The PPT announced by Qin Lihong is a "compass", and the middle of the "compass" is the dotted core summarized by all the automobile or business school planning such as human resources, manufacturing, research and development, and business model innovation.

Around this core, WEILAI divides it into four parts, namely the car, the full life cycle service, the digital experience and the lifestyle beyond the car; the outermost circle is the refinement of these four parts, such as the car corresponds to "smart, electric, car"; the service corresponds to "NIO Energy, NIO Service, BaaS, ADaaS and official used car", the digital experience corresponds to "smart cockpit, NIO App, NIO energy cloud"; the lifestyle corresponds to "NIO Day, NIO." life, NIO Center, Community Interaction", etc.

This compass of no more than 100 words shows Weilai's thinking about the competitiveness of the system.

Although NIO has had ups and downs in the past 7 years, NIO has been perfecting in every part in the past seven years. Weilai builds the competitiveness of the system because Weilai believes that in the 3.0 years, building a brand is not only based on products and intelligent hardware can be achieved.

"If we take the development of the automotive industry, from the attributes of the brand, according to the historical stage, we divide it into 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0." Qin Lihong said.

In the 1.0 years of automobile brands, the core of competitiveness between automobile brands and brands is in hardware, as long as the car is built well, manufacturing quality and cost control are good, you can build a successful brand, it can be said that in the past 1.0 era for more than 100 years, the two most important companies that have changed history, Ford and Toyota.

The most prominent company in the 2.0 years is Tesla, with the development of the Internet and intelligent technology, the experience focus of the automotive industry has gradually shifted from the car to the performance of three electrics, on-board intelligence and so on. In the 2.0 era, after consumers are participants, the embodiment of industry competitiveness differentiation is mainly in software.

In the 3.0 years, Weilai's judgment of the entire intelligent electric vehicle track and the final game was that it was a decathlon race, so it was necessary to build the decathlon in an all-round way, rather than a single champion.

In the future competition, it is not about how a car manufacturer has issued a model, but a problem that will last for 30 years, or even 50 years, the strategic shift of the entire industry. The competition involved is not only the competition between electric vehicle brands, but the competition between electric vehicles as a new thing group and traditional fuel vehicles at a larger level. Therefore, it is an all-round competition.

"At the end of this year, I am more pleased, no matter whether we do a good job or not, at least in the expansion of this compass, we are doing things together." Qin Lihong used the "Cold Horn Bird" as an analogy, the Cold Horn Bird did not build its nest in winter, and always felt that there was a place to hide, if the company did not go to layout its own charging pile, it always felt that there was a place to use, but, in the long run, it was a lack of strategic security.

"Flexible power exchange" to complete the NIO Power layout

In the layout of charging piles, WEILAI has laid out more than 6,000 charging pile piles, and about 70% of them are used by non-Weilai users.

As of 10:00 a.m. on December 5, Weilai Automobile has launched a total of 678 substations, and it is predicted that at the latest in July next year, 1100 substations will be launched, although because of the lack of money for a year and a half during the period, there is a lack of heart, and the pace of building and replacing power stations has slowed down, but Weilai's original intention has not changed.

At the press conference on December 5, Shen Fei, vice president of NIO Energy, released the flexible power exchange mode, which realized the last piece of the puzzle on the RECHARGEable, replaceable and upgradable NIO Power layout. "We hope that next year, the first half of the year at the latest, will be able to change it, cross-level change, can be up, can also be down." Shen Fei said.

The flexible power exchange mode fundamentally solves the different needs of users for electric vehicles. Truly enable on-demand battery configuration. "If this user thinks that one day I will go to Beijing and Tibet, will I have to buy a 100kWh battery from the first day?" Qin Lihong asked.

If Weilai can not change the power, can not do the flexible upgrade of the battery, users in order to one day to go to Tibet, can only from the first day of the car purchase, every day to carry a 100kWh battery, their own cost is not conducive to low-carbon environmental protection, if 80% of the users carry a large capacity battery for a long time, the use efficiency is not high, resources and environmental protection is also an additional waste.

