Bigger and cheaper than the Model Y, it's a great value for money

Auto per person

2024-05-16 15:59Posted on the official account of Beijing Daily People Club

Larger in size and cheaper than Model Y, the Ledao L60 is here to abandon lidar and take the route of pure visual intelligence.

As the second brand of NIO, Ledao bears the heavy responsibility of volume. At the brand press conference, Ledao frequently pulled out the various data of the Model Y for benchmarking, unceremoniously showing its "ambition".

In the past, NIO occasionally euphemistically mentioned friends and competitors, and the wording was full of mildness and restraint; Today's Ledao has obviously become more high-profile and more flamboyant, and every word reveals a desire for sales.

The gameplay has completely changed.

Text | Wei Bing

Edit | Li Huanhuan

Operations | potato

Crush Tesla in an all-round way?

After the press conference, Li Bin and the Ledao management team held a review meeting overnight, and after seeing the booking, the executives finally breathed a sigh of relief for the time being. Ai Tiecheng, president of Ledao Automobile, revealed, "The number of bookings far exceeded expectations. ”

The hope of reversing sales is all on Ledao.

On May 15, NIO's second brand, Ledao, was finally launched. Aiming at the price band of 200,000 yuan and facing a wider range of family users, Ledao has become the "hope of the whole village".

In order to truly meet the needs of family users, Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, revealed at the press conference that in the past few years, the Ledao team has visited 553 real family users in first-tier to fifth-tier cities, and gained an in-depth understanding of the needs of different family users in different regions, before finalizing every function of Ledao's first car, the L60.

▲ Li Bin at the press conference. Photo / Ledao official

Ai Tiecheng took the large screen in the car as an example. When doing user research, it was found that the large screen was used most frequently, so "make the central control screen the best," and reduce the excessive effort spent on additional products. "What is not used frequently, no matter how well it is done, it has no value."

"Focusing on the core needs of home users and making the most suitable products is what Ledao pursues."

Chen Yang, who is engaged in R&D at NIO, recalls that from the early days of R&D, Ledao has been highly valued within NIO. "The company often preaches the goals of Ledao, and everyone will also focus on reporting the progress of Ledao when filling in OKRs."

Zhang Yan, a R&D staff member of Weilai, agrees that the nodes of Ledao are in a hurry, and the R&D atmosphere of Weilai is actually not 'volume', "but the nodes of Ledao's intelligent driving project have been completed ahead of schedule."

Chen Yang's intelligent driving team, which is also responsible for the development of Ledao's intelligent driving project, told everyone that Li Bin often goes to experience new features that have not yet been launched in Ledao, and will give feedback. Chen Yang and his colleagues have received feedback from Li Bin more than a dozen times, and other projects have never received such treatment.

After the birth of Ledao, the internal atmosphere of Weilai, which has always been peaceful, also has a little more gunpowder flavor, and Li Bin began to encourage everyone to "moderate involution" internally.

Waiting from top to bottom, Ledao's first battle cannot be lost. NIO is generally confident in Ledao's market performance. There is even a bit of a desperate meaning, "If Ledao is not successful, many colleagues may leave." Zhang Yan sighed.

Chen Yang believes that price is the main factor, "the sales volume (of the NIO brand) was not good before, mainly because the price was too high, and the cost performance (of Ledao) was more in line with market expectations."

In order to highlight the cost-effectiveness of Ledao, the official frequently pulls out the Tesla Model Y, the world's top single model, for benchmarking.

Positioned as a family intelligent electric mid-size SUV, Ledao has put a lot of thought into space, after all, the demand for space of family users has always been not the highest, only higher. According to the official data, the L60 is 4828mm long and has a wheelbase of 2950mm, which are just a little larger than the Model Y.

It is these few centimeters of difference that can accommodate two men with a height of 1.83 meters in the front and rear rows of the car at the same time to achieve "Erlang's leg freedom".

