In order to sell cars, Weilai Li Bin desperately pretended to be stupid?

Produced | new energy group of the company's research office

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Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile, likes to amplify words is nothing new, which seems to have become a marketing method of Weilai. After all, at the beginning of 2021, Li Bin once said, "Tesla is to become a volkswagen, and Weilai is benchmarking against the BBA." ”

A while ago, at the 2021 NIO Day, Li Bin's remarks on new energy vehicles and fuel vehicles once again aroused heated discussion among the majority of netizens. Li Bin said: "I don't understand why anyone still buys a fuel truck now? What good is the gas truck except that it can smell a little gasoline? ”

The ass decides the head. As a manufacturer of new energy vehicles, Li Bin said that these words are naturally related to his position, but ignoring the shortcomings of new energy vehicles such as poor winter endurance, insufficient charging piles, and low retention rate, and "humiliating" the owners of fuel vehicles with a condescending attitude is too arrogant.

1. Winter battery life is 50% off, and the charging time is doubled

"Buying a fuel car is like buying a mechanical watch, more of a feeling, there is a charging anxiety, basically the heart of gasoline car users to operate electric vehicles." This sentence came out of Li Bin's mouth, and it did not seem strange. Li Bin is one of the representatives of the new domestic car-making forces, hoping that consumers buy electric vehicles, naturally there are his interests to consider, but Li Bin's attitude is too extreme, not only offended the owners of oil trucks, but also made netizens on the sidelines dissatisfied.

However, the reason for the dissatisfaction of netizens is that the battery life and charging anxiety of new energy vehicles really exists, and this anxiety will not suddenly disappear because of Li Bin's words, especially in the northern region in winter, the "mileage anxiety" of new energy car owners is more obvious.

According to the recent test data of the new energy vehicle endurance and charging of the car emperor, in Yakeshi City, Hulunbuir City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, under the condition of minus 20 degrees Celsius and full power (the driving mode adopts emergency mode, the vehicle loads 1 driver and a passenger, and the air conditioner is 24 °C), the official mileage of weilai EC6 with a mileage of 615km is 336.9km; the official cruising range is 670km Of Xiaopeng P7, and the measured endurance is 316.2km. That is to say, under this condition, the endurance of WEIO EC6 and Xiaopeng P7 is 55% off and 47% off respectively.

In general, in the low temperature environment of minus 30 degrees, ternary lithium batteries can still maintain normal battery capacity, but for lithium iron phosphate batteries, when the temperature is lower than minus 10 degrees, the battery capacity will drop to about 60% of the initial capacity. New energy vehicles loaded with ternary lithium batteries are more suitable for the northern region in winter, while new energy vehicles equipped with lithium iron phosphate batteries will make car owners have more serious mileage anxiety.

In addition, in the cold environment, the battery of the new energy vehicle not only has a shrinking endurance, but also the charging time is significantly longer. Most electric vehicles need at least one hour to charge, according to the data of the car emperor, the average low-temperature charging time of new energy vehicles increased by 70%, and the low-temperature fast charging time of some vehicles even increased by 257%.

Compared with electric vehicles, the form of refueling vehicles is very simple, driving the car to the gas station to refuel, in addition to the time in line, the whole process will not exceed 10 minutes at most. Why there are still people who buy fuel vehicles instead of electric vehicles, this reason is enough.

2. The distribution of charging piles is uneven, and the facilities are still not perfect

The problem facing new energy vehicles now lies in the lack of charging and replacing infrastructure. On December 25, CCTV Finance reported that in the Beijing area, where the charging infrastructure is relatively perfect, there are even new energy car owners who get up at 4 a.m. to grab public charging piles to charge new energy vehicles.

During peak travel periods such as holidays, the shortcomings of insufficient charging and replacing facilities for new energy vehicles are magnified. During the eleventh period of 2021, topics such as "8-hour drive to new energy vehicles took 16 hours" and "how to solve charging difficulties for new energy vehicles" rushed to Weibo hot searches, causing heated discussion among netizens.

According to the State Grid data, the charging capacity of highway charging facilities reached 1.4292 million kWh on October 1, 2021, close to 4 times the usual daily charging capacity, a record high. As Li Bin said, the infrastructure of the new energy vehicle replacement point is developing rapidly and is much more convenient than in previous years. However, as far as the experience of new energy car owners in high-speed charging is concerned, the "stress test" of charging piles at this stage does not seem to be enough.

