The author | Xie Gubai
Editor| Zhao Yuan
From July 2021, the bad news of NIO began to be significantly more than good news.
In July, NIO lost the throne of the new car-making force for the first time, and in the following months, except for winning the first place in September, NIO's sales were not as good as expected, and in the worst October, its delivery volume was only 3667 vehicles.
During the same period, a large number of car owners complained about the design defects of the NIO seat, covering the three models currently on sale: ES8, ES6, EC6, and some car owners said that sitting on the NIO seat for a long time caused different degrees of damage to the waist and spine.
The biggest controversy took place in mid-August.
Lin Wenqin, a 31-year-old owner of WEIO ES8 and founder of Meiyihao, died in a traffic accident while enabling the "NOPL pilot" function. This tragedy has pushed Weilai to the cusp of the storm, and has also triggered a re-examination and thinking about autonomous driving in the entire industry.
Then at the NIO DAY at the end of the year, founder Li Bin's sentence "I don't understand why there are still people buying oil trucks" made him "Xi ti" Weibo hot search.
These negative factors superimposed on each other deepened the outside world's doubts about Weilai, and some people began to change their past "Wei Xiaoli" name, the new title is "Xiaoli Wei" and "XiaoLi"- Weilai is no longer the leading big brother.
However, the stage of market performance and the occurrence of uncontrollable accidental events are not enough to support the outside world to make a positive judgment of "good" and "bad" for the head players in an industry. In an interview with the media some time ago, Li Bin summed up the key word of Weilai in 2021 as "preparation", which means that Weilai can ignore the short-term poor performance for a slightly long-term layout.
However, "preparation" always has to have a stage of results released, and now, what Weilai has to do is to answer the three examination papers in 2022.
01 Can I get back to the sales ground?
Focusing on the sales volume in the second half of last year, in addition to 5880 vehicles in August and 3667 vehicles in October, WEILAI's delivery volume at other times was actually not so bad, basically stable at about 10,000 vehicles, ranking first in the first echelon.
But the horizontal comparison is not so: Xiaopeng and Ideal have achieved sales climbing in November and December, and once stepped over the threshold of 15,000 monthly sales, and Weilai stepped in place.
Of course, this can not ignore some objective reasons, such as Weilai is in a higher price segment, there are no new models in the past year, but these are obviously not the core problems, in the higher price segment will stabilize sales in the first place, is the achievements that Weilai has made in the past, has been relying on the ideal of a model, it seems that it has not fallen into sales stagnation.
So what's the problem?
After the release of the third quarterly report last year, WEIlai attributed the reason for the decline in sales to the upgrading of production lines, the preparation of new product introductions, and certain supply chain fluctuations.
These reasons should be viewed in two dimensions:
In the first dimension, the Jianghuai plant is the only production capacity center of WEILAI at present, and the transformation of the production line of the Jianghuai plant led to a sharp decline in sales in October, which is a normal sales fluctuation.
The second dimension, a certain supply chain fluctuation, which is a common problem in the industry in the past year, such as lack of cores, battery supply is in short supply, etc., this problem involves multiple links in the upstream and downstream of the industry, the uncertainty is stronger, and it is difficult for depots to solve independently.
Whether Weilai can return to the sales highland in 2022 lies in these two points: whether it can get rid of the supply chain constraints externally and whether it can ensure stable production capacity internally.
Judging from the news that has been released, Weilai is not worried about the sale of models in 2022, and the models to be delivered during the year include ET7, ET5 and ES7.
However, not worrying about model sales does not mean that Weilai can sell more cars in 2022.
Nio's current main production capacity relies on Jianghuai Automobile's Hefei foundry, which previously had an annual production capacity of about 120,000 units. After the upgrading of production capacity at the end of 2021, the annual production capacity will be 240,000 units, and the double-shift production mode can reach 300,000 units.
The total vehicle production capacity of the Xinqiao Industrial Park under construction is planned to be 1 million vehicles per year, and the first phase of the plant will be put into use in the third quarter of this year.
In this way, at least in the short term, Niolai's production capacity is sufficient.
But the biggest uncertainty comes from supply chains. Some insiders familiar with Weilai once told the media, "Weilai lacks foresight, and its current assets are not used to prepare the supply chain system, resulting in a very passive situation now." ”
Auto analyst Zhang Xiang also pointed out that Weilai is a car company with a sales production model, and the inventory is not high, so once there is a problem in the supply chain, it will be directly reflected in the delivery volume.
