Image source@Visual China
文 | 趣解商业，作者 | 刘亮
Following the official release of the M9 on December 26, followed by the Xiaomi automotive technology conference held on the 28th, Lei Jun spent a full three hours to introduce the latest achievements of Xiaomi SU7, the first model of Xiaomi Automobile, and the self-developed core technology system;
The succession of these two press conferences and the subsequent New Year's Day holiday have diluted the popularity of the new ET9, which NIO announced at NIO Day 2023 on December 23.
The pre-sale price is 800,000 yuan, how about the technology flagship ET9 "money scene"?
For this new flagship model ET9 with a pre-sale price of 800,000 yuan, Li Bin once said two words.
"The upcoming release of this new car represents NIO's resolute entry into the executive flagship market, although there are different definitions of executive flagships in different eras, but in the final analysis, it must be a technical flagship. ”
"Mercedes-Benz S, BMW 7 Series, Porsche Panamera are the real cornerstones of these brands, we have to resolutely enter the executive flagship market, different times have different executive flagship needs, but it must be a technical flagship, we believe this car can represent the needs of this range. ”
Yan Jinghui, a member of the expert committee of the China Automobile Dealers Association, once said, "Although the million-level model market is not the mainstream volume market, if a successful model is launched, it can further enhance the brand power and premium ability." This may be one of the reasons why NIO launched the ET9 – to further enhance its brand power and highlight its brand positioning, and in addition, the gross profit margin brought by high-end models is also unmatched by other low-end models.
Li Bin is convinced that 2024 and 2025 will usher in the explosion of the high-end pure electric vehicle market.
According to the data of the China Passenger Car Association, the cumulative retail sales of traditional luxury cars in the first three quarters of 2023 were 1.66 million units, a year-on-year increase of 13%, and the cumulative retail sales of new energy luxury vehicles in the first three quarters reached 580,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 89%, which is much higher than that of traditional luxury cars.
But Li Bin, who firmly believes that he will make a difference in the executive flagship market, has to face the reality that the executive flagship market has been occupied by traditional luxury brands for many years.
Judging from the market data, Mercedes-Benz S-class, BMW 7 Series, Audi A8L, Porsche Panamera and other car series occupy almost half of the market share of domestic executive cars;
From the perspective of "Fun Solution", the biggest challenge for NIO to enter the high-end market may be the lack of brand and technology accumulation, and many people have expressed doubts about this.
Image source: Douyin screenshot
The user group of the executive car is more in pursuit of taste, and pays more attention to the heritage and value behind the brand. It is not difficult to see that the appeal of domestic brands in the luxury car market is obviously not high enough, and in the minds of a considerable number of consumers, the brand power of domestic brands is not enough to support their high-end positioning.
On the other hand, the ET9, which currently brings together a number of NIO's latest R&D technologies, will not be delivered until the first quarter of 2025, and can only be regarded as a "futures product" today.
Although Li Bin said at the press conference that "NIO ET9 is the first product in China to enter the soul competition of luxury executive sedans, so it is willing to spend more time to adjust and optimize the details", but this also means that many of its technologies may still be in the experimental stage, and how many technical advantages this product can have after a year, this product power level is also a factor affecting consumer purchases.
In the new energy era, the traditional luxury car market has indeed been eaten up by electric vehicles, but in the face of such a fast-growing market, how NIO can break through among the many "new forces" of car manufacturing is not only brand power and product power, but also factors that limit its terminal sales, and more importantly, production capacity and delivery issues.
As early as when NIO ET5 was launched, tens of thousands of orders were unsubscribed because of the delay in giving an exact delivery time. The ET7, which was released in January 2021, was also delivered after a year and two months, and some users who couldn't wait unsubscribed, while the Xpeng P5, which was three months later than the ET7 was launched, was delivered in the fourth quarter of that year, becoming the first model to mass-produce LiDAR. Is the frequent delivery delay Li Bin's "long-termism" or the problem of supply chain and production capacity?
The delay in delivery has affected NIO's market demand and consumer experience. Judging from the pick-up time of NIO car owners on social platforms, many NIO models will take about a month to be delivered to customers.
Image source: Screenshot of NIO APP
In the face of increasingly fierce market competition and uncertainties, there is still a question mark over how much ET9 can sell.
Entering the sinking market and not falling behind is more important than the "high-end dream".
The ET9 priced at 800,000 yuan is not destined to be a high-volume model, and its more important role is to raise the high-end brand positioning of Weilai, but at present, for Li Bin and Weilai, the "high-end dream" is very important, and how to continue to "dream" under the condition of "not falling behind" is more important.
In terms of revenue, according to the financial report data, NIO's loss in the first three quarters of 2023 will reach 15.3 billion yuan, exceeding the sum of 2022, and according to the previous plan, NIO will achieve breakeven in 2023.
In terms of deliveries, NIO delivered 160038 vehicles in 2023, up 30.66% year-on-year, with an average monthly delivery volume of about 13,000 units, while NIO set a 2023 target of doubling its annual sales year-on-year at the beginning of 2023, and it seems that it has only achieved 65.3% of its annual target (245,000 deliveries).
