Now the domestic new energy vehicle market has undergone earth-shaking changes, Tesla's hegemony is not as good as before, and its influence is slowly weakening, but it is still famous, many novice buyers who have just come into contact with electric vehicles, will still think of Tesla first, and compare it with domestic cars, Tesla's industry status is still not to be underestimated.
For a long time, some domestic brand models have been trying to challenge Tesla, and although the result is a threat to Tesla, there is still a certain gap with it in terms of sales. Now, it is the turn of NIO's "Ledao" to make a move and directly challenge Tesla.
Will it behave differently?
Who is "Ledao"?
Ledao is the second brand of NIO, and the name of the Ledao brand is taken from the name of "happy family, good family". From the meaning of the name Ledao, we can see that the user group it is aimed at is home users.
In Ledao's view, family happiness and family care are the concept of Ledao Automobile's definition and development of products. Family fun is the value of family user experience, and the bigger the better. Having a good family is the cost of owning a car in the whole life cycle, and the better it is.
Unlike the NIO brand, which is positioned in the high-end market of more than 300,000 yuan, the Ledao brand focuses on mainstream family market users and pursues volume and market share. As the trump card of NIO's downward "onslaught", Ledao's first car, Ledao L60, will be directly benchmarked against Tesla Model Y, with a lower price. Li Bin once mentioned that the cost of this car will be about 10% lower than that of Tesla Model Y.
In 2023, NIO's sales reached 160038 units, an increase of 30.7% from the previous year. From January to April this year, a total of 45,673 vehicles were delivered, an increase of 21.2% year-on-year. Although sales have increased, in terms of average monthly deliveries, NIO has not yet fully reached its target of selling 20,000 units per month.
Sales did not meet expectations, which also put pressure on NIO's performance.
In March this year, NIO released its full-year financial report for 2023. Total revenue reached 55.62 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.9%, a record high. However, the net loss for the whole year also set a new record, reaching 20.72 billion yuan, an increase of 43.5% year-on-year, that is, although the revenue increased, the profit did not increase.
In terms of the external environment, the intensifying price war in China's auto market, as well as the rise of emerging forces and traditional car companies, have brought a lot of pressure to NIO. NIO urgently needs to expand its sales scale. Launching a differentiated brand for the mass market is one of NIO's important strategies to expand sales.
"Achieving growth with a new mass-market brand is a top priority for the company in 2024." This sentence can also show the importance that Weilai or Li Bin attaches to the Ledao brand.
So, can the lower price and cost-effective Ledao L60 become a popular model for NIO this year, competing with the Model Y, which has been the best-selling car for a long time?
With a pre-sale of 219,900 yuan, the Ledao L60 is 30,000 yuan cheaper than the Model Y
On May 15, NIO's second brand, Ledao, was officially released, and its first mid-size SUV, Ledao L60, was unveiled and announced the pre-sale price. The pre-sale price of the new model is 219,900 yuan, which is 30,000 yuan cheaper than the current Model Y, and the new model will be launched and delivered in September. Now pay a deposit of 2,000 yuan, you can deduct 6,000 yuan for the purchase of the car, NIO brand users who buy Ledao L60 will receive 30,000 points after picking up the car, and ES8 founding users will receive 50,000 points after picking up the car.
In terms of appearance, Ledao L60 adopts a closed front face design, which is a new attempt in the NIO brand. Its split headlight design is characteristic, with "L" shaped daytime running lights on top and slender high and low beam clusters below.
The car's headlight clusters have a split structure, with the L-shaped daytime running lights on the top that look like eyebrows, and the high and low beam clusters below are designed to be very thin, giving it a very modern feel. Moreover, there are raised lines on the front bonnet of the new car, which adds to the sense of power.
From the side, the Ledao L60 has short front and rear overhangs, a coupe-like roofline, raised wheel eyebrows, and a low visual center of gravity, giving people a sporty feeling. It also comes with petal-shaped low-drag wheels and concealed door handles with a drag coefficient of Cd 0.229, which helps to increase the vehicle's range.
Instead of a floating roof, the L60 has blackened window trims to enhance the car's sophistication. In terms of dimensions, it has a length, width and height of 4828/1930/1616mm and a wheelbase of 2950mm, positioning it as a mid-size SUV.
In terms of tail design, the Ledao L60 looks sporty, and the design of the ducktail adds a touch of performance. The taillights do not adopt the current popular through-type design, but a slightly slender shape, with the embedded trapezoidal license plate area and the black bumper below, which has a strong sense of layering. It is worth mentioning that the car also has a liftback tailgate with a large opening for easy stuffing.
In terms of trunk space, the official said that Ledao L60 can easily fit two 28-inch, two 24-inch and one 20-inch suitcase, which is enough to meet the luggage needs of a family of five.
