Written by Meng Huiyuan
Editor/ Li Wenjie
排版/ Annalee
From the ET9 of 800,000 yuan to the L60 of 219,900 yuan, NIO, which has always had a high profile, now has to bow its head.
On May 15, NIO officially announced the second brand Ledao. At the press conference, Li Bin praised the brand's first model, the L60, an SUV for the mainstream family market, for "redefining the new standard of family cars", and said that the Tesla Model Y is "longer, wider and more spacious".
After Ai Tiecheng, President of Ledao, took the stage to announce a series of technical highlights such as anti-collision protection, large use space, high battery life and low energy consumption, automatic battery replacement without getting out of the car, and intelligent assisted driving, the brand launch conference ended in the official announcement that the new car will be released in September and delivered in September, and the pre-sale channel has been opened.
Judging from its positioning change from a high-end commercial car to a family car, NIO, driven by the "catfish" of Xiaomi Automobile, has realized that in the mass consumer market, only by embracing young people who value "cost performance" is the real future.
As we all know,Previously"'Baoshi Mi' car owners need to overcome the problem of social fear,Because going out will be watched by everyone"In the ridicule,XiaomiSU7It has fully demonstrated to the outside world,Its young people25~35 years old、The annual income is in the class of 10~300,000 yuan,And the consumer group composed of single groups,How amazing purchasing power can burst out。
However, taking the "preemptive" route, looking forward to capturing young consumers, the road ahead may not be as optimistic as imagined.
In addition to cost performance, young people can be more picky
"Now the price of oil is not low, any car basically has to 6 or 7 corners of a kilometer, and the more expensive one is more than a piece, but the tram can run 300~400 kilometers as long as it is full of 30 yuan, which is too cost-effective." As a small expert in managing money at home, Xue Qi has recently been considering whether to change to a new energy vehicle, "Our leader said that the longer the tram is driven, the more reluctant to drive a gas car, because he is used to such a cheap cost, and then he will feel very expensive and wasteful to drive a gas car. ”
Xue Qi, who was encouraged, also paid attention to new energy vehicles, "I learned about a Blue Mountain SUV under the Wei brand from the short video evaluation, and I feel that the conditions in all aspects are very in line with the needs of our family, but the price is a little high, and the top landing price is more than 300,000 yuan." ”
"When I choose a car, the first consideration is the cost performance, the second consideration is the large space, and the third consideration is the safety factor." But for Xue Qi, in the end, it is necessary to make her make up her mind to pay through many comparisons, "In fact, if you fix the budget price first, you will find that there are too many brands and models to choose from now, so you must fully understand and compare the price, configuration, appearance, and space size before you can choose it." ”
Zheng Fei, who watched it but still didn't pay, admitted frankly that he was excited by the autonomous driving technology of new energy vehicles, so he wanted to wait for the technology to be more mature. Zheng Fei believes that the technology of new energy vehicles has been upgrading, and buying new and not old is the last word, "the family should consider the child, so the SUV is more suitable, the junior brother of our unit bought the extreme krypton, I want to buy the world, although there are related accidents, but now there are more accidents on the road, more Tesla accidents, I feel that this is mainly based on the driving person." ”
After learning about the choices of peers around him, Zheng Fei concluded, "Many people's first tram is based on cost performance, bachelors are basically about 100,000 yuan, small families are based on their ability to pay and then choose, now the tram in addition to BYD's millions of yuan, is the traditional brand (referring to oil cars) plus new energy as a hybrid sold expensive, such as Range Rover new energy can also be millions of yuan, but now the price of emerging brands is good, since Xiaomi SU7 fired, I feel that the choice range of young families has been anchored at around 200,000 yuan, and everyone gritted their teeth and couldn't buy it. ”
In fact, after chatting with some "post-90s" and "post-95s", it was found that "new energy is the first choice for buying a car" has become the consensus of many young people, and when choosing a new energy vehicle brand, they invariably regard "cost-effective" as the primary purchase condition, but it is not limited to this when really placing an order.
Young consumers can indeed be picky enough, because everything is just like what Xue Qi said, and now there are too many new energy vehicle brands in the same price range to choose from. At present, many new energy vehicle brands have to admit that the choice orientation of young consumers is becoming more and more important for them.
Take the field of new energy vehicles" "popular fried chicken" Xiaomi SU7 as an example, during this time it was revealed that "the number of locked orders has exceeded 100,000 units", regardless of whether the news is true or not, Xiaomi Auto, which broke into the field of new energy vehicles as a "dark horse", has brought unprecedented competitive pressure to friends: Since Xiaomi SU7 was listed, Xiaopeng, Wenjie, Zeekr, Zhiji, Zhijie and many other car companies have announced price cuts, and even multiple rounds of price cuts.
Xiaomi SU7 detonates the purchasing power of young people (Source: Xiaomi Auto's official Weibo)
As the widely circulated joke goes: "The thing that other car companies are most afraid of: all the people who buy Xiaomi cars are young people." After all, young people are the mainstream consumer group in the future, and catering to their preferences is the right trend for market development.
Rely on "low prices" to save the day?
Anti-collision protection, large use space, high battery life and low energy consumption, automatic battery replacement without getting out of the car, intelligent assisted driving, the key is that the pre-sale price is only 219,900 yuan...... It seems that even NIO has now taken the route of "civilianization".
But it is not so much that Ledao is targeting young people in the mass market at this time, but that NIO has had to save the "mess" under the high-end positioning.
First of all, NIO's previous high brand positioning and product prices have brought it a certain amount of ownership in the high-end market, but it has also caused it to fall into a long-term sales dilemma.
