Author/ Author of "Finance and Economics" Weekly Author Wang Xin
Edited / Mao Shiyang
Li Bin appeared after 8 months, responding to the sales "falling behind"
"Because of product reasons, (sales volume) did not outperform the trend, but WEILAI basically maintained an annual growth rhythm of 100%, and it is expected that the growth rate this year will also be 100%." On December 19, Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO Motor, said in an interview with Caijing Tianxia Weekly after hosting NIO Day2021.
It is worth noting that a person in charge of Weilai told Caijing Tianxia Weekly that the last time Li Bin appeared in public and was interviewed by the media was at the Shanghai Auto Show in April this year.
This is very unusual, because Weilai led the first echelon of new cars, coupled with Li Bin often speaking out in public, so Li Bin was called the "godfather of travel" by the outside world. Both prerequisites, however, have been challenged in recent months. In addition to the silent Li Bin, in the second half of this year, Weilai's delivery volume fell behind for three consecutive months, and it repeatedly ranked at the bottom of "Wei Xiaoli". Among them, In October this year, Weilai sold only 3667 vehicles.
In the past few months, where has Li Bin gone?
"I'm very busy this year, and our R&D workload is very large. Because our company's research and development is directly managed by me, we have more than a dozen colleagues who report directly to me. Li Bin told Caijing Weekly, "I spend more time this year on personnel recruitment and internal research and development work management." ”
In fact, Li Bin's 8 months of "Shen Yin" coincided with the key node of Weilai. As the application software of WEILAI's first-generation platform products begins to iterate, the products of the second-generation platform gradually begin to be mass-produced, so the development of software and hardware products has become Li Bin's main work, "Our own underlying self-research work is very much, including self-research of automatic driving full stack." ”
In addition to R&D, user work remains important. "Run a little bit more in the summer and winter. For example, busy NIO Day, more itinerary, generally on weekends to participate in user gatherings. Li Bin told the "Finance and Economics World" weekly, "I think it is still a very important year for Wei from this year to next year." So we do a little more internally. ”
In fact, behind this round of sales decline, Weilai has encountered challenges in products, especially in intelligent hardware.
"Our development is very limited, others are improving, Weilai's ceiling is shorter, and many times the software team carries the pot for hardware capabilities." Li Bin said frankly that many new companies started later than Weilai, but there are some breakthroughs, "If we look at Weilai, the completion of the software displayed by the first generation of platforms as a whole, I think the evaluation is still OK." If you go back to the time point of 2018 and 2019, today is indeed affected by a lot of hardware capabilities and has been challenged. ”
In addition, Li Bin told the "Finance and Economics" weekly that the resignation of Ren Shaoqing, who is responsible for the research and development of Weilai's automatic driving, which is frequently rumored in the outside world, is "all nonsense." I am now solemnly refuting the rumors, these are the headhunting company's tricks to dig people up and spread randomly, this matter will not shake our team. ”
Even so, Li Bin still admitted that the gap between Weilai and Weilai is not small. "From the perspective of sales, Today's Weilai is four years behind Tesla, which is equivalent to Tesla when it did not launch the Model3 in 2017." Li Bin told Caijing Tianxia Weekly.
(Photo/Visual China)
Li Bin brought a new car ET5 to prepare for the "turnaround" of sales?
Specific to the product, the new car ET5 has become the main answer sheet for Li Bin's "Shenyin" 8 months later.
On December 18, at NIODay2021, NIO's new car ET5 was unveiled, which is the fifth model of the NIO brand and the second car of the NIO brand. The starting price is 328,000 yuan before the ET5 subsidy and 258,000 yuan before the BaaS (battery rental service) program subsidy, and the delivery is scheduled to start in September 2022.
For this "answer sheet", Li Bin is personally very satisfied. Although Li Bin did not disclose the specific number of orders for ET5 so far, he said that et5's order popularity exceeded all of Weilai's previous models, and even many competitors "quietly unsubscribed from the original order" and switched to ET5.
When NIO ET5 first opened the booking, the NIO APP even "collapsed" at one point, which is considered to be one of the evidences of the competitiveness of new cars. However, 60% of the current bookings come from old car owners, that is, "fans" of Weilai.
"Who is ET5 targeting? We were targeting two cars with a 3. Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of Weilai Automobile, said. In the eyes of the outside world, the two cars mentioned by Qin Lihong are Tesla Model 3 and BMW 3 Series, and the two cars are classic models in the pure electric and fuel car market at the same price.