The interior features a wrap-around layout and is equipped with ? A 17.2-inch central control screen, a 13-inch high-definition HUD safety screen, and an 8-inch exclusive rear entertainment control screen bring safe driving, free car control, immersive entertainment, each performing its own duties, and efficient linkage.
In terms of power, the Ledao L60 is based on the 900V silicon carbide platform (NT3), the same platform as the NIO ET9, the comprehensive efficiency of the electric drive system reaches 92.3%, and it provides single-motor rear-wheel drive and dual-motor four-wheel drive options, the specific parameters have not yet been announced, but the energy consumption is as low as 12.1kW/100km, which is lower than the 12.5kW/100km of Tesla Model Y.
The new car adopts a front MacPherson and rear five-link independent suspension, and is equipped with FSD variable damping suspension, which can adjust the drag according to the road conditions. It also offers BaaS battery leasing options, which can be used for daily commuting with 75 kWh and 100 kWh battery packs, and can be exchanged for 150 kWh battery packs through battery swapping stations for long-distance trips, corresponding to a range of 555 km, 730 km and more than 1,000 km respectively.
In terms of intelligent driving, Ledao L60 provides a pure visual intelligent driving solution that is ready to be delivered. The whole system is equipped with 30 high-performance perception hardware as standard, including 1 4D imaging millimeter-wave radar with a detection range of 370 meters, 7 high-definition cameras with 8 million pixels, with a forward detection distance of 687 meters, and 4 starlight-level 360-degree cameras, which can be seen clearly even in low light of 12lux.
In terms of safety configuration, Ledao L60 is equipped with a high-strength occupant protection compartment and chassis protection compartment as standard, using 2000Mpa ultra-high-strength steel, as well as 45 safety configurations such as collision warning, automatic emergency braking, and blind spot monitoring, which comprehensively protect the safety of occupants and batteries.
It can be said that the configuration of the Ledao L60 is "aimed at" this Model Y.
In addition to L60, what other killer features does Ledao have?
When everyone mentions NIO, they can think of its "dare to be the first" energy. NIO is the first in the high-end EV market to build a charging and swapping network, and has been at the forefront of innovation, which has become a hallmark of NIO.
Moving on to the Ledao brand, it targets a broader market of home users. It brings the user experience that NIO has invested in R&D and accumulated over the past decade.
In Li Bin's words, Ledao's strategy is to "dare to be the queen of the world", which means that Ledao should serve a wider range of family users, and provide those mature technologies that have been tested in practice to everyone in a more economical way, so that the price of high-quality technologies and products is more affordable to the people.
With the goal of "global quality benchmarking", NIO's quality management system has achieved high-quality production of more than 500,000 units. The company has created an evaluation system of "Quality Excellent Partner" to lead the innovation of the industrial chain cooperation model, promote the co-creation and reshaping of the supply chain, and more than 300 excellent industry supply chain partners have formed effective support for the Ledao brand. The mature manufacturing, quality and supply chain management system has laid a solid foundation for Ledao's large-scale and high-quality production.
Not only that, but a complete power supply system has been established. The NIO brand is the best new energy vehicle brand in the industry. Through NIO's "rechargeable, swappable, and upgradeable" full-scenario energy service system, Ledao models can enjoy more than 1,000 battery swap stations in the initial stage of delivery, allowing users to set off with a full battery in 3 minutes.
The Ledao brand has stood on the shoulders of giants from the very beginning. Relying on the R&D costs and continuously increasing operational strength that NIO has invested, coupled with the unique service system and charging and swapping network in the industry, these have become the core competitiveness of the Ledao brand, and it is also a barrier that other brands are difficult to overcome in a short period of time.
Not only that, based on NIO's complete R&D system, Ledao has "innate advantages" in terms of vehicle architecture, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, driving performance, safety performance, reliability, etc., and Ledao L60 can enjoy the experience of high-speed NOA and urban NOA when it is delivered, which is more attractive than the launch of "futures" by some brands.
All of the above can further make the Ledao brand enter the eyes of consumers, and at the same time make Ledao L60 an unavoidable option in everyone's car purchase list.
Write at the end
This year is also the 10th anniversary of the establishment of NIO, and the NIO brand has experienced too much and is constantly maturing from the beginning of the high-spirited brand, to the crisis, to the revitalization, and now to the release of the second brand.
Let's go back to Ledao, from the perspective of various data indicators, Ledao L60 has a strong competitiveness in comprehensive product strength. However, it will be difficult to completely defeat the Tesla Model Y, which has built up a high level of brand awareness and consumer loyalty. However, with strong product strength, dealer network, energy supplement network and mature service system, it is still possible to compete with it.