In 2023, NIO delivered a total of about 160,000 units, but the management's sales target at that time was more than 200,000 units, which obviously failed to meet expectations. In 2024, the situation is still not optimistic, NIO disclosed that its total delivery volume in the first quarter was 30,053 units, down 46% from the previous quarter. Compared with other new energy brands, its delivery volume only ranks fifth, behind Wenjie, Ideal, Leap, and Zeekr (the delivery volume of the latter car companies is 80,400 vehicles, 33,400 vehicles, and 33,000 vehicles, respectively).
Secondly, NIO has been unable to achieve profitability, which has caused NIO to be frequently questioned by the outside world.
Relevant data show that when Li Auto, which also belongs to the high-end camp, achieved annual profitability and net profit of 11.81 billion yuan, NIO's cumulative loss from 2018 to 2023 has exceeded 80 billion yuan. Even its high-interest rate advantage under the high-end route is gradually losing: the financial report data shows that NIO's gross profit margin has dropped from 10.4% in 2022 to 5.5% in 2023, and the annual profit margin of automobiles has dropped from 13.7% to 9.5%.
Subsequently, NIO, which is highly dependent on external blood transfusion, is deeply mired in "huge performance losses" and "sluggish sales", and the dislike attitude of capital is also very clear.
Not only JPMorgan Chase lowered the target price of NIO twice in December last year and February this year, citing the low number of new cars in 2024 and the reluctance of management to sacrifice profits to increase sales, which led to the decline of NIO's evaluation in the US stock market from "neutral" to "underweight". Even Baiji Capital, which is known for its long-term investment in well-known growth stocks such as Amazon and Tesla, also submitted a statement on shareholding changes to the SEC on April 4, stating that in the first quarter of this year, Baiji Capital reduced its holdings of nearly 100 million shares of NIO, and its shares decreased from 115 million shares (5.5% of NIO's total share capital) to 18.91 million shares, a decrease of 83%, which is almost liquidated.
Finally, NIO's performance in the Hong Kong stock market is also embarrassing.
At the time of writing, NIO's share price closed at HK$42.2, which was only about 20% of its high of HK$199.2. Even compared with HK$73.6 at the beginning of the year, it has fallen by nearly 43% in just over a quarter.
NIO stock price action
In the midst of the crisis, NIO urgently needs a key variable to restore confidence in the market. In 2024, NIO's main brand NIO will not launch a new model, so it can only rely on the long-brewing "second brand" Ledao to help achieve sales growth. In Li Bin's previous words, "'Alps' (the previous code name of NIO's second brand, which refers to the current so-called 'Ledao') will have a higher priority than gross profit margin." ”
Entering the pinnacle game, Ledao speeded up
"We don't want to use cost performance to summarize the competitiveness of Ledao, but Ledao does have a better service system, more competitive prices and better product experience." On the eve of the press conference, Li Bin's speech showed his sufficient self-confidence, and also emphasized that Ledao's pricing will be one of its competitive advantages.
Judging from the official announcement of the press conference, based on the pre-sale price of 219,900 yuan, some people speculate that if the BaaS battery leasing scheme is adopted, the price may even be as low as 170,000 yuan.
Ledao L60
Speculation aside, judging from the reality of the situation, this battle for young people is more fierce than imagined. Because in this price range, there are now many strong opponents such as Xpeng G6, Xpeng G9, Wenjie M7, Zhiji LS6, and Tesla Model Y.
With the debut of AVATR 07, Zhijie's full SUV and other models, as well as the Xiaomi SUV that will be launched next year, as well as the ideal L6 that has been listed, Wenjie M5, etc., the market competition for the 20~300,000 yuan gear has become extremely fierce, and the "family car" track can be described as a red sea, from mileage, intelligent driving technology, to interior design, user service, to the size of the space, the appearance of the model, etc., each brand model is trying its best to show its uniqueness. In order to win the favor of consumers.
Judging from the feedback from relevant netizens after Ledao's release, many people expressed their expectations for the pre-sale of the product, which is very "cost-effective": "If there is no battery, I don't know if 170,000 can be sold out, but it must not sell badly" "The appearance is handsome, the battery replacement is much more advantageous than the charging speed, and the price is fragrant" "I have made up my mind, the battery replacement is +900W, there is no reason not to place an order"......
Of course, in addition to the cost performance, Ledao also has exclusive advantages that have been attributed by Li Bin to: the service network and charging and swapping system that Weilai has established. Li Bin called it a "late-mover" strategy, that is, starting from the high-end market, laying a solid foundation in technology, infrastructure, enterprise system capabilities, etc., and then gradually participating in more brutal competition in the mass market.
In other words, since 2016, NIO has continuously invested more than 43 billion yuan in R&D in exchange for more than 8,700 patents, as well as the "moat" of the charging and swapping system that NIO has invested heavily in (since the beginning of 2021, NIO has entered the implementation stage, NIO currently has 2,415 battery swap stations and 22,449 charging piles), all of which will be used by Ledao. Even NIO said that in 2024, the company will still increase investment in the field of charging and swapping infrastructure, and will start to lay out fourth-generation battery swap stations in April, which are compatible with both brands.
But these "burning money" in exchange for the advantages, in the end can be converted into sales through Ledao and assist Weiwei to achieve self-hematopoiesis for the time being, continue to "burn money" to increase technology research and development and expand the scope of infrastructure has been put on the bright side before Ledao goes on sale, combined with the Weilai crisis mentioned above, the problem that Weilai needs to face at this stage is that Ledao L60, which will be officially released and delivered in September, may not have much time left for it to "save the field".
How to speed up the launch of the new car may be the primary proposition of the "debut" of the L60.