From "Alps" to "Dabie Mountain", the long-awaited second brand of NIO has finally been unveiled. The brand was finally named "Ledao" and officially released on May 15. The new brand means "happy family, good family".
The English name "ONVO" is derived from OnVoyage, which means a beautiful journey. Compared with the NIO brand, Ledao's positioning is lower.
Although "Ledao" sounds a bit like "senior old man music", it has a beautiful meaning, is simple and easy to understand, and is conducive to market communication. It's just that netizens who are good at having fun don't think so.
Some netizens associate LeTV with Ledao, "Ledao = LeTV? A prelude to running away? "Is it going to be a low-to-mid market? If you are happy to be poor, then you can simply call it 'poor road'."
I have to say that this session of netizens is too talented.
Ledao Auto is positioned in the mainstream family market. Throughout the press conference, Ledao L60 was anchored to Tesla Model Y in all aspects, and Toyota Rav4 models also became its benchmarking object.
In terms of body size, the Ledao L60 has a body length of 4828mm, a width of 1930mm, and a wheelbase of 2950mm. Li Bin particularly emphasized that compared with the Model Y, the L60 is comprehensively surpassed.
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.
The pre-sale price of the Ledao L60 starts at 219,900 yuan, which is 30,000 yuan cheaper than the Tesla Model Y. Considering that the official listing price is generally cheaper than the pre-sale price, the official selling price may be lower.
This car supports battery swapping, but Ledao has not officially announced the BaaS solution. Some people speculate that if the BaaS battery leasing scheme is adopted, the price may even be as low as 170,000 yuan.
Compared with Tesla Model Y, Ledao L60 definitely has advantages in terms of product power and price, but this does not mean that Ledao L60 sales will definitely exceed Tesla Model Y.
Recently, CleanTechnica announced the global electric vehicle sales list in the first quarter of this year, and Tesla's Model Y sales are far ahead. This is not the "far ahead" in Yu Chengdong's mouth, but it is really supported by data. The quarterly sales of 263773 units were nearly 120,000 units more than the second-place BYD Qin.
In the 200,000-300,000 market, in addition to the Tesla Model Y, Xpeng G6, Denza N7, BYD Song L and the newly launched BYD Hiace 07 EV will also become its competitors.
In the market, there is not only one model targeting Model Y, but there is a large sales gap with Tesla Model Y.
The L60 will not be officially released and available until September this year, and deliveries will be a little later. Now it looks very fragrant, and it is difficult to predict what level it will be in the market when the time comes.
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.
NIO has been targeting the high-end market before, but the capacity of the high-end market is limited, and its monthly deliveries have always hovered between 10,000 and 20,000 units.
According to the data, NIO will deliver a total of 160,000 new vehicles in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 37%, but the monthly average is less than 15,000 units, only 65% of the annual sales target.
In January ~ April this year, 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%.
It seems that the sales volume has indeed increased compared with the same period last year, but compared with its peers, it is not only far less than ideal, but also lags behind Deep Blue, Extreme Krypton and Leap. At present, NIO has fallen into the second camp in the competition of new forces.
Due to the fact that sales volume has never been able to break through the bottleneck and it is difficult to balance the high cost of upstream, NIO will have a net loss of 20.72 billion yuan in 2023, an increase of 43.5% year-on-year.
NIO's cumulative losses from 2018 to 2023 have exceeded 80 billion yuan, and its gross profit margin has dropped from 10.4% in 2022 to 5.5% in 2023.
Enterprises have not been profitable for a long time, and the capital market has gradually lost confidence, even if you have strong financing capabilities.
In December 2023 and February 2024, JPMorgan Chase lowered the target price of NIO's stock price twice, with the latest target price being only $5 per share, with a cumulative reduction of more than 50%.
A few more words
Like many people playing games, "the big one is wasted, open a small one and practice again". In other words, the tuba has not been practiced well, and it is actually quite difficult to expect the trumpet to explode.
At present, under the dual pressure of losses and poor sales, NIO urgently needs a high-volume model to save the market. So, can Ledao reverse the current situation of NIO and help NIO get out of the quagmire?