Text/Leju Finance Li Shanshan
"A car can't produce a part." Due to the impact of the epidemic, Weilai and Li Bin have lived a tight life.
On April 9, WEILAI Automobile issued a statement saying that 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 resumed, resulting in the suspension of NIO vehicle production, and many users' vehicles will be delayed in delivery recently.
Under this announcement, a user left a message: "It is not easy to bin brother, the group saw that you exchanged green onions for other people's salt, the difficulty of the epidemic can be imagined, take care of yourself." Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile in Shanghai, was forced to "exchange green onions for salt" in the WeChat group due to the tight supply of daily necessities.
In addition to the suspension of production, there are also price increases. On the 10th, the day after the announcement of production suspension, WEILAI announced that the price of many of its models will be raised by 10,000 yuan, the long-endurance battery pack battery rental service fee will be adjusted from 1480 yuan / month to 1680 yuan / month, and the battery pack will be flexibly upgraded to a long-lasting battery pack the price will be adjusted to 9800 yuan / year.
For the price increase, Li Bin said, "I originally wanted to carry it, but the epidemic situation was even more unbearable." ”
Judging from the latest deliveries, Weilai Automobile's sales in March have fallen out of the top three of the new car-making forces. In March this year, the monthly sales of the four new car-making forces of Xiaopeng Automobile, Nezha Automobile, Ideal Automobile and Zero-run Automobile have exceeded 10,000 units, while Weilai Automobile's monthly sales of less than 10,000 vehicles, only 9985 vehicles.
Forced to press the "Pause button"
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, many car companies have fallen into the dilemma of stopping work and stopping production due to the problem of "cutting off the supply" of parts, and the same is true for the immersive Weilai Automobile.
On April 9, WEIO released the "Explanation of Recent Production and Delivery" on its APP, saying 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.
It is reported that WEILAI's headquarters and vehicle manufacturing base are located in Anhui, while many of its supply chain companies are located in Jilin, Shanghai, Jiangsu and other places, and these suppliers have stopped production due to the epidemic.
Among them, as a supplier of NIO auto parts, United Electronics, ZF, Pirelli and other companies are located in Shanghai; AVI Power, Panbo Brake, Wandu Hella and other companies are located in Jiangsu; as well as Bosch, Continental Group and other companies are distributed in Shanghai, Jiangsu and Jilin.
At the same time, NIO's international business headquarters and NIO's global mass production vehicle R&D center are located in Shanghai.
"A car can't produce a part." Li Bin said, "Affected by the epidemic in Changchun and Hebei, some parts of Weilai were cut off 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. ”
The loss caused by the suspension of production is self-evident. It is understood that the current annual production capacity of Weilai Jianghuai plant is 240,000 units, and the peak production capacity after overtime can be pulled to 300,000 units / year. It is estimated that according to the limit of 300,000 units a year, the suspension of production for one day will lose 822 vehicles that may have previously rolled off the production line, and according to the average ticket price of 40,000 yuan, it can be seen that the direct loss of Weilai's daily products is 340 million yuan.
In fact, this is not the first time that NIO has stopped production due to supply chain impacts. In March last year, NIO lowered its delivery forecast to 19,500 units from its target of 20,000 to 20,500 units in the first quarter. At the same time, the production of Hefei Jianghuai Automobile Plant was suspended for 5 days, becoming the first new car-making force in China to stop work due to lack of cores.
In September 2021, due to chip problems, WEILAI adjusted its delivery target for the third quarter to 22,500 vehicles to 23,500 vehicles, compared with the sales target of 23,000 vehicles to 25,000 units given in the second quarter financial report, which was lowered again.
The impact of this shutdown on delivery is still unknown. However, Weilai Automobile said in its announcement that "many users' vehicles will be delayed in the near future", which will inevitably cause consumers to refund the refund behavior, which will bring a new round of tests to Weilai's sales.
However, five days after NIO announced the suspension of production, the NIO Jianghuai plant began to gradually resume production. On April 14, the relevant person in charge of Weilai revealed that the supply chain recovered slightly, and the Hefei production base began to gradually resume production, but the follow-up production plan also depends on the recovery of the supply chain.
Sales fell out of the first echelon
A wave of uneven waves rose again, and on the day immediately after the announcement of production suspension, Weilai Automobile, which had insisted on not raising prices, was finally "defeated" by reality.
On April 10, NIO officially announced the notice of product price adjustment, and its ES6, ES8 and EC6 will usher in price adjustment on May 10, and each version will be raised by 10,000 yuan. In addition, the long-life battery pack battery rental service fee has also been raised from 1480 yuan / month to 1680 yuan / month, and the price of the battery pack is flexibly upgraded to a long-life battery pack by year to 9800 yuan / year.
For the price increase, Li Bin said: "Raw materials, especially battery raw materials, have risen too much this year, and there is no downward trend in the near future. ”
According to the financial report, the gross profit margin of Weilai vehicles in 2021 is 20.1%, and Li Bin mentioned at the performance meeting that it will adhere to the "18%-20% gross profit margin" this year, but now it seems that whether it is cost or sales, this goal of Weilai is challenged.
Judging from the latest delivery volume, as the "bellwether" of new forces in car manufacturing, Weilai Automobile's sales in March have been overtaken by "latecomers", and the sales ranking has fallen out of the first echelon of new car-making forces.
In March this year, Xiaopeng Automobile sold 15,414 vehicles, ranking first in the sales list of new car-making brands; followed by Nezha Automobile, with sales of 12,026 vehicles; its only one ideal car on sale, ideal ONE, won the third position with the data of 11,034 vehicles; zero-run cars achieved monthly sales of 10,059 units, while Weilai Automobile's monthly sales were less than 10,000 units, only 9985 units.
This is not the first time that WEILAI has fallen out of the top three sales in a single month. According to the data, the top three sales in February this year were the ideal 8414 vehicles, Nezha's 7117 and Xiaopeng's 6225 vehicles, and Weilai ranked fourth with a performance of 6131 vehicles.
How did the former "new force brother" come to this point? In addition to supply chain waves, the new product window period in 2021 is also one of the considerations.
At present, the models that make up the main sales force of NIO are mainly ES8, ES6 and EC6, and their first delivery times are June 2018, June 2019 and September 2020, respectively, which can basically be considered as old models. In the wave of new energy car manufacturing with rapid iteration of products, it is difficult for old models to maintain sustained combat effectiveness.
On the new model, the ET7 developed by NIO for the NT2 platform did not start delivery until the end of March this year, and the ET5 and ES7 are expected to start delivery in September and the third quarter of this year.
In addition, brand positioning will also affect the size of sales. The average selling price of NIO's models on sale is more than 400,000 yuan, which is higher than the average selling price of Xiaopeng and Ideal of about 200,000 yuan and 300,000 yuan respectively.
Weilai in 2022 successively unhappy, the sales ranking of new car-making forces has undergone obvious changes, some people commented, "The old three strong era has passed, and the new five will come." ”
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Source: Automotive V-line