Li Bin also expressed his helplessness at the third quarter earnings report, saying that the CATL era exclusively supplies Weilai's batteries, and although a lot of investment has been spent to increase production capacity, the battery supply still determines the ceiling of Weilai's delivery.
In addition, there is the factor of lack of cores, although the lack of cores on a global scale is gradually alleviating, but as Li Bin said, "it is difficult for us to predict which chip suddenly has any problems," the unknown risk of chip shortage is also a difficulty for Weilai.
02 Can power exchange be a differentiating advantage?
At present, new energy vehicles are moving towards larger-scale popularization, and mileage anxiety is still an obstacle.
There are two ways to solve mileage anxiety, one is to rely on the rapid iteration of battery technology to provide longer battery life; the other is to build a sound charging and power replacement infrastructure to solve the energy anxiety of car owners.
For the latter, for pure electric models, there are now two different routes in the industry: overcharge and replacement.
More car companies choose the overcharge solution. According to media reports, in the personal car market, Weilai is the only car company that provides power exchange services, and other tram companies are mostly aimed at taxis and other scenarios. In Weilai's plan, by 2025, the number of substations in the world will be 4,000, and there will be 1,000 overseas.
In fact, the solution to change the power has had negative cases in the past, and Israel's Better Place has previously gone bankrupt due to its inability to achieve profitability; Tesla has also tried this route briefly, but soon shifted its focus to the supercharging route.
The core reason is that the construction of a replacement power station is really not a cost-effective business.
First, the construction and operation and maintenance costs of substations are high.
Qin Lihong once calculated an account to "Finance and Economics": the hard cost of the replacement power station includes two parts, one is the initial construction, personnel duty, daily maintenance, and the apportionment of a replacement power station is hundreds of thousands of yuan, the other is the electricity fee, and the average cost is also a replacement power station of hundreds of thousands of yuan.
According to the annual cost of a single substation of 1 million, NIO will invest at least 4 billion yuan to achieve the laying out of 4,000 substations around the world.
Second, for a relatively long time, Weilai's replacement power station can only hope for its own brand, and the realization space is small.
At present, the substation mode faces the shortcomings of the battery can not be shared across the car series, the compatibility of the substation is low, and it is difficult to integrate the resources of the car company to form a common standard, which is also the reason why Tesla abandoned this route.
On the one hand, there are as many as 145 kinds of battery models specified in the mainland national standard "Product Specification Size for Electric Vehicles", and the battery module structure varies according to the model design;
On the other hand, in different modes of side power exchange, sub-box power exchange, and chassis power exchange, the corresponding battery specifications and parameters are also different, and it is difficult to realize the sharing of battery products and power exchange equipment between car companies.
This has led to the fact that before the introduction of unified national standards, the power exchange network that Weilai has spent a lot of effort to build can easily form a situation that can only serve its own car owners.
Third, it is difficult to change the power station to help Weilai bring more revenue, and it may even be a loss-making door.
Shen Fei, senior vice president of Weilai, previously told LatePost that according to the calculation of 6 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity and an average of 50 kilowatt-hours of electricity per unit, a substation can change 50 units a day and earn 500,000 or 600,000 yuan a year, which can basically cover the site rent and equipment depreciation.
Shen Fei said that if the future replacement power station begins to charge all, according to the calculation of each vehicle changing electricity once a week, a replacement power station will radiate about 350 vehicles to support 50 orders a day.
That is to say, according to the scale of 4,000 substations, IF WEILAI wants to achieve breakeven in the power exchange business in 2025, it needs at least 1.4 million units to use the power exchange service.
Considering the cost of battery loss, it is more difficult for Weilai to bring revenue through the power exchange business.
Fourth, the development of supercharge technology may also have an impact on the power exchange mode.
Compared with the current charging scheme, the biggest disadvantage is that the charging speed is slow and the energy replenishment efficiency is low, but this also means that once the charging speed can be raised, the user experience of charging and replacing is likely to be close, and the differentiated advantages of the power exchange are also easy to be smoothed out.