"As WEILAI enters the high-end mainstream, we hope that Weilai can enter the field of luxury cars, replace luxury fuel vehicles, and turn the pattern of BBA into the pattern of the NBA, so I pay more attention to the contrast between Weilai and the mainstream luxury models of traditional fuel such as BBA." Li Bin said, "From the perspective of the market, one word we often say internally is called the NBA. ”
At present, the size of China's luxury car market is 4 million, of which BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi (referred to as "BBA") in China's market share of more than 20%, Li Bin believes that WEIO's share in the luxury car market is expected to reach 20%.
However, NIO's current sales figures are only one-tenth of that of the BBA. In the first 11 months of this year, NIO has delivered 80,940 new cars, an increase of 120.4% year-on-year, and it is expected to be unable to complete the target of 100,000 annual sales this year.
In fact, with the enrichment of NIO's product line, users need to choose between multiple products. For example, the release of ET5 this time, the outside world is worried that it will rob some of the orders of ET7.
On January 20, 2022, the flagship smart car NIO ET7, priced at 448,000-526,000 yuan, also opened the lock order, and officially delivered on March 28, which is NIO's first car.
For whether the hot ORDER of ET5 will affect the sales of ET7, Li Bin explained: "The two children in the family who have a job can do it, ET5 is our entry-level model, Tesla has done the efficiency orientation to the extreme." ”
"The positioning of ET7 is not the same, ET7 is more upscale, more atmospheric, more elegant. ET5 is more athletic and younger. The age structure of its population will be different. Of course, the price difference between the two models is 120,000, and each has its own reasonable gross profit margin. Qin Lihong told Caijing Tianxia Weekly.
(Image source: WEILAI official image)
Saying that the "car-making threshold" has risen to 40 billion yuan, Li Bin persuaded the newcomers to retire?
"I personally think the whole investment threshold is higher, double the 20 billion yuan a few years ago." If an enterprise does not have 40 billion reserve funds, the risk will be great. We still have 50 billion in cash, and now we've been in existence for 7 years and we've stocked up on so many things, but we're still in reserve. Li Bin told Caijing Tianxia Weekly, "So the threshold of the automotive industry is higher than we think." We are not to scare anyone, and now Weilai is still losing money. ”
Previously, in 2016, Li Bin said that the investment threshold for new cars was about 20 billion yuan, and this figure subsequently became an important reference for the outside world to measure whether a new car project was "reliable".
Some people say that 2021 is the origin of the outbreak of electric vehicles, and standing at this time node, the new energy vehicle market is also expected. According to Li Bin's judgment, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles will exceed 90% in 2030.
For the competitive relationship of "Wei Xiaoli", Li Bin believes that because three startups are in the same track and were established at almost the same time, both the capital market and the people's minds are classified into one category, which has a certain rationality, however, "There are so many very good local companies in China, and there are many new start-ups, each of which is very good, but in different market segments, we can't simply put the surface numbers or products together to compare." ”
However, the challenges of NIO are still obvious.
Not only is the sales volume of the new forces of Wei Xiaoli's first generation of cars rising, but the second camp led by Nezha and Weima is also constantly creating sales records, and the electric vehicle brands of traditional OEMs are gradually occupying the minds of users. In addition, the light orange era, Niuchuang, Binli, Box Car, and the "Future Car" that have just been officially announced are all making efforts.
"We haven't started rolling in yet." Li Bin said, "The era of competition between new energy brands is far from coming. However, he also said that the threshold for automobile entrepreneurship is now higher and the risk is greater.
In fact, Weilai's opponents are also very strong. From the data point of view, the sales of Xiaopeng, Ideal, Weilai and Nezha in November all exceeded 10,000 vehicles, Wei Xiaoli still maintained the first echelon of new car-making forces, and Nezha Automobile led the second echelon with sustained growth and breakthrough results. In addition, the new forces, which have not yet broken through 10,000 vehicles, also achieved the best delivery results in history in November.
"Year after year, I still see us improving. The entire electric vehicle track, in the next 10 to 20 years, the competition between the two camps of the mainstream is from the competition of new energy and fuel vehicles. Li Bin said, "It is not the competition between Tesla and other electric brands, nor is it the contrast between Wei Xiaoli." ”
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