Written | Cold Zelin
Edit the | Wang Pan
During the Lantern Festival, NIO held a full marketing workshop at the NIO House in The MixC in Shanghai. In addition to taking stock of Weilai's services during the Spring Festival, another small Easter egg may attract everyone's attention.
At the meeting, Qin Lihong, president of WEIO, unveiled the mystery of NIO's third new model this year.
"We will officially release a brand new car in mid-April, the legendary 'Gemini' Gemini, which was misunderstood in the past as a brand new brand, but is actually a brand new model."
It is reported that the model is a medium and large SUV based on the NT2.0 platform, the level of intelligence will be consistent with ET5 and ET7, the size is between ES6 and ES8, has been officially named ES7, the price should also be between the two.
Previously, NIO has released two new cars, ET7 and ET5, which will be delivered at the end of March and September respectively. The ES7 will also be delivered within the year, so that NIO will have 6 models on sale, and under the non-BaaS solution, the pricing is more than 300,000 yuan.
The ES7 will also be the first rare model of NIO not to be released on NIO Day.
Different from last year's ideal push to change, Xiaopeng added new cars, and Weilai sold old cars, which eventually led to the situation that Weilai missed the championship in delivery throughout the year, and the monthly delivery volume was exceeded by the waist forces. This year, WEILAI is accelerating its wild run to occupy the luxury brand market and is expected to return to the first place of new forces.
Multiple models are sold at the same time, and Weilai speeds up
More than two months have passed since 2021, and this year's product planning of new energy vehicle companies has also surfaced, and models such as Xiaopeng G9, Ideal X01, Nezha S, WM M7, and Gaohe HiPhi Z will be delivered this year. However, to say that the car companies that launch three high-end models at one time, there is only one Weilai for the time being.
New models drive deliveries, which is the main source of revenue for most new energy vehicle companies.
Last year, Xiaopeng P7, P5, the ideal ONE reform will be the delivery of these two companies once again pushed to a height, more delivery means that more revenue can contribute, in the current situation that all parties want to eat a mouthful of new energy cake, reserve more funds, invest more research and development, is conducive to the establishment of a moat for car companies.
From the above two charts, it can be clearly seen that last year, Weilai's revenue growth rate was not as good as Xiaopeng and ideal, and the increase in revenue can also make car companies more bold in research and development investment, promote the improvement of product strength, and form a positive cycle.
On the other hand, last year, Xiaopeng and Ideal completed double listings in Hong Kong, successfully raising tens of billions of Hong Kong dollars. On the contrary, due to the influence of user trust funds and other influences, the way back to Hong Kong is not smooth.
At the end of last year, Weilai Li Bin disclosed to the media that there is currently no new listing plan, and it will "re-do itself" in 2022. This means that WEIO is less likely to raise funds from outside this year.
These three models developed based on NT2.0 may become Weilai's "timely rain" in order to accumulate sufficient capital and user base in the next round of new energy wars.
On the last day of 2021, multiple departments jointly issued the Notice on the Financial Subsidy Policy for the Promotion and Application of New Energy Vehicles in 2022. The notice clearly states that vehicles licensed after December 31, 2022 will no longer be subsidized, which means that this year is the last year of subsidies. At the beginning of the year, major car companies also raised the price accordingly, and the increase range was between 2000-20000 yuan.
Although the penetration rate of new energy is rising, no one can accurately predict the market after the complete cancellation of subsidies. For example, the great decline in new energy subsidies in 2019 has caused panic in the entire industry.
Therefore, this year can be said to be the last year for car companies to steadily accumulate user resources, and the last cold winter also confirmed that the thick mass base will also be a bottom card for car companies to survive in the future competition.
However, it should be noted that the upstream supply chain capacity this year may continue to affect the delivery volume of car companies. Qin Lihong also revealed: "Our delivery target this year is decided by the supply chain, and this year's production capacity will be improved, and how much can be produced will be delivered." ”
This sentence contains two meanings, one is that Weilai is very confident in the product strength of these three products; second, the supply of upstream parts is still not optimistic.
Speaking of the ES7 model, unlike the previous products, it is not difficult to see from the name of the car that the ES7 is a market segment product.
The current price of ES8 is 468,000-55.8 million yuan, ES6 is priced at 358,000-46.8 million yuan, and the ES7 as a five-seat medium and large SUV should have a certain overlap with its predecessors in terms of pricing.
Nio's ES6 and ES8 play an anchoring role (the same is true for cars), determining the overall price range of the NIO brand, while ES7 explores the needs of subdivided users. And Weilai did not choose to continue to explore or sink like Tesla, most likely to deepen its brand strength in this range.
In fact, Qin Lihong also made it clear that the ES7 will be benchmarked against the BMW X5L.
Benchmark BMW, strengthen the high-end position
This is not the first time that Weilai has benchmarked BMW.
Previously, Weilai said that the model of ET7 is a large car such as BMW 7 Series, while the ET5 benchmark model is BMW 3 Series.
Li Bin also said that Weilai will stick to its own positioning, how much BBA fuel vehicles sell, Weilai electric vehicles sell the same price, better than their service, performance, high degree of intelligence, more competitive products, competitive services, this is the overall strategy of Weilai.
It is undeniable that the current automobile market is still dominated by fuel vehicles, and it is still more difficult to tap the high-end market from potential users of new energy, on the contrary, it is more difficult to grab users directly from the fuel vehicle market to get more increments.
According to the data of the Association, the 2021 high-end car retail ranking BMW 5 Series and 3 Series are ranked one and two. In the context of the global lack of cores, the total sales volume of the entire BMW Group reached 2.21 million units, achieving the best sales in history.
However, BMW's achievements in the field of pure electricity are in contrast to this, with global sales of 103,000 units in 2021, although higher than Nio's 91,000 units, but only 48,000 units sold in China. There is a lack of blockbuster models, and many models are facing or have been discontinued.
Qin Lihong also said bluntly that in the matter of high-end new energy vehicles, Weilai and BMW are not latecomers.
Therefore, for BMW users, the probability of transforming new energy is to choose the rest of the brands. If WEILAI implants the concept of "benchmarking" into the hearts of consumers, and BMW has never been able to come up with powerful products, then as the penetration rate of new energy continues to rise, the traffic that WEILAI can undertake is extremely considerable.
In addition, as mentioned by Li Bin above, NIO has certain advantages in terms of service and intelligence. Especially in terms of services, the dealer model promoted by traditional car companies has been deeply rooted, and the interests are complex, which is difficult to change in a short period of time. For example, the agency sales model implemented by Volkswagen last year has also become a decoration because dealers privately give consumers certain preferential treatment for selling cars.
This is still the case at the sales end, and it is more difficult to talk about the control of dealers in terms of after-sales service. Therefore, added value will also influence the decision of some consumers when buying a car.
However, all these things are both an opportunity and a test for Weilai.
In the face of the upcoming large number of users, whether the service quality that Weilai is proud of will decline, and the power exchange mode and direct operation mode also need large-scale investment in construction and maintenance. In order to ensure the quality of service last year, NIO has successively recovered the ownership of NIO Space that joined, so it is likely that it will not open to join again.
On the other hand, in order to ensure the maintenance of the service as a signboard, large-scale enrollment expansion is also essential, and the influx of a large number of employees in a short period of time may also cause management difficulties.
Weilai still needs a long way to stand firm in the mid-to-high-end brand, but its accelerated action has begun to appear.