Weilai Automobile Qin Lihong: The core competitiveness of enterprises is the whole experience, not a single point

Reporter Xia Zhibin Shi Yingjing reported from Shanghai

"A lot of people say lately when are we going to make a profit? I said that profit is a very simple thing, without thinking about tomorrow, you can achieve profitability. The key is how we look at the power exchange track, if we judge that this track is a big, mainstream, long-term track, then we need to invest when we should invest. A few days ago, Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of Weilai, told reporters from China Business Daily and other media.

(Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of NIO)

For Weilai Automobile's investment in the field of power exchange, Qin Lihong took the example of children going to school, and the above investment is like parents' investment in their children's education. "We need to judge whether this is a short-term transaction or a long-term industry, which is a basic question."

For weilai's profit, Qin Lihong further said: "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 of our three expenses, the loss part is research and development, the purpose of financing is to invest in research and development, we feel that this matter can not be ambiguous, because electric vehicles are the early stage of an emerging race track, if you do not invest in research and development, it means that there is no future, which is Weilai's corporate values." ”

On December 5th, on the occasion of the annual NIO Day, NIO held a battery flexible upgrade communication meeting, announced the full opening of the battery flexible upgrade service on a monthly basis, and Shen Fei, senior vice president of NIO Energy Management, shared the considerations behind the launch of NIO's battery flexible upgrade service. Qin Lihong made an in-depth analysis of the competitiveness of Weilai's system.

In Qin Lihong's view: "The core competitiveness of enterprises must be the whole experience, not a single point, and the focus of the industry should shift to user differentiation." The long-term relationship between the enterprise and the user, as well as the position of the user in the entire brand of the enterprise, we feel that it is the key to success or failure in the future, which is why we want to build the competitiveness of our system around the user's whole experience. ”

Turn on the Battery Flexible Upgrade Service

"No matter how Weilai battery is upgraded, its foundation is to replace the power station. Regarding Weilai's power exchange, the most asked question is, does it earn money in the end? When will I be able to earn money? How to measure whether the power exchange can make money? In fact, the value created by power exchange is multifaceted, it includes four angles: rapid energy replenishment, battery upgrade, battery health, and rapid recovery of battery packs. Shen Fei said.

Taking rapid replenishment as an example, in Shen Fei's view, it is the biggest advantage of the replacement power station. "No matter how the charging technology develops, for a long time to come, if you want to refuel in speed, the only possible energy replenishment solution is to change the power."

Shen Fei said that the value of the power exchange itself is a comprehensive performance, and if there is an opportunity later, after doing more pilots and attempts, it may be possible to supplement some points of the combination of power exchange with ultra-fast charging, photovoltaics, and energy grids, and the efficiency will be higher.

"Now a large number of users are still 70kWh battery packs, how to reduce the number of energy replenishments from Beijing to Tibet? Very simple, replace the battery with a larger capacity, if there is 100kWh in the system, replace the 100kWh battery, which will almost increase the cruising range by nearly 50%, and the user experience will certainly be much better. Regarding the battery upgrade, Shen Fei said for example, "If the user thinks that one day he will go to Tibet from Beijing in the future, will he have to buy a 100kWh battery from the first day?" ”

Shen Fei said: "If we can't change the battery, can't do the flexible upgrade of the battery, and the user has a home pile, charging is very convenient, carrying a 100kWh battery every day, the user pays more costs, and now the country and society are advocating low-carbon and environmental protection, if 80% of the users carry a battery with such a large capacity for a long time, but the use efficiency is not high, which is also an additional waste of resources and environmental protection." ”

The reporter learned that according to the 100kWh battery upgrade plan of Weilai users, the price of flexible upgrade per month is 880 yuan / month. Both BaaS and non-BaaS users can enjoy flexible monthly upgrades with the same upgrade method and fee. However, BaaS users need to pay an additional monthly flexible upgrade fee of 880 yuan / month in addition to the rent of 980 yuan / month.

In addition, WEIRA's battery flexible upgrade service also provides a flexible upgrade method on an annual basis, with a price of 7980 yuan / year. As of November 30, NIO has completed a total of 8,047 battery upgrades (including permanent and annual flexible upgrades).

"Why do we dare to introduce a flexible battery upgrade solution? Because we have a network covering the whole country, we can lay the foundation for flexible upgrading, which is also the largest material foundation. From the upgrade point of view, it is indeed the user's hard demand, the battery as the most expensive part of the electric vehicle, if you can use the larger the capacity, or when needed, you can change to a larger capacity of the battery, which is one of the best experience of electric vehicle users. Shen Fei said.

