With the blessing of ET5, in the new track spawned by the wave of electrification transformation, WEILAI is politely greeting all competitors, and then started a relentless "decisive battle" in advance.
Author 丨 Cui Liwen
Responsible editor 丨 Cui Liwen
Editor 丨Zhu Jinbin
"The brand has been established for 7 years, and NIO always has to learn to grow up on its own."
On December 18, I drove to Suzhou to participate in the 2021 NIO Day, and wanted to prepare a theme for this year-end feast that belonged to Weilai in advance, so that I had the opening sentence of the article.
As for the reason, it is very simple. Taking the timeline as a measurement dimension, if we say that on 2017 NIO Day, when the ES8 slowly drove to the center of the stage, Nio told us for the first time what it wanted to do.
2018 NIO Day, compared with the ES8 positioning lower ES6 to the front of the stage, more people-friendly but still high-end positioning, indicating that after its listing, it will become the temporary "main sales responsibility" of Weilai.
2019 NIO Day, unexpectedly, the darkest hour will come so quickly that even survival becomes precarious and crumbling. Fortunately, in the end, Weilai survived.
Even if the emergence of EC6 is more like a helpless compromise, it still maintains the tradition of this new force to build cars once a year. At the scene, in the face of more than 10,000 users shouting in unison to cheer, Li Bin bowed deeply to them. And that was perhaps the most moving moment.
2020 NIO Day, when the resources in WEIlai's hands are more and more abundant, everything is slowly returning to the established track. The release of ET7 a year late officially opened the pure electric car strategy and regained the label of "leader" in the industry.
7 years, along the way, experienced insults, questioning, counterattacks, praise, from the swaddling baby who is difficult to resist risks, to toddlers, and then to small steps, in the whole process, you can clearly feel the existence of progress and transformation.
2021 NIO Day, the whole experience, perhaps in the control of empathy, there is indeed a lack of heart. But with the arrival of NIO's second pure electric car ET5 as scheduled, it is still proved by practical actions what it is: always learn to grow up.
And its arrival also allows a "decisive battle" to start in advance.
Without a "blockbuster", create a "blockbuster"
I would like to ask, for a long time in the past, what is the biggest pain point of WEILAI itself? In my mind, there is no incubation of a real "blockbuster", or one of the answers.
Especially when Tesla Model 3 and Model Y are located in China's new energy market, showing a harvest trend, monthly sales have already exceeded 10,000. As a friendly merchant, Xiaopeng P7 can also be delivered at about 7,000 units in a single month, and the contrast is particularly obvious.
Seeing this, there will inevitably be people who take the average price and positioning of Weilai's products as the reason for not being able to produce "explosive models", but after careful consideration, they will find that it can only be said to be an excuse.
After all, the luxury SUV market of more than 400,000 yuan has a total amount and demand that is not small, and the BBA, as a traditional fuel, is still eating away at most of its dividends. ES8, ES6, EC6 three products can do, just from the soup.
Obviously, it is far from reaching the point of true subversion and innovation. In order to prove its own gold content, Weilai also needs to come up with other solutions.
So, will it be ET7? In my opinion, the answer is still no.
The root cause, the prerequisites for the emergence of "blockbusters", the sufficiently prominent product strength and the sufficiently balanced cost performance, coupled with a sufficiently accurate transmission rhythm, are indispensable. And put such a measurement standard on Weilai's first pure electric car, except for the first item, it seems to be slightly deviated.
In the most blunt words, et7 is still expensive, and the waiting period from the debut of the new car to the final delivery is too long. These unfavorable factors are preventing it from achieving more changes.
Fortunately, with the arrival of ET5, all the above problems were solved in an instant. And it has also become the biggest and only protagonist of 2021 NIO Day, and has full potential for "blockbusters".
Specifically, first of all, the price that everyone is most concerned about, the starting price before the 75-degree battery pack subsidy is 328,000 yuan, and the price before the 100-degree battery pack subsidy is 386,000 yuan, respectively, after the BaaS car-electric separation scheme is adopted, the starting price before the subsidy is lowered to 258,000 yuan.
"Sincerity, or sincerity." To be fair, in ET5, it can be clearly felt that Weilai or Li Bin has let go of the "obsession" of excessive pursuit of brand high-end.
In fact, as early as the start of 2021 NIO Day, I had discussed the price of new cars with friends around me. At that time, the common concern was focused on the fear that ET5 and ET7, similar to ES6 and ES8, would not open up a large price difference and lose the opportunity to momentum.
But as it turned out, some of the concerns proved to be completely superfluous. ET5 after having a sufficiently balanced cost-effective long board, and then look at the product power it shows, has played a positive superposition effect.
Compared with et7, it also has a dual motor layout, with a maximum power of 360kW, a maximum torque of 700 N·m, an acceleration of 4.3s from 000 km/h, a braking distance of 33.9 m from 100 km to zero, and a wind resistance coefficient as low as 0.24.
It also has three different power battery capacity options of 75 degrees, 100 degrees and 150 degrees, and the maximum cruising range can reach 1000 kilometers.
It also has THE NAD autonomous driving assistance system that WEILAI is proud of, with the supersensitive system Aquila and the supercomputing platform Adam.
It also has 33 high-performance perception hardware, with a final strength of 1016 TOPS, 4 Nvidia Orin chips, and 19 auxiliary driving functions as standard, and then gradually realizes high-speed, urban areas, parking, power exchange and other scenarios, and the whole process of point-to-point automatic driving.
