The price increase of raw materials and the superposition of epidemic factors are plaguing the new energy automobile industry, and Li Bin bluntly said that he "can't hold back".
On April 10, Li Bin, CEO of Weilai Automobile, left a message in the Weilai Automobile User App, saying, "Raw materials, especially battery raw materials, have risen too much this year, and I can't see the trend of decline in the near future, I originally wanted to carry more, the epidemic is even more unbearable, the price increase is also forced, please understand." ”
Previously, Weilai Automobile issued an announcement that due to the impact of the continuous sharp rise in global raw material prices this year, from May 10, 2022, Weilai will make appropriate adjustments to the prices of its products.
In terms of vehicle prices, the models involved in this price adjustment are NIO ES8, ES6, EC6, and the starting price of each version of the model is raised by 10,000 yuan; the starting price of the latest two models, NIO ET7 and ET5, remain unchanged.
In terms of the rental price of BaaS batteries, the long-endurance battery pack battery rental service fee is adjusted from 1480 yuan / month to 1680 yuan / month, the price increase is 200 yuan, the standard battery pack battery rental service fee remains unchanged, still 980 yuan / month, the purchased car users are not affected by this adjustment; the battery pack is flexibly upgraded to a long-life battery pack The price is adjusted to 9800 yuan / year, and the flexible upgrade price is unchanged on a monthly basis, still 880 yuan / month.
The day before the price increase was announced, NIO had just announced that it was suspending production due to supply chain problems.
Weilai announced on April 9 that "since March, due to the epidemic, the company's supply chain partners in Jilin, Shanghai, Jiangsu and other places have stopped production one after another, and have not yet recovered." Affected by this, WEILAI's vehicle production has been suspended. Due to the above reasons, many users' vehicles will be delayed in the recent past, please understand. ”
Since then, Li Bin has replied to users, "A car is not a part that can be produced." Affected by the epidemic in Changchun and Hebei, we cut off some parts in mid-March, relying on some parts inventory to barely support until last week. Recently, there have been epidemics in Shanghai and Jiangsu, and many partners cannot supply goods and can only suspend production. In addition, Li Bin also said that such a situation is not a Weilai, and many manufacturers have suspended production.
On the 2021 earnings call on March 25, Li Bin revealed, "From the third and fourth quarters of last year to this year, the cost of raw materials upstream of batteries has indeed increased a lot, and our entire industrial chain must share the rising pressure together." At present, we have not raised prices, but we will have some plans for annual product improvement this year, and we will judge our price policy and price strategy according to the price of the market and the price of raw materials at that time. At present, our products have not yet been priced. He said that not only batteries, but also the price increase of raw materials including commodities aluminum and copper have brought some negative effects to Weilai.
According to the surging news statistics, in the previous March, nearly 20 car companies have announced price increases for their new energy vehicles, ranging from thousands of yuan to tens of thousands of yuan, of which the highest price increase is more than 30,000 yuan. In this round of price increases, the reasons for the price increase given by car companies are related to the continuous sharp rise in the price of raw materials such as batteries.
According to the delivery information released by NIO on April 1, NIO delivered a total of 9,985 vehicles in March, an increase of 37.6% year-on-year; the cumulative delivery of 25,800 units in the first quarter, an increase of 28.5% year-on-year; and the historical cumulative delivery volume was 192,800 units.