China Fund News reporter Feng Yao
The long-awaited second brand of NIO has finally been unveiled.
On the evening of May 15, at the press conference of the second brand of NIO, Ledao, Li Bin, founder and chairman of NIO, positioned the brand for the mainstream family market. The brand's first model, the L60, will be launched and delivered in September, with a pre-sale price set at CNY 219,900.
At the whole press conference, Tesla became the object of the comprehensive anchoring of the Ledao brand, from the body size to the energy consumption level, the L60 is fully on par with the Tesla Model Y.
From the perspective of the industry, the significance of Ledao's "debut" is not to become a "challenger" of Tesla, but to shoulder the heavy responsibility of NIO's impact on scale.
Fully anchored to Tesla
"The release of the Ledao brand is based on NIO's accumulation in technology, products, services, and the construction of a charging and swapping system." Li Bin said so at the press conference. He revealed that NIO has built 2,415 battery swap stations and 22,449 charging piles.
And this huge infrastructure network laid the foundation for the launch of the Ledao brand.
At the press conference, Ai Tiecheng, senior vice president of NIO and president of Ledao Automobile, announced the first model of Ledao, L60. According to NIO, the Ledao L60 is positioned as a family intelligent electric mid-size SUV.
Li Bin has previously said that as the second brand of Weilai, Ledao will focus on the 200,000 yuan market. And in this level of the market, Tesla occupies an unshakable position.
Throughout the press conference, Ledao L60 was anchored to Tesla Model Y in all directions, and the Toyota Rav4 model also became its comparison object. But in fact, in the 200,000-level market, in addition to Tesla Model Y, Xpeng G6, Ideal L6 and BYD Song L will also become its competitors.
In terms of body size, Li Bin particularly emphasized that compared with Model Y, Ledao L60 is comprehensively surpassed. It is reported that the body length of the Ledao L60 is 4828mm, the width is 1930mm, and the wheelbase has reached 2950mm.
In addition, in terms of energy consumption, Ai Tiecheng also said that the energy consumption of Ledao L60 is 12.1kWh per 100 kilometers, which is lower than the Model Y's 12.5kWh per 100 kilometers.
He revealed that in terms of battery life, Ledao L60 has three battery packs: 555 km for the standard endurance version, 730 km for the long-range version, and more than 1000 km for the ultra-long endurance version. At the same time, the model is also equipped with a 900V high-voltage architecture and has a fully self-developed 900V silicon carbide main electric drive system.
It is worth noting that, like the NIO brand, the whole Ledao system supports battery swapping, which is also the energy supplement mode that the NIO system is proud of. Ai Tiecheng said with a smile, "Ledao is powered, the second in the industry". The implication is that in terms of energy supplementation, Ledao is second only to the "same brother" Weilai.
It is reported that based on the charging and swapping system created by Weilai, Ledao's "debut" comes with 1,000+ battery swap stations and 25,000+ free charging piles.
In addition, Ledao L60 adopts a lidar-free version of the intelligent driving solution. The car is equipped with 30 high-performance perception hardware as standard, NVIDIA Orin-X intelligent driving core (254TOPS computing power), including 4D imaging millimeter wave radar, 7 8 million pixel high-definition cameras, 4 starlight 360-degree cameras and so on.
In terms of the most eye-catching price, the pre-sale price of the Ledao L60 starts at 219,900 yuan, which is 30,000 yuan cheaper than the Model Y. The model will be launched and delivered in September this year.
Attack at scale
From the perspective of the industry, the significance of the release of the Ledao brand is not just to add a competitor to Tesla. The brand's debut should be seen as a signal for NIO to launch an impact on scale. After all, the lure of scale for car companies is obvious.
In the past year, the price war in the car rim has lowered the gross profit margin of many car companies, but BYD's gross profit margin has increased against the trend. For the whole year of 2023, BYD sold 3.024 million vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 62%, ranking among the top 10 in global car sales for the first time.
Due to the continuous increase in sales scale, BYD's annual gross profit margin has reached 23.02%, while the company's indicator is 20.39% in 2022.
On the contrary, Tesla's gross profit margin on vehicle sales fell from 26.2% in 2022 to 17% in 2023. In terms of profitability, Tesla has been completely left behind by BYD.
Taking Li Auto, which is also a new force car company, as an example, the delivery of the whole year last year was high, which made this new force car company achieve a breakthrough. Li Auto achieved an annual turnaround for the first time in 2023. Its full-year net profit in 2023 reached 11.81 billion yuan, compared with a net loss of 2.03 billion yuan in 2022.
In the past year, Li Auto's vehicle gross profit margin has reached 21.5%, which is already on par with BYD, and at the same time, Tesla is also left behind.
On the other hand, although NIO has always ranked first in high-end pure electric vehicles with more than 300,000 yuan, the capacity of the high-end market is limited, and its monthly delivery volume has always hovered between 10,000-20,000 units.
Since entering 2024, NIO's sales have shown a steady growth trend. According to official data, in January ~ April, NIO delivered about 45,700 new vehicles. Among them, in April, NIO delivered about 15,600 new vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 134.6% and a month-on-month increase of 31.6%.
As for the reasons for the continuous growth of sales during the year, NIO previously explained that it is related to the promotion of the new BaaS service and the 1 billion replacement subsidy policy released by NIO, and it is also related to the large market environment of "oil to electricity" and NIO's continuous internal accumulation.
At the beginning of May, NIO also launched a "zero down payment" car purchase plan, and "trade-in" can enjoy an exclusive subsidy of up to 20,000 yuan. "2024 is a critical year for new energy vehicle companies to gain a firm foothold, and the competition is destined to be very fierce." According to Li Bin's plan, in 2024, NIO's monthly sales will return to the level of 20,000 units.
Therefore, in the eyes of the industry, Ledao is a key step for NIO to achieve large-scale growth and amortize costs. Li Bin previously explained that the NIO brand and the new mass-market brand will be similar to the relationship between Audi-Volkswagen and Lexus-Toyota. Many institutions believe that the launch of the second brand Ledao is expected to make a considerable contribution to its monthly sales.
Thirdly, the brand is already on the way
It is understood that NIO also plans to launch a third brand Firefly in 2025, which will enter the red sea of 100,000 yuan new energy vehicles with this brand.
In addition to the Ledao brand, NIO is also developing a second sub-brand codenamed "Firefly", positioning entry-level small electric vehicles, which is expected to be less than 200,000 yuan.
According to Li Bin, "the three brands of NIO focus on the high-end market, the mass mainstream market, and the entry-level market, with price positioning of more than 300,000 yuan, more than 200,000 yuan, and more than 100,000 yuan respectively."
He once said, "The third brand was originally planned to be released in the second and third quarters of this year, and the product was ready, but considering the entire brand sequence, the release time was postponed to the second quarter of next year." ”
Editor: Captain
Review: Muyu