It can be said that after removing the details of the appearance and interior, and the difference between the size of the vehicle, the ET5 can be regarded as a "scaled down version" of the ET7 of equal proportions, without any subtraction.
And the body color, mood lights, full car audio, including the panorama digital cockpit PanoCinema that applies AR/VR technology to the ET5, are trying to "please" young consumer groups as much as possible.
Obviously, in addition to sincerity, we can also see its determination to go all out to open up.
As for the last one, the transmission rhythm is precise enough. At the event site, Li Bin promised all users that the delivery date of ET5 will be September next year.
Compared with ET7's waiting time of more than a year, it has made great progress. In the process of learning to grow up, Weilai also has the ability to "create a blockbuster without a hit".
After the release of ET5, the Weilai APP that was "squeezed out" is also the best proof.
Stand in the moment and gaze into the abyss
Seven years, for any new force to build a car, is not an easy milestone moment to reach. And when survival is no longer a problem, how to live better, not to rest on its laurels, and to re-examine its own shortcomings and shortcomings has become particularly important.
It is like standing in the most gratifying moment, staring at the darkest abyss.
The same is true for NIO. In fact, the opposite of seven years must be the unavoidable "seven-year itch". As early as the previous article, it was mentioned: when will the power exchange mode that cannot be turned back really run through? When will the real blockbuster appear? When will fragile and deadly capacity be solved? When will the relationship between enterprises and users be sublimated?
On NIO Day 2021, some questions were answered, but some are still pending.
For example, the emergence of ET5 is about the same as Weilai locking in its "blockbuster". According to the data released by Li Bin on the spot, as of December 18, 733 substations have been completed, and 1300 will be completed by the end of 2022. Although it is still not self-financing, but with the increasingly large base of car owners, the expected inflection point is believed to come sooner or later.
In contrast, production capacity may be the biggest obstacle to NIO's impact on larger milestones next year. After all, this year, due to the epidemic, lack of cores, and production line transformation, the former has lost the possibility of impacting the annual delivery mark of 100,000 vehicles. According to the plan, ET5 will be located in the NeoPark Xinqiao base under construction in Hefei, taking the lead in production.
Then, it also means that the entire process of the latter promotion must ensure that there will be no difference. Otherwise, ET5 will miss the best delivery window like ET7. At the same time, JAC Weilai Base will undertake the mass production of 4 models next year, and the supply chain pressure can be imagined.
"Capacity, capacity, or capacity." Next, the most difficult challenge for Weilai is to fully ensure that this sector is sufficiently powerful.
As for the relationship between enterprises and users, in fact, the biggest feeling after participating in the 2021 NIO Day is that between Weilai and the car owner, after experiencing the stage of common hardship and suffering, the weakening of viscosity has been unavoidable.
But from the perspective of transformation, it may be a good thing. Reasonable distance and rational examination mode may be able to eliminate the occurrence of many chaos from the root. On the way to a real "user enterprise", Weilai seems to have a lot of homework to do.
In addition, when ET5 was released, it also spawned many new doubts that could not be avoided.
First of all, when its price is announced, behind the increasingly hot reaction, perhaps the most embarrassing thing is the ET7, which is the flagship of the sedan sequence. The phenomenon of left-right hand combat between the two may be more violent than the ES6 and ES8, which can also be separated by 5 and 6/7 seat layouts.
Although the explanation given by Wei's employees is, "The user portraits that buy ET7 and ET5 are by no means the same type of people." But what I'm trying to say is, "As long as there's an intersection, there's bound to be a grab." Moreover, the first delivery date of the ET7 is set for March 28, which is only a maximum of half a year away from the delivery date of the ET5.
Secondly, ET5 will become a "blockbuster" under Weilai next year, there is no doubt. Whether it can become a "blockbuster" in the entire industry is still debatable. After all, let's not forget the huge price adjustment space that Tesla Model 3 has, and the long-endurance version of this still unplayed hole card.
Not surprisingly, Xiaopeng P7 will also usher in a facelift upgrade in 2022, lidar will definitely hit the car, coupled with a mature enough intelligent cockpit and auxiliary driving system experience, these are things that ET5 has not yet proven, and the variables are still very large.
Again, it's the price. At the first time after the conference, I opened the WEILAI APP to study ET5. In the state of almost "naked matching", choose to use BaaS, and the price of the car can indeed be lowered to 258,000 yuan.
However, once the paid car paint, wheel hub, interior plus similar TOMI, seat ventilation heating massage optional bag, the price will exceed the 300,000 yuan mark. If you follow a similar operation and choose to buy out a 100-degree battery, the ET5 will reach more than 400,000 yuan.
And don't forget that the overall size of this new car is actually slightly smaller than expected. With a length, width and height of 4,790mm, 1,960mm and 1,499mm respectively, with a wheelbase of 2,888mm, it is just the size of a standard B-Class car.
The length of the car is slightly shorter than the Xiaopeng P7, and even the Camry is slightly shorter. Therefore, in the minds of some potential consumers who care about this parameter, the cost performance of ET5 is bound to be further weakened.
At the end of the article, I would like to say that the theme of 2021 NIO Day was identified as "Hello World" early. And this sentence "Hello, world" is given a lot of meaning by Weilai.
As a bystander, it can be simply seen that next year, the new force will build a car, which will allow its latest model to enter the old car power like Germany.
And I prefer to understand that with the blessing of ET5, in the new track spawned by the wave of electrification transformation, WEILAI is politely greeting all competitors, and then started a relentless "decisive battle" in advance.
| Cui Liwen |
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