▲ Ledao L60. Photo / Ledao official

In addition, Ledao L60 is also equipped with a global 900V high-voltage architecture, with the lowest wind resistance of Cd 0.229 in the world's mass-produced SUV, and energy consumption of 12.1kWh per 100 kilometers, which is just a little ahead of Model Y.

At the same time, Ledao is also learning from Tesla's excellence. For example, the Ledao L60 uses a pure vision solution and is not equipped with lidar. The advantage of this is to further reduce the cost, "the pure vision solution is more costly," Chen Yang told Auto. However, this technical solution is a great test for the algorithm, "If the algorithm is not powerful, pure vision cannot compare with lidar in terms of recognition and accuracy." An example of a new force's intelligent driving R&D personnel: "Two days ago, a new force's car mistakenly identified the vehicle on the billboard, which is a typical pure visual bad case. ”

Battery swapping is the biggest hole card

Li Bin once said in an interview with the media at the Beijing Auto Show that Ledao's sales will be better than Xiaopeng's second brand and Xiaomi SU7. A large part of the reason comes from his prediction of market segments, "in the household market of more than 200,000, there is a chance to produce a single monthly sales of 50,000 or 60,000 models, even if it is pure electric."

Whether it can sell 50,000 or 60,000 yuan a month, pricing is a key part.

At the press conference, Ai Tiecheng, president of Ledao Automobile, announced that the pre-sale price of Ledao L60 starts at 219,900 yuan, and he emphasized that it is "30,000 yuan cheaper than Model Y". The new model will be officially launched in September, and deliveries will begin at the same time.

▲ Ai Tiecheng announced the pre-sale price of Ledao L60 at the press conference. Photo / Ledao official

According to the convention of the car circle, the pre-sale price of a new car is only a test price, and the car company will determine the final price according to the market's feedback on the pre-sale price and the order situation. Therefore, the starting price of Ledao L60 will most likely be lower than 219,900.

Ledao will rely on NIO's supply chain and R&D foundation to reduce costs as much as possible. Li Bin believes that by taking advantage of the existing supply chain and reducing costs in R&D, the goal of delivering 10,000 units per month can be 10% cheaper than Model Y.

If the BaaS solution is adopted, the price of Ledao L60 may fall below 200,000 yuan.

In March this year, in a group interview after NIO's long-life battery strategic communication meeting, Li Bin made it clear that the second brand (i.e., Ledao) will definitely continue to adopt the BaaS model, because the Ledao model provides a smaller standard range than the 75kWh battery pack of the NIO brand, so it "will be cheaper than NIO's standard range BaaS".

Some analysts believe that the Ledao L60 will be available with 60kWh, 90kWh and 150kWh batteries. Based on the calculation of the 60 kWh battery, the capacity is 80% of the 75 kWh battery pack of the NIO model, and according to this ratio, the price of the Ledao L60 car that chooses the BaaS service may be about 56,000 yuan lower than the buyout price. In other words, the starting price of Ledao L60 under BaaS may be around 160,000 yuan.

▲ Ledao L60 energy consumption. Photo / Ledao official

At this price, in the face of Xpeng G6, Tesla Model Y, Xiaomi SU7, Ideal L6 and other models, it can only be said that it can be a dozen, but it is not enough to open up the differentiation advantage.

You must know that the starting price of the new top Xiaomi SU7 is only 215,900 yuan, and the starting price of the ideal L6 is 249,800 yuan. The just-released Zhiji L6 has an equity price of less than 200,000.

If you want to impress users who are dazzled by the new car, it also depends on whether the specific configuration is attractive enough.

In the hands of NIO, there is also a scarce trump card - battery swapping.

According to official information, Ledao Auto will share NIO Power's "rechargeable, swappable and upgradeable" full-scene energy service system, and users can enjoy the battery swap network composed of more than 1,000 battery swap stations when they pick up their cars. Ai Tiecheng used a set of data to make this advantage more visual, Ledao was born with 1000+ battery swap stations, 25000+ free charging piles, and 1000000+ third-party charging piles.