It further added: "The flexible upgrade of the battery does not mean that there is a detachable structure that can be done, it needs to have a two-sided foundation. One is the hardware foundation, we have to have these networks, and behind the network is our equipment, the equipment itself to do well enough; the other is that we have to have some intelligent algorithms that can flexibly predict and adjust the entire demand. ”

In terms of power exchange network, as of now, WEILAI has built a total of 700 substations, 3,020 supercharge piles, 3,319 destination charging piles, and more than 430,000 third-party charging piles in the country. In addition, NIO has accelerated the construction of substations in urban areas. By the end of November, a total of 42.34% of Weilai users had lived in "electric zone houses", that is, residences within 3 kilometers of the Weilai substation; the "station ratio" dropped to 258, that is, the average service of a single-seat substation was 258 cars.

When the user asked, can 100kWh be temporarily replaced by a 75kWh battery? Why not? That's what we're going to do next. As our network becomes more and more dense, this kind of thing can certainly be done, but also give users more flexibility, we will do the next period of flexible power exchange, that is, 70kWh, 75kWh can be exchanged for 100kWh, 100kWh can be exchanged for 70kWh, 75kWh, the middle can be adjusted and motivated by some integrals and other mechanisms, in any case can be flexibly replaced. Shen Fei said.

Qin Lihong added: "The upgrade we talked about before is one-way, that is, the small battery rises to the large battery, and the flexible power exchange is the last piece of the puzzle on our rechargeable, replaceable, and upgradable NIO Power map, and we hope that next year, the latest first half of the year, will be launched, so that the battery can be changed casually, cross-level replacement, can be up, can also be down." ”

"There are many users who may not use electric vehicles much, or users of oil vehicles, who will feel that the battery is not as big as possible? The larger the battery means the higher the cost, and no matter what the method, the cost will eventually go to the consumer. Whether you are allowed to change the power downwards, I think it has a huge impact on our scheduling ability, resource reserves and network layout. Qin Lihong said.

System competitiveness

"The competitiveness of the system is similar to the decathlon race, and we see more of the individual races on a daily basis, such as releasing a car, a battery, a technology, etc. The smart electric vehicle track is a trillion-level track that requires decades of continuous competition to win or lose, and it must be a decathlon race. Qin Lihong said.

Qin Lihong added: "Weilai is not a parts company, nor is it a software company. We are now pursuing go hand in hand, and in the single item where others score 99 points, we may only have 85 points, which is not so brilliant. Everyone and ourselves have expectations of WEIlai, which is definitely 100 points for each item, but it is not up to it in the short term, because we are the development of the whole system. ”

In Qin Lihong's view, the current market competition has not grabbed a share between electric vehicle brands, and the current competition is more of a competition between electric vehicles as a new thing group and traditional fuel vehicles. "If competition between electric vehicle brands becomes the main competitive model, then people who have not done anything in this regard may suffer."

On the communication of the day, Qin Lihong showed a page of PPT. It is reported that the PPT was made by Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, Zhou Xin, executive vice president and chairman of the product committee of NIO, and Qin Lihong in 2015, and is also one of the 8-page PPT of Weilai for A+ financing.

"This page of PPT has not changed a word to this day, this is our basic judgment of the current situation, although the words are very few, adding up to 100 words, but it can help us recognize what is the driving force of industry changes, and why Weilai, as a start-up brand, chose to do so many things." Qin Lihong said.

In the above-mentioned PPT, Qin Lihong starts from the attributes of automobile brands and divides the development process of automobiles into three stages, namely automobile brands 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0.

Among them, the 1.0 era refers to the one-way communication stage before the Internet, the communication with users is the traditional mass media, consumers are still just a simple audience, and the focus of the industry is manufacturing.

The communication method between brands and markets in the 2.0 era is based on the Internet to communicate, the most important means of contacting users is email, the role of consumers has changed from a simple audience to a participant in opinions, and the focus of the industry at this time has become direct sales, and the most prominent company at this stage is Tesla.

In the 3.0 era, the communication method between brands and users and the mainstream communication mode of the whole society are mobile Internet, the role of consumers has become the owner, and the focus of the industry has also become the user. "Combining the thinking of the 3.0 era, NIO puts the competitiveness of the system into four aspects, namely car, service, digital experience and lifestyle." Qin Lihong said.

The four aspects of the competitiveness of the NIO system also constitute another compass map for the development of NIO. For the "car" in the competitiveness of the Weilai system, Qin Lihong explained that the "car" refers to the car as a physical carrier in the narrow sense, whether it is an intelligent electric vehicle or an amphibious vehicle in the future, it is a car with a steel body as a physical carrier.

The "service" refers to the whole service of the user's whole life cycle, which includes the traditional meaning of automotive after-sales service, repair, maintenance, modification, beauty, etc., as well as energy experience services. "We do new energy vehicles, we must talk about energy services, we feel that in the foreseeable future, electric vehicle companies that do not do energy services are opportunists." Qin Lihong said.

Qin Lihong said: "The competitiveness of the system was drawn when Weilai was established, and today it is a piece of the puzzle, and every point in the outer circle is what Weilai is doing, through this map, you can see the underlying logic of Weilai doing things." Why Weilai does so many things, why do it with this method, through this picture, there will be a better understanding, this is a key to Weilai. ”

(Editor: Quartzing Proofreader: Yan Jingning)