Weilai called BMW: a head-on confrontation between electric vehicles and fuel vehicles

Author 丨 Peng Suping

Editor 丨 Zhang Ruosi

Figure Source 丨 Figure Worm

Car-making upstart Weilai officially launched a challenge to BMW.

At an exchange meeting held on February 15, Weilai President Qin Lihong revealed that they will release the new car ES7 in mid-April this year, which is expected to be delivered within the year. This is a medium to large five-seat SUV positioned between the NIO ES6 and ES8.

ES7 is actually a project code-named "Gemini" internally, which has previously been misread by the outside world as a new brand that NIO is about to launch. The car itself has been gaining momentum for a long time, but the marketing campaign has not yet begun, and Qin Lihong has stopped pointing, saying that more information will be revealed in April.

However, he made it clear that the NIO ES7 will compete with the BMW X5L and confidently predicts that the two cars will be the "two large five-seatER SUVs most anticipated" in 2022. "We hope to work hand in hand with bmw X5L to make efforts in the two markets of traditional fuel and emerging electric to meet the different needs of users." Qin Lihong said.

In fact, since its inception, Weilai has targeted the head camp of traditional fuel vehicle luxury brands. In a previous interview, Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of WEILAI, also made no secret of the hope that he hoped to achieve "one of three in the world" in the luxury car segment where Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi are located.

The benchmarking on the product is actually not the first time. At the 2021 NIO Day 2021 held at the end of last year, NIO released a new model ET5, when Qin Lihong also vaguely said that et5 was aimed at "two 'belt 3' cars", which actually referred to Tesla's Model 3 and BMW 3 series.

Nio's new generation of products has been fully benchmarked against BMW. Models built based on the NT2.0 platform, in addition to ET5 and ES7, it is said that ET7 will also launch an impact on the market segment where the BMW 7 Series is located - Weilai's slogan seems to be more than just talk, platooning, one challenge after another, in the luxury car market, the head-to-head confrontation between Chinese brand electric vehicles and traditional car companies fuel vehicles has begun.

ES7 early listing?

According to Qin Lihong's forecast, the ES7 will be released in mid-April this year, and from the time point of view, it will be about around the Beijing Auto Show. This is commonplace in the automotive industry, but for Weilai, it is an unconventional operation.

As a new car-making force, Wei has released new cars on its annual event NIO Day in previous years and delivered them after a period of time, but ES7 has advanced the release time by half a year, and it is likely that it will be delivered within the year.

If realized, this should be the first time that WEILAI has delivered 3 new models in a year – this speed, whether it is for new car-making forces or traditional car companies, is quite rapid.

It should be pointed out that the ES7, like the other two models that began to be delivered this year, is based on the NT2.0 platform. Across the automotive industry, this kind of rhythm is relatively rare.

According to the analysis of people familiar with the automotive industry, for a new technology platform, the more conventional and insurance approach is to release a model first, and then decentralize the technology and launch other models on the same platform after all aspects are mature.

But WEILAI clearly does not stick to these conventions. At the beginning of the mass production of the NT2.0 platform, Weilai offered a "family portrait": ET7 and ET5 are cars, and ES7 is an SUV, which not only makes up for the original missing car products, but also provides choices for consumers who pay attention to the latest technology but have higher requirements for space.

The ES7 project itself has been in the pipeline for a long time, and in May last year, a public tender document showed that the Gemini model had started the transformation of the production line, and the initial annual production scale was planned to be 60,000 units.

However, at that time, the outside world thought that the Gemini would be a new entry-level model launched by Weilai, but in fact, it was not so. Qin Lihong pointed out that as the name suggests, the positioning of ES7 will be between ES6 and ES8, and it will pursue more extremes in terms of comfort.

The rapid launch of the ES7 has something to do with competitors to some extent. Qin Lihong benchmarked the ES7 with the BMW X5L, and public reports show that the X5L may be officially mass-produced in April this year. Released near the time node of X5L mass production, the ES7 may face off with X5L.

Some analysts said that from the existing information, ES7 still has the strength to compete with X5L, from the body size point of view, X5L's length, width, height may be slightly better than ES7, but in terms of price, ES7 has more advantages, network information shows that X5L is expected to sell at more than 550,000, and the price of ES7 should also be between ES6 and ES8, about 400,000 or so.

The head-to-head confrontation between electric vehicles and fuel vehicles

Although it belongs to the same luxury brand of large five-seat SUV, but the ES7 and X5L are actually not small differences, the most significant thing is that the two belong to different markets, ES7 is a pure tram, X5L is a fuel vehicle, the two corresponding to the market and population is very different.

"Although Weilai can sell 10,000 vehicles a month, but looking at BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, they have a lot of models with tens of thousands of sales, and the gap between us is still very large, and many gasoline car users still do not trust electric vehicles." In an exchange at the end of last year, Qin Lihong also talked about the challenges of reality.

However, this is also the reason why Weilai actively benchmarks BMW - what Weilai wants to strive for is the target users of traditional luxury brands, rather than the target users of new car-making forces such as Tesla and Ideal, at least from the starting point.

It is said that Weilai often mentions a word "NBA" internally, which is hoping to have a certain substitution for mainstream brands in the segment of high-end luxury cars, and turn the pattern of BBA (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi) into the NBA, of which "N" refers to Nio.

This is a head-to-head confrontation between electric vehicles and fuel vehicles. Weilai, which has initially gained a foothold in the high-end pure electric vehicle market, is now high-profile to BMW, which may be a market strategy, but it also shows from the side that the development of China's new energy vehicle market has entered a new stage - in the field of luxury cars without any subsidy support, pure electric vehicles have also begun to compete with fuel vehicles.

From the fuel driver to win customers, Weilai clearly knows where the shortcomings of electric vehicles need to overcome. Weilai has laid out its own charging and replacing infrastructure, and strives to add electricity as convenient as refueling. According to the plan, in 2022, WEILAI's energy replenishment network will reach: more than 1,300 replacement power stations, more than 6,000 supercharge piles and more than 10,000 destination charging piles.

"In high-end new energy vehicles, compared with BMW, we are not 'latecomers'." Qin Lihong said that the development achievements made by Weilai in recent years have given them the confidence to challenge BMW. It is difficult to leverage the huge fuel vehicle market, but at least in the field of new energy vehicles, Weilai's advantages have emerged.

Previously, the outside world questioned that the window period of the new forces of car manufacturing is only a few years, and once the BBA starts to do electric vehicles, Weilai will fall into passivity, but at present, this is not the case. The data shows that in the past year, WEILAI has delivered more than 90,000 vehicles nationwide, while BMW, the highest sales of new energy models in the BBA, has only sold 48,000 vehicles.

"Their round of cards has been completed, but in the increasingly fierce competition, in the high-end pure electricity market, Weilai still stands on its feet." Of course, the competition in the entire market has just begun, and we are still running in a relatively high position. Qin Lihong said.

However, as Qin Lihong said, the competition in the era of new energy vehicles has just begun, and traditional car companies such as the BBA have not yet fully entered the game, and there are still many unknowns who will eventually win.

Taking BMW as an example, it has launched the sales of new energy vehicles such as electric vehicles, and is also developing its own exclusive platform for electric vehicles, according to the plan, by 2023 its new energy models will be expanded to 25 models, half of which are pure electric models - how the product force is not yet known, but the research and development capabilities and mass production capabilities of traditional car companies should not be underestimated, not to mention the brand appeal it has formed over the years.

Editor of this issue Wang Tingting Intern Zhan Huinan