▲ Ledao L60 battery replacement. Photo / Ledao official

Before the press conference ended, the quasi-car proposition was decided, and he told everyone Auto that he ordered the L60, "just to be able to change the battery." "Zhang Qian has an electric car, Geely Geometry E, and a petrol car, BMW X3. The charging experience is always poor when using the tram, so consider buying a car that can be swapped out. Zhang Qianlai hesitated between NIO ET5 and Ledao L60, and later ordered L60, "betting on the new brand to have the right to replace batteries for free".

Chen Yang believes that users' perception of the convenience of battery swapping will become stronger and stronger, and battery swapping may become one of the criteria for users to consider when buying a car.

In addition, NIO's unique and exclusive gameplay methods, such as community and driving, will also empower Ledao to strive for more market share.

However, the difficulty lies in how to balance and how to play the user operation that NIO is proud of, which can not only attract new users, but also not make old users feel stabbed in the back.

Li Bin told Auto that NIO will balance the rights and interests of owners of the two brands by building an exclusive network and a shared network. In addition, as the scale of Ledao users climbs, the scale of service facilities such as battery swap stations will also keep up.

Ledao will not drag down the gross margin

NIO needs a volume model too much.

Judging from the sales list of new energy vehicle companies in April, NIO's situation is not optimistic. According to the retail sales data of new energy passenger vehicles released by the China Passenger Car Association in April, NIO ranked 12th and has fallen out of the top 10 list.

Li Bin couldn't help but joke to himself, "If we can only sell more than 10,000 cars every month in the future, Lihong and I will have to find jobs." ”

In an all-staff letter at the beginning of last year, Li Bin reflected on the problems existing in NIO, "In 2022, the team will continue to expand, but there are many cases of unclear responsibilities, inconsistent goals, imperfect processes, and duplicate construction, and there is still a lot of room for improvement in efficiency." ”

In order to sell cars, NIO began to emphasize sales capacity, and at the earnings call in the second quarter of last year, it put forward new requirements for front-line sales - the ability to achieve "30,000 monthly locks". At the same time, NIO began to expand its sales team on a large scale and desperately sell cars. During the third-quarter earnings call, Li Bin continued to emphasize sales capabilities, and the construction of sales and service networks became a higher priority within NIO.

The strengthening of "sales capacity" has played a role, and NIO delivered 20,000 units in July 2023.

▲ NIO offline stores. Photo / Visual China

Since the beginning of this year, NIO's sales have also gradually rebounded. In April, NIO delivered more than 15,000 vehicles, up 134.6% year-on-year and 31.6% month-on-month. However, there is still a certain distance from the goal of "20,000 monthly sales".

Ledao landed, and the task of walking naturally fell on the shoulders. Li Bin said bluntly, "The growth of new brands for the mass market is the company's top priority in 2024. ”

Ai Tiecheng told everyone that "the sales system of Ledao and NIO will operate independently, and Ledao's offline stores will adopt a full direct sales model", and in 2024, Ledao Automobile will build no less than 200 offline sales networks. In a media group interview after the press conference, Li Bin further revealed that by the time Ledao L60 is launched and delivered, there will be at least 100 sales stores.

At present, "Ledao front-line sales are recruiting," Liu Qihang, general manager of Ledao Automobile Beijing Region, told Auto.

Entering the mass market is an inevitable choice for NIO to seek a larger sales scale. At the same time, Li Bin also reassured investors that Ledao, with a lower unit price, would not drag down NIO's gross profit level. "With the current pre-sale price of Ledao, NIO has left a good gross profit space."

At the same time that NIO is accumulating strength for Ledao, Xpeng is also building a sub-brand, codenamed "MONA", and Ideal is also gradually launching low-cost models. In the new battlefield, Wei Xiaoli met again.

However, NIO still has a card - Firefly, which will help NIO open up a broader market of 100,000 yuan. And the third brand will not be too far away, Qin Lihong, president of Weilai, announced in advance that "I will meet you within a year".

(At the request of the interviewee, Zhang Yan, Chen Yang, Qi Le, and Zhang Qian are pseudonyms)

The article is original by each Auto, and infringement must be investigated.

View original image 665K

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•