Benchmarking the Tesla Model Y, the price is close to that of the Xiaomi SU7, and the Ledao was officially released.
On the evening of May 15, NIO officially released its second brand Ledao, and the first model of Ledao, L60, was also officially unveiled. Ai Tiecheng, senior vice president of NIO and president of Ledao Automobile, said that the pre-sale price of Ledao L60 starts at 219,900 yuan, which is 30,000 yuan cheaper than Tesla Model Y, and Ledao L60 will be released and delivered in September this year.
Image source: Screenshot of the press conference
Compared with the NIO brand, Ledao has a lower positioning, and it is the first work of NIO to deploy from high-end pure electric vehicles to the mainstream home market. This means that NIO's multi-brand strategy has officially landed. At present, under the dual pressure of losses and poor sales, NIO is in urgent need of a high-volume model, can Ledao reverse the current situation of NIO and help NIO get out of the quagmire?
It is 30,000 yuan cheaper than the Model Y
The pre-sale price starts at 219,900 yuan
Li Bin, chairman and CEO of NIO, said that Ledao is positioned as a family smart electric mid-size SUV. Li Bin said that the Ledao L60 is longer, wider and more spacious than the Model Y.
Image source: Screenshot of the press conference
Li Bin said in the introduction of the Logo of the Ledao brand that Ledao is positioned in the family market, and the logo icon of Ledao is an upward road, implying that the family days are all the way up, and the theme color of Ledao is Dawn Orange.
At this press conference, Ai Tiecheng, president of Ledao, also met with the public. According to public information, Ai Tiecheng joined NIO in 2021 and is currently the senior vice president of NIO and the former vice president of the marketing department of Disney China Resort.
Li Bin believes that Ai Tiecheng's appointment as the president of Ledao is very in line with the concept of Ledao, "He is a person who can not only understand family users, but also bring joy to families." ”
Ai Tiecheng introduced the product performance of Ledao at the press conference. Ai Tiecheng said that Ledao L60 is equipped with a 900V high-voltage architecture. There are three versions of Ledao, with a standard range of 555KM, a long range of 730KM, and an ultra-long range of over 1000KM. The energy consumption is the lowest among mid-size SUVs in the world, with energy consumption of 12.1 kWh per 100 kilometers, which is slightly lower than that of the Model Y, and it is also the lowest drag coefficient among production SUVs in the world, with a drag coefficient of 0.229.
It is reported that the first model of the Ledao brand, the Ledao L60, will be developed on NIO's third-generation technology platform NT3.0, benchmarking against Tesla Model Y, and focusing on the 250,000-yuan family intelligent pure electric SUV market.
On the day of the press conference, Ledao L60 also opened pre-sale, with a pre-sale price of 219,900 yuan, 30,000 yuan cheaper than Model Y, and will be released and delivered in September this year.
Although it is benchmarked against the Tesla Model Y, the price of Ledao is close to that of Xiaomi SU7. This price slightly exceeded market expectations, and the market expected that the price of Ledao L60 would reach below 200,000 yuan.
Can NIO reverse the status quo?
For the current NIO, Ledao bears more important responsibilities for NIO: boosting sales, diluting costs, and reversing losses.
From January to April this year, NIO delivered 45,700 new vehicles, with a monthly average of 11,400. Compared with other new power car companies, Weilai's sales performance this year is not outstanding, and the sales volume in the first four months is less than half of that of Wenjie and Ideal, and it is also lagging behind ZEEKR and Leap, and has fallen from the first echelon of new forces to the second echelon.
NIO's current product matrix has a total of three series: ET, ES, and EC, which are positioned in the mid-to-high-end, and the lowest price is ET5, with a starting price of 298,000 yuan. In June last year, after the price of the whole NIO series was reduced by 30,000 yuan, the effect was immediate, and the monthly sales of NIO rushed to 20,000 units in July of that year. However, from August last year to April this year, NIO's monthly deliveries never returned to 20,000 units.
NIO has not yet made a profit. In 2023, NIO's net loss will further expand to 20.72 billion yuan, and its gross profit margin will decline by 4.9 percentage points year-on-year. Since 2021, NIO's gross profit margin and vehicle gross profit margin have gradually declined, with gross profit margins of 18.9%, 10.4%, and 5.5% from 2021 to 2023, respectively.
Compared with the NIO brand, Ledao is positioned in the mainstream family market and has a lower price than the NIO brand. In the face of fierce competition in the auto market in 2024, NIO has high hopes for the launch of a second brand.
"This year, NIO is confident that it will return to the delivery target of 20,000 units per month." Li Bin said a few days ago.
It is worth noting that the pre-sale price of Ledao is 219,900 yuan, and there are many popular models in the price band, such as BYD, Wenjie, Xiaomi, Tesla, Ideal, Zeekr, Xiaopeng and other brands have explosive products.
Among them, the Ideal L6 was launched on April 18 and is the first model of Li Auto within 300,000 yuan, positioned as a compact SUV, with a price of 249,800-279,800 yuan, and orders from April 18 to May 5 exceeded 41,000 units.
In addition, on the day of Ledao's listing, AITO Automobile announced that the new M5 of Wenjie started large-scale delivery. Within 72 hours of the release of the new M5, Dading exceeded 10,000 units, with the starting price of the new M5 being 249,800 yuan and the new M7 Plus being 249,800 yuan.
Tesla's Model Y starts at 249,900 yuan, making it Tesla's "king in sales" product.
In June, Xpeng Motors will also launch a new brand "MONA" to position itself in the low-end mainstream competitive market and give full play to the differentiated competitiveness of Xpeng Intelligent Driving.
From this point of view, the price band in which Ledao is located is very competitive.
Although the price band is highly competitive, some industry insiders believe that there is still a lot of market space in this price band, "the current 200,000-300,000 yuan market is really stable and there are not many new energy vehicles with monthly sales of more than 10,000 units, which also means that there are still many unmet needs." If you go back to the era of fuel vehicles three or five years ago, in the range of 200,000-300,000 yuan, there are quite a few models with stable monthly sales of more than 10,000 units, so there is still a lot of space. ”
It remains to be seen whether Ledao can stand out in the fierce market competition.
Reviewer: Xiong Yonghong Editor: Yu Hongbo Proofreader: Jiao Yuanyuan Producer: Li Ruoyu
Issued by: Sun Hong