One of the reasons for this dilemma is that the number of charging piles is not enough. According to the requirements of the charging pile construction task arranged by the National Energy Administration Development and Reform Commission, the "vehicle-to-pile ratio" will reach 2:1 by 2030. At the end of 2020, the number of new energy vehicles in China was 4.92 million, the number of charging piles was 1.681 million units, and the "vehicle-to-pile ratio" was 2.9:1.

In 2021, the number of charging piles and new energy vehicles is growing rapidly. According to the data, in the first 11 months of 2021, the national charging infrastructure increased by 704,000 units, the sales volume of new energy vehicles was 2.990 million units, and the incremental ratio of pile vehicles was 1: 4.2. According to the statistics of the China Charging Technology And Facilities Alliance, as of November 2021, the cumulative number of charging infrastructure in the country was 2.385 million units, an increase of 55% year-on-year. However, due to the fact that the growth rate of charging piles has not kept up with the growth rate of domestic new energy vehicle sales, at the end of November 2021, the domestic "vehicle-to-pile ratio" is about 3:1, which is not lower than the end of 2020, which further aggravates the phenomenon of charging difficulties in some areas.

In addition, the location of some charging piles and the layout of the early stage of the construction station are unreasonable, resulting in uneven distribution of charging piles. For example, at the end of November 2021, Qingdao's "vehicle-to-pile ratio" was 4:1, higher than the overall level of the country, but this data is still at a good level among similar cities in the country.

The insufficient number of charging piles, uneven distribution, and the difficulty of withstanding the traffic during peak travel periods such as holidays are all practical problems that new energy car owners and car buyers with a wait-and-see attitude need to consider, but Li Bin has ignored it "deliberately".

3. The retention rate of new energy vehicles is low, and the circulation of the second-hand market is poor

Compared with fuel vehicles, new energy vehicles also have many advantages, such as the restrictions of the unlimited number policy, the low cost of car maintenance, and the good driving experience, but new energy vehicles also have a disadvantage, that is, the retention rate is too low. The problem of the retention rate of new energy vehicles is not limited to the consumer level, and the circulation of second-hand new energy vehicles is not smooth, which is also one of the problems faced by the new energy automobile industry.

Since 2020, the domestic new energy automobile industry has ushered in explosive growth, and in the first 11 months of 2021, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles has reached 12.7%, of which in November, the penetration rate of domestic new energy vehicles has exceeded 20%, reaching 20.8%. The increase in penetration rate also means that a considerable number of vehicles will enter the replacement cycle after a few years.

According to the 2021 China Auto Repair Rate Report, except for Tesla, the one-year maintenance rate of pure electric vehicles of other models is generally low. The average three-year retention rate of mainstream new energy vehicles is only 32%, while similar fuel vehicles can generally reach about 60%. According to the report released by the China Automobile Dealers Association in the first half of the year, the one-year retention rate of WEIO ES6, ES8, Xiaopeng P7 and Ideal ONE was 78.12%, 62.98%, 72.59% and 71.10% respectively. If you convert it, the Weilai ES6, which is priced at 356,000 yuan, depreciates by about 80,000 yuan a year; the Weilai ES8, which is priced at 468,000 yuan, depreciates by about 170,000 yuan a year.

The low retention rate of new energy vehicles and the low vehicle maintenance rate have seriously hindered the circulation of second-hand new energy vehicles. Some experts believe that in addition to the low retention rate, the lack of inspection system and supervision system is also the reason for the poor circulation of second-hand new energy vehicles. As far as the current situation is concerned, the domestic second-hand new energy vehicle market is not ready.

Perhaps for Li Bin, he personally does not need to consider the shortcomings of new energy vehicles, as long as more new energy vehicles are sold to consumers and the company's market scale is continuously expanded, he can gain a place in the competition of new energy vehicles. However, the low retention rate, poor winter endurance, and mileage anxiety caused by long-distance travel are indeed things that car buyers need to seriously consider, after all, car consumption is a large household expenditure for Volkswagen.

In the past few years, Li Bin has also said a lot of crazy words, such as he once said on the CCTV program: "Porsche's factory is definitely not as good as the factory of Jianghuai Weilai." This kind of talk may just be a means for Li Bin to create momentum and do marketing for Weilai. But this time, Li Bin's remarks made him directly stand on the opposite side of consumers, not only did not stand in the perspective of consumers to solve the problems faced by new energy vehicles, but instead "humiliated" the owners of fuel vehicles with a condescending attitude.

Although it has survived the painful days in 2019, it does not mean that Weilai will not encounter other crises after that, and maintaining humility, putting down arrogance, and exporting good products to the market is the right thing that Li Bin should do at the moment, rather than talking everywhere and saying some so-called "wild words".