Compared with the same period, Li Auto delivered a total of 376,030 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 182.21%, with an average monthly delivery volume of about 31,000 vehicles, and Xpeng Motors delivered a total of 141601 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 17.26%, with an average monthly delivery volume of more than 11,000 vehicles.
Image source: Tram Report
It is worth mentioning that in December, Li Auto delivered 50,353 new cars, a new high in a single month, which is also the first time that it has delivered more than 50,000 vehicles in a single month this year.
Li Xiang also said on his Weibo: "All the goals for 2023 have been achieved: 376,000, 50,000, 20,000, and 300." In 2024, we will challenge higher goals: 800,000, 100,000, 30,000, 2,000". In other words, Li Auto's annual delivery target for 2024 is 800,000 units.
Image source: Weibo screenshot
In contrast, in the "Wei Xiaoli" camp, whether it is a single month or a full year of delivery, Li Auto has opened a significant distance from Weilai Automobile and Xiaopeng Motors.
Compared with Li Auto and Xpeng Motors, NIO has many products, but there are no popular models yet. In this way, NIO urgently needs to convert sales capacity into sales volume in 2024. In terms of product layout, NIO has made it clear that there will be no new models launched in 2024, and it may still need to achieve the volume task on the main products such as ET5 and ES6, as well as the second and third brands ("Alps") and the third brand ("Firefly") that NIO will soon launch.
Image source: Weibo screenshot
Qin Lihong, president of NIO, previously said that the second brand "Alps" and the third brand "Firefly" are both internal project codes of NIO, not brand names.
For the second brand, Li Bin said at the 2023 NIO media communication conference that the new car is not called the previously rumored "Alps", and the current internal project code name for it is "Dabie Mountain"; Li Bin revealed that "Dabie Mountain" is positioned in the family market, and there are only 3 models in the entire life cycle.
"Dabie Mountain" is mainly aimed at the mid-range market, with a model price range of 20-300,000 yuan, and it is also considered to be one of the main pillars of NIO's sales growth in 2024.
However, the competition in this market is more fierce than that of models above 300,000 yuan, and the competitors are also stronger. On the one hand, new energy brands such as BYD and Tesla have established market leading advantages, and on the other hand, Li Auto, which is also a "new force in car manufacturing", is also eyeing the sinking market of 200,000-300,000 yuan.
For the third brand, according to Qin Lihong, the brand has only planned one model, which is a small car similar to BMW MINI, specializing in the entry-level market below 200,000 yuan.
However, Qin Lihong also emphasized that "the eight models currently on sale are the main source of revenue for NIO in the next 1-2 years." "The second and third brands will not be able to take the lead next year.
In 2024, Li Bin and NIO will "give up their illusions"
In the eyes of the outside world, NIO is becoming less and less like an automobile company, and this dissimilarity mainly comes from NIO's all-round cross-border - batteries, chips, mobile phones, charging and swapping stations, NIO HOUSE, and car insurance...... Any one of these is a 10 billion project.
At present, whether it is the fledgling car insurance, the mobile phone that has launched products, or the battery swap station that has invested tens of billions of yuan, it has not brought NIO a return in terms of revenue, but is very likely to become a drag on NIO's business.
Image source: Screenshot of NIO's official website
In the past, Li Bin has been struggling for "idealism", but after experiencing a series of troughs such as declining sales and increasing financial losses, he seems to realize that "idealism" will definitely not work in a company. Li Bin said in his self-evaluation: "In the process of pursuing long-termism, the inertia of doing things is too strong, and the inertia of doing things is too strong, and the adjustment speed is not fast, which will bring very high costs." ”
At the media conference, Li Bin also mentioned the contradiction between "long-termism" and "short-term implementation". In his opinion, "individuals can have idealism, such as myself. However, there can be no idealism in doing business, and there can be long-termism. But we also have to avoid pitfalls, know the boundaries of our own resources, and not form a culture of not doing a good job of short-term implementation because of long-termism. ”
Li Bin also emphasized that NIO is also a company with efficient execution and clear goals, and it needs to be very pragmatic to be a business.
To this end, Li Bin gradually reduced costs and increased efficiency. First, it laid off 10% of its workforce, postponed and cut investment in projects that could not improve its financial performance for three years, and then received an additional investment of US$2.2 billion (about 15.7 billion yuan) from Middle East capital CYVN;
Image source: Weibo screenshot
As one of the three giants of the "new car-making forces", NIO's business story may be very good, but when it comes to the essence of business, performance is the basic market, especially with the intensification of competition in the industry, new energy vehicles and NIO have reached an inflection point, and NIO, which has been expanding its own boundaries, will become more and more difficult in the future if it cannot achieve a breakthrough.
Regarding the increasingly fierce market competition in 2024, Li Bin said, "First, it must be miserable to give up illusions about the fierceness of market competition; ”
At the media conference, when asked about "expectations for the new year", Li Bin's answer was "sell cars well." ”
In Li Bin's view, "Survival is not the only purpose, the important thing is to develop, and participating in the finals is not the goal, winning is the goal." Now we can only rush forward. ”