NIO released a new brand, Ledao, and the U.S. stock market fell sharply at the opening, slapping its face

AutoRadar

2024-05-16 00:15Published in Shanghai

May 15 coincides with the International Day of Families, on which NIO unveiled its new brand "ONVO". The new brand focuses on family cars, and the first model unveiled is the mid-size SUV Ledao L60, which is benchmarked against Tesla Model Y, and has a number of "small advantages" in performance, with a pre-sale price of 219,900 yuan. According to the current pre-sale "urine" of car companies, when it is officially listed, the upper limit of rights and interests may be less than 200,000 yuan.

Judging from the current price range of all NIO models, it is roughly 300,000-500,000 yuan, which is a proper "quasi-luxury" brand. If you ask NIO users what the reason for buying a car is, its unique battery swap network should account for a large proportion. However, this time, as soon as Ledao came out, it directly pulled half of Weilai's Buff, such as sharing the 1,000+ battery swap stations and 20,000+ charging facilities that Weilai has built so far, as well as sharing Weilai's vehicle, three-electric, intelligent and other systems accumulated over the years, and full-link digital intelligent engineering. In other words, Ledao is actually NIO with a changed LOGO, but the price has "plunged".

At the press conference, Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, said: "Over the past three years, the Ledao brand has established its own system capabilities, and combined with the accumulation of NIO in the past 10 years, the launch of the Ledao brand has come naturally. The implementation of the multi-brand strategy gives us the opportunity and ability to serve a wider range of users. With the support of the company's system competitiveness, we are full of confidence in the development of the NIO brand and the Ledao brand. ”

Let's focus on the key point, and the key message point in this sentence is "serving a wider range of users". How do you serve a wider range of users? There is no other way but to increase sales. And the most effective and simple way to increase sales is nothing more than to reduce prices. It is easy to have an accident with the direct price reduction of NIO, and the old car owners will feel that they have been "stabbed in the back", so it is much more tactful to release a new brand and take a detour. Well, the logic is closed, I guess that's what NIO thinks.

After the Ledao press conference, coinciding with the opening of the U.S. stock market, NIO fell sharply at the opening, with the highest drop of 9.93%. It can be seen that investors also believe that the release of Ledao will affect the development of NIO to a certain extent. Even if sales are high, it will pull down profitability to a certain extent. From the consumer's point of view, the full set of NIO's resources has been transplanted to Ledao, and the price has been greatly reduced, which does not mean that NIO can actually reduce costs. So, Weilai sells expensive, whose leeks are cut?

Thinking about it, it is indeed embarrassing for Weilai, the biggest selling point of the brand is the battery swap, and the battery swap network is the most expensive "infrastructure" project, and it took nearly ten years to complete the project. In order not to backstab old car owners, they are ready to go to the new brand, but this biggest selling point can't be hidden. If you don't change the battery, it is equivalent to tying your hands and competing products to fight shirtless, winning or losing; The battery swap will affect the follow-up development of the main brand and the confidence of investors. As the saying goes, "money is hard to earn, is hard to eat", the words are not rough.

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Personal opinion, for reference only