After the flexible power exchange is realized, the user can flexibly configure the battery according to the needs. Usually only need to install 70kWh, 75kWh, when necessary, you can change 100kWh; similarly, 100kWh can also be changed for 70kWh, 75kWh, the middle can also use some integral and other mechanisms to make adjustments and incentives, in any case can be flexible to change the power.

The law of balance between system competitiveness and profitability

However, behind the service is technology, which is a big investment, shen fei alone led the team of 1,500 or 600 people, including headquarters, regional end, R & D personnel, scheduling R & D personnel and so on.

Weilai Automobile's third-quarter financial report shows that revenue is 9.805 billion yuan, a positive increase of 116.65%; however, the net profit is still in a state of loss of 2.859 billion yuan. "Profit is a very simple thing, you don't think about tomorrow, you make a profit." Qin Lihong said that the key is how we look at this track, if we are optimistic, we need to invest when we should invest. Just like the education input of children, it is not an annual and monthly input and output.

"A company is ultimately profitable, and I think the profitability of a company is an important aspect of judging the value of a company in the long run, we absolutely do not hate profits, objectively speaking, Weilai is still a loss-making enterprise today, but we have to look through the financial statements and look at the logic behind it." Qin Lihong said that since the third quarter of this year, the gross profit created by Weilai's car sales has been able to fully cover the marketing and management costs of our three fees, the loss part is research and development, and the purpose of financing is to invest in research and development because this is the early stage of an emerging track, if you do not invest in research and development, it means that there is no future.

Qin Lihong said that if profitability is the highest goal of Weilai, it will be profitable immediately if it stops its research and development activities, but Weilai pays more attention to your qualifications for making a profit tomorrow, rather than how much to harvest today, and adhere to this value.

For Tesla in the past two years, the price of the car has dropped again and again, and the gross profit margin has risen, Qin Lihong believes that this shows that Tesla's self-research and industrial layout in the early stage have brought systematic cost advantages that have begun to show. Qin Lihong said that Weilai will also learn from Tesla's next step of system cost capabilities, technology and supply chain control capabilities, but Weilai does not take tesla's same path.

Qin Lihong believes that WEILAI is more like an Apple in the automotive industry. Although becoming Apple is not WEILAI's mission, it can only help everyone understand that Apple has done a lot of things outside of mobile phones and computers, including the design of the whole industry chain and the small ecology built.

Therefore, although Weilai and Weilai coexist in the smart electric vehicle market and have a competitive relationship, the road of the two companies is completely different. "We understood the Tesla case, but we felt that the practice was not suitable for us." Qin Lihong said.

In terms of financial data, although it is still in a loss, in the latest period, the gross profit of Weilai Automobile has reached 20%, which means that in the past seven quarters, the gross profit growth rate has reached nearly 30 percentage points.

Unlike Tesla, which took the increased gross profit to reduce the price, Weilai Automobile did not expand the sales base in this form, but constantly invested the increased gross profit back into the service and continuously improved the satisfaction of each user.

Qin Lihong said that doing so is WEILAI Auto's own value orientation. Although the new energy vehicle market is growing rapidly, it still accounts for less than 10%, and the market is still a pyramid market in the short term, and it will be a spindle market in the long run.

The premise for Weilai to further expand the short-term war is not to sell less than the ideal and Xiaopeng, I think it should be sold less than the BBA. Because the high-end market growth is still quite good, the competition is not so fierce. I think Weilai should do better to expand the market of Weilai in the high-end mainstream fuel vehicle market, rather than comparing with the new energy brands that are misplaced and positioned in another market.

This is also why even weilai automobile is still engaged in "NIO Day" when the most difficult wages cannot be paid. Because this is the value that Weilai Automobile has been adhering to, not taking the short-term KPI as the guide, adhering to the original intention, and focusing on the 360-degree or slow development of the initial PPT circle, the initial intention will be adhered to.

Of course, Qin Lihong also revealed that Weilai is also planning a more popular brand in order to achieve larger-scale sales, but that is still in the preparatory stage, and for users at different levels than existing users, the service system will be different.

Yuguan Car City was founded by Yu Linglin, an automobile reporter who has been in the industry for more than ten years, all articles in this public account are original, and only represent personal views, copyright, please contact the author's public number for reprinting: 2844125311, and can be reproduced with consent, and please indicate the source and author.

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