At NIO's press conference some time ago, Li Bin once said half-jokingly in an interview: "For most of the year from now until the end of the Alps release, if we still sell 10,000 vehicles a month, (Qin) Lihong and I will have to find a job." ”
Although this is a joke, it now seems that Li Bin is striding towards the road of part-time work.
In April 2023, NIO delivered 6,658 new cars, ranking at the bottom of the sales list of new automakers, and NIO's worst result in the past year, a bit far from Li Bin's monthly delivery of 10,000 vehicles. And, more importantly, NIO is the only one-month delivery volume of the top new power brands such as Ideal, Xiaopeng, Zerorun and Nezha to "turn down", down 35.85% month-on-month.
The ability to have a single explosive model with monthly sales of more than 10,000 is regarded as a criterion for whether new energy brands can stand on the second half of the competition. At present, NIO has seven models on sale, which is probably the largest number of models sold among the new power brands. But none of these 7 models can fight, because NIO is still in the stage of platform replacement, the actual main models are only ET5 and ES7, and the ET5, which originally undertook the burden of sales, was subject to problems such as production capacity and delivery rhythm in the early stage, and failed to effectively help sales growth.
As of now, NIO's cumulative deliveries from January to April 2023 are 37,699 vehicles, while Li Bin's estimated annual sales target is around 250,000 units, which means that NIO's average monthly sales need to reach more than 25,000 units in the remaining eight months to reach the target. This is almost an impossible mission for NIO now.
Sluggish sales have also put NIO under financial pressure. According to the latest financial report data, NIO's total assets are 96.264 billion yuan, total liabilities are 68.617 billion yuan, and the asset-liability ratio reaches 71.28%, which is much higher than that of friends such as ideal and Xiaopeng. The huge investment in the battery swap model, the development investment of new platforms and sub-brands, and the cost of adhering to the ultimate user service all make NIO spend money like water. Friends are actively considering reducing costs and increasing efficiency, but NIO's annual net loss in 2022 will be 14.4371 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 259.4%, which not only sets a new record, but can also be said to be a top among the new forces in car manufacturing.
Looking at the stock price performance, NIO's current stock price is already the lowest of the three, and even Xiaopeng, which has been in the "most difficult" period since the end of last year, has a higher stock price than NIO. At the end of last year, you thought it was Xiaopeng who fell behind, but this year it was NIO who fell behind.
In April this year, NIO adjusted the rights and interests of the first owner to buck the trend and increase prices, reducing the total value of free power replacement, charging piles and NOP+ free use rights and interests worth about 30,000 yuan. Perhaps because of the fear of misinterpretation by the outside world, NIO also specially held a media communication meeting for this adjustment, and Li Bin even admitted at the meeting that he was ready to reduce the user's willingness to buy.
Even so, the industry generally gives two interpretations of NIO's move: one is to force orders, that is, by strengthening the expectation of future rights reduction, users can place orders as soon as possible; The second is to reduce costs, from the current competitive situation, NIO's cost is indeed too high and needs to be controlled and reduced.
However, contrary to expectations, this move did not lead to an increase in orders for NIO, but led to a decline in sales in April. Moreover, even NIO's proud owner service has encountered a crisis.
Recently, the new ES6 was officially released, as a model positioned lower than the NIO ES7, the new generation of ES6 is not only cheaper than the NIO ES7, but also more advanced in configuration and architecture than the NIO ES7, which has attracted many ES7 owners to complain.
A communication conversation between Li Bin and the owner of the NIO ES7 at the NIO user exchange meeting exposed on the Internet was full of gunpowder between words. ES7 owners believe that the higher-priced ES7 is still using the old accessories of the previous generation platform, so NIO requires NIO to compensate all ES7 owners in terms of user rights. Benefits include: lifetime warranty on the vehicle, 12 free off-site power-ups per year, seat upgrades, etc.
And Li Bin's reply this time is also very firm, regarding the issue of seat and second-hand car value preservation, he said that he can try to find a way to meet it. But as for other rights and interests, he said there was nothing he could do. "I don't do anything to keep me awake anyway, and if everyone is not satisfied, I really can only do my best to do what I can do, otherwise I can't do it." In the end, Li Bin also put down cruel words: "If you should hate NIO, you will hate NIO, and there will be no compensation." ”
Different from the attitude of "responding to users' needs" in the past, the severance of NIO and Li Bin is also a helpless move. Most NIO car owners choose NIO products, many of them are for NIO's services. However, due to continuous losses and the need for new products, the "shrinkage" of service rights and interests is actually an inevitable trend, and NIO has to face frequent complaints from users because of dissatisfaction with rights and services. The result of this "pet fan" without lower limit is actually doomed from the time NIO began to take the road of ultimate service.
The crisis NIO is facing now, we think, may be no less severe than in 2019, when Hefei City came to the rescue, and the world changed in time, I don't know who is now? Impulse is a must for the second half of the competition of new energy, but before the launch of the sub-brand Alps at the end of the year, NIO can only rely on ET5 and ES6 to survive. Especially at this stage, ES6 is already the "hope of the whole village" for NIO, and there is no room for mistakes. Betting on the ES6 is bound to "offend" users of other models.
On the one hand, we have to endure the user's "backlash" against the brand, while watching each market segment be seized by friendly businessmen, and when the world is working together, the heroes are not free, maybe in a few months we can write about this topic: If Li Bin and Qin Lihong go to find a job, which car company will take them in? (Text/Youshi Auto Old Cannon)
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