Charging piles also have an advantage: their interfaces and communication protocols have national unified standards, and different brands of cars can be shared. For example, according to media reports, 77% of the more than 3,000 superfilled piles built by Weiwei are currently used by vehicles of other brands.
In addition, WEILAI must also face the challenges brought about by the entry of the Ningde era.
03 How to stand firm in the incremental market?
In the past 2021, in addition to spending a lot of effort on the laying out of the replacement power station, another action of Weilai is to start the global layout.
In September, NIO opened its first direct-operated store, NIOHouse, in Oslo, Norway. Li Bin has previously explained that Norway was chosen because its market volume is more appropriate, which is conducive to the follow-up of services and supporting facilities. In addition to Weilai, Xiaopeng also regarded Norway as the first stop at sea.
How small is the market capacity in Norway? According to the data provided by Guotai Junan Securities, in 2021, the sales volume of new energy vehicles in the Norwegian market will be 151917, but the penetration rate has reached 86.2%.
This makes the point: NIO may not be counting on the Norwegian market to contribute much beautiful delivery data, but is exploring the way.
Li Bin has admitted in a previous interview with the media that going to sea is not a smooth road, first of all, to adapt to local regulations, such as data protection, privacy, etc., to carry out a lot of software product development. Second, the local service system also needs time to build.
In this way, in Norway, where the penetration rate is higher and the market is more mature, Weilai is just a small test.
Because in Li Bin's case, if WEIlai wants to be successful in the world, it must be successful in both the European market and the US market.
And once Weilai wants to enter the European and American markets, it cannot escape Tesla.
In the U.S. market, Tesla ranked first in new energy passenger car sales in 2021, selling 352,000 units, accounting for 52.5% of the market; from the model point of view, Tesla's four models entered the top ten sales list: ModelY sold 190395, Model 3 sold 121877, Model X sold 22,546 units, and Model S sold 17,653 units.
In the European market, the top five Volkswagen, Strantis, Renault-Nissan, Daimler, and BMW together occupy nearly 70% of the market share, but the best-selling model is still the Tesla Model 3, which sold 142905.
Therefore, if you want to gain a foothold in the European and American markets, it is a more challenging and less hopeful goal for Weilai.
In contrast, a more likely opportunity that Weilai is already trying is to seize the domestic low-end market demand.
The market capitalization list has previously been discussed in the article "Delivery War: The Key Battle of New Energy Vehicles", and the new energy automobile industry will show a trend next: the industry will move towards a refined and differentiated product layout.
This will be divided into two paths, one is to maintain or impact the high-end intelligent electric market, such as WEILAI's ET7, the ideal X01, Xiaopeng's medium and large SUV; the other is the product sinking, impacting the 100,000-200,000 yuan price range, the market potential is large and the lack of competitive pure electric models of the blank market, such as Xiaopeng P5, zero-run C11 and other models.
Previously, there were media reports that Ai Tiecheng, former general manager of WeWork Greater China, joined WEILAI as vice president of strategic new business, reporting directly to Li Bin. Sources revealed that the new business that Ai Tiecheng is responsible for in Weilai is a sub-brand, and the so-called sub-brand is a low-end brand that Weilai is preparing to launch independently of Weilai, and is expected to be priced at 150,000-250,000 yuan.
Some people familiar with the matter said, "Li Bin also took into account the positioning of Wuling Hongguang MINI EV." ”
In this way, in the near future, NIO will become a company covering high, medium and low markets in multiple price segments, which also means that it will make enemies on multiple fronts.
04 Conclusion
In Li Bin's eyes, the current new energy vehicle market is still in the qualifying stage, he said that by 2024, 2025, the industry will enter the final stage, he also said that there may be more fundamental changes in the industry pattern, will be seen more clearly at that time.
For all the time before that, all the players on this track needed to do one thing well: put their heads down.
In fact, the challenges facing NIO are far more than that.
It still hasn't made money, with a net loss of 840 million yuan in the third quarter of last year, but it still has a lot to spend; it used to flaunt its own service and experience, but in the past year, the criticism and doubts around the service have never stopped;
There is also automatic driving, the tragedy that occurred last year will not be forgotten, it will always be a wake-up call for all players in the industry: it is not so easy to pick up this pearl.
In the face of these uncertainties, WEILAI has unlimited possibilities and unlimited risks.