This article is the 450th original work of deep diving atom
In addition to the ideal, Weilai and Xiaopeng have been repeatedly compared with Tesla, and they have also been placed high hopes by the market - they can become a model for China's Internet car manufacturing and can catch up with Tesla. But this excitement, with the rise and fall of the new forces' stock prices, also seems to be more and more flat.
No matter how high the expectations, in the end, the simplest evaluation criteria are sales and revenue. According to the February delivery volume, Weilai ranked fourth with sales of 5131 vehicles, far below the ideal sales of 8414 vehicles at the top of the list, once the leader of the new forces, and now the sales are even less than the ideal of this extended-range electric, which is really a bit unreasonable.
Deep dive atom has always emphasized in many previous analysis articles that for car manufacturing, the most important thing is to break through the marginal cost. If the sales volume does not go up, any product concept is a castle in the air.
01
High-end is more than just high prices
Weilai's product positioning and strategy belong to the high-end and high-end card position. But we believe that it is the so-called "high-end" that has delayed Weilai. Deep dive atom interviewed the automobile production practitioners told that Weilai is indeed very sincere in the use of materials, in the same price, Weilai almost pulled the materials full, but the idea is still continuing the practice of traditional car companies, there is a suspicion of "stacking materials". It's just that one is the material added to the car, and the other is to turn the "material" into a substation and service. This leads to the fact that Weilai's profit margin is not high, and there is even a risk of losing money and making money.
One of the core reasons why the new car-making forces were optimistic at the beginning was that the founders all had Internet backgrounds and might have better product thinking and capabilities. But specific to Weilai, it seems that weilai's clearest function point is not clear now. Taking the leader in the mobile phone field, the iPhone, as an example, can always maintain a certain competitive advantage with the overall mobile phone industry, and the core is that it can make breakthroughs in many functional points and form a distinct technical route and visual image. For example, the iPhone's head-to-head curtain design has been ridiculed since the first day it came out, but now it has become the iPhone's unique technology and the most recognizable form.
△ Substation
But the success of this product, Weilai so far does not seem to have. If "power replacement" is the core point of Weilai's main focus, to truly popularize and facilitate it, it is more necessary to rely on infrastructure. For the user who buys the car first, this is a shrinkage of the service, and for the user who buys the car later, it is a blank check. Regardless of the anxiety about the ownership of battery property rights caused by the power exchange.
Weilai's understanding of high-end, in a sense, is still locked in the cost performance, that is, with the same high price, to buy the most sense of gain of products. But this does not meet the definition of high-end product power. For example, the intuitive impression of the iPhone to the user must be smooth and durable enough, as well as high value preservation. Back to Tesla, it is its introduction but very convincing product function design and constantly updated and iterative FSD, constantly bringing new experiences and expectations to users.
In addition to some thunderous golden sentences contributed by Li Bin, as well as the App community service that the boss personally went down, it seems that it is difficult to find unique highlights in product functions.
02
Just having "Wei Zhongxian" can't stabilize the basic disk
Weilai's fans are known as "Wei Zhongxian". Divided into two, on the one hand, it is indeed loyal to true love, on the other hand, many people's doubts about the "foolish loyalty" of Weilai fans. For example, on August 12 last year, Lin Wenqin, the founder of Shangshan Ruoshui Investment Management Company, drove a NIO ES8 car and enabled the automatic driving function mode, and after a traffic accident occurred in the Hanjiang section of the Shenhai Expressway, he unfortunately passed away. The owners of Weilai jointly issued an open letter to defend Weilai, and the indifference shown in the face of human life, which temporarily aroused many physical discomforts and disgusts from everyone.
△ Nio owners joint statement
This unique community temperament is not a sweet burden for Weilai, but a wet and cold cotton jacket. To put it bluntly, this is the temperament of an upstart. This is completely contrary to the Internet genes that people expect from the new forces.
At the latest Apple conference, in addition to the super chip, Apple also updated the third-generation iPhone SE. That is to say, the companies that are most good at products and brands have product layouts in various price ranges of their card slots, and they can also do a good job of cost control. However, NIO's ET5 and ET7 have not yet been delivered, and it is said that they will not be delivered until September this year. But the same problem is that if you continue to follow the previous "stacking" product thinking, then the more models, the more losses.
Nio, once considered by many to be a tram company capable of becoming a Chinese Tesla, has been recognized by many rivals, including Volkswagen, since its establishment. Recently, Ford took apart its own new energy vehicle division independently, and Tesla and Wei were directly listed as transcendent objects. However, as we said at the beginning, sales are the bottom line that determines how far WEILAI can run on this road. While it is important to win the respect of opponents, winning the sincere recognition of consumers is the core or ultimate goal.
With sales stalling, Weiyuan has been falling all the way since it created a record high in January last year, and recently the stock price has further fallen back to the level of September 2020. Although hong Kong stocks are listed for the second time, it also needs time to observe.