NIO's "Half-Life" starts at 219,900 yuan

智行驾道

2024-05-15 23:03Published in Guangdong automotive creators

After the release of Xiaomi SU7 in March, Li Bin, CEO of NIO, said in a short video co-produced with Lei Jun, "The price of Xiaomi SU7 is too fierce, and Ledao is not easy to price."

On May 15, NIO's sub-brand Ledao Automobile was officially released, focusing on the family market of less than 300,000 yuan, and its first model, Ledao L60, was also unveiled. The pre-sale price of the "bad pricing" Ledao L60 starts at 219,900 yuan, which is 4,000 yuan more expensive than the Xiaomi SU7, and will be launched and delivered in September this year.

From the perspective of price and positioning, Ledao L60's direct competitors include not only Tesla Model Y, BYD Hiace 07 EV and other giants, but also new forces such as Zeekrypton 001, Denza N7, and Ideal L6.

In addition to the competition, the Ledao brand also carries more hope for NIO - scale. Whether NIO can have a longer future, Ledao will be the most important step.

What is the product strength of Ledao L60?

May 15 is World Family Day, and it is clear that the L60 was released on this day – it is a model that is aimed at families. Throughout the press conference, the word "home" ran through almost all the time.

If you look at it by the standard of "family car", the competing products of Ledao L60 are not only pure electric models, but also 200,000-300,000 yuan range extender SUVs such as ideal L6 and blueprint FREE.

So, does the Ledao L60 have enough strength?

NIO's "Half-Life" starts at 219,900 yuan

In terms of body size, the length, width and height of Ledao L60 are 4828mm/1930mm/1616mm, and the wheelbase is 2950mm.

In terms of cockpit, Ledao L60 is equipped with a 13-inch HUD, a 17.2-inch 3K resolution center control screen, and an 8-inch rear entertainment screen placed at the end of the center armrest, using the new Ledao OS system.

Ledao L60 adopts 900V high-voltage architecture, as well as a fully self-developed 900V silicon carbide main electric drive system, the car claims to challenge the ultra-low wind resistance of the world's mass-produced SUV, with a drag coefficient of 0.229 at 120km/h. Under comprehensive optimization, the official energy consumption per 100 kilometers is only 12.1 kW·h, which is known as the industry's lowest energy consumption of medium-sized SUVs, and provides three different battery packs of 555km, 730km and 1000+km.

Of course, as a sub-brand of NIO, Ledao L60 also supports battery swapping, and supports one-click automatic parking into the battery swapping platform, and the whole battery swap only takes 3 minutes.

In terms of intelligent driving, Ledao L60 is equipped with 30 high-performance perception hardware as standard, including NVIDIA Orin-X intelligent driving chip, 4D imaging millimeter wave radar, 7 8 million pixel high-definition cameras, 4 starlight 360-degree cameras, etc., using a lidar-free urban navigation scheme.

Compared with competing products such as Model Y, Hiace 07 EV, Zeekr 001, and Denza N7, the functions and configurations of the Ledao L60 are basically the same as the mainstream of the industry, and its advantages are mainly reflected in battery swapping, which is a characteristic of the NIO system, especially when pure electric vehicles generally have range anxiety.

According to NIO data, it has built 2,415 battery swap stations (1,000+ battery swap stations supporting Ledao L60), achieving more than 80% coverage of power district housing. In daily use, the Ledao L60, which is also a high-voltage architecture + fast charging, not only does not fall behind in charging, but also has more battery replacement and energy supplement, which obviously has stronger applicability than other models that can only be charged.

However, the disadvantage of Ledao L60 is also that it supports battery swapping, in order to be compatible with battery swapping, Ledao L60 is likely to be the same as other NIO models, unable to adopt the currently popular CTB (battery-body integration) design, resulting in its interior space and driving experience are limited compared with models using CTB.

In general, Ledao L60 is basically similar to models of the same price in terms of product power, with no particularly outstanding technology and functions, and no obvious shortcomings. This may be an intentional move by NIO, after all, Ledao's most important task is to move volume, and an overly aggressive product positioning may not be suitable for the first model.

Ledao's priority is to scale

At the end of 2023, NIO sold about 160,000 units, failing to achieve its target of 200,000 units. However, NIO stabilized its ranking, ranking second only to Ideal in the sales list of new car-making forces.

In 2024, NIO faces even greater challenges, with total deliveries of 30,053 units in the first quarter, down 3.2% year-on-year. In the sales ranking of new car-making forces, NIO fell to fifth, behind Wenjie, Ideal, Leap and Zeekr.

Among these four brands, ZEEKR and NIO are both positioned as "pure electric luxury brands" and are direct competitors of NIO, and ZEEKR 001 and ZEEKR 007 are strong competitors that both brands of NIO and Ledao must face. Now that the sales of ZEEKR have caught up with Weilai, it is a danger signal for both Ledao and Weilai.

On the other hand, NIO currently has as many as 8 models on sale, and it is the brand with the most models among new forces such as "Wei Xiaoli", Zeekr, Leap, and Nezha. According to the data of the research institute Jaylan Road, NIO's monthly sales efficiency (average monthly sales of bicycles) is only about 1,500 units, which is in a backward position among the new and old car manufacturers.

The unsatisfactory sales volume also put a lot of pressure on NIO financially.

According to NIO's financial report, the gross profit margin of NIO's automotive business in 2023 will be 9.5%, down 4.2 percentage points year-on-year, far from the earlier target of 15%. During the same period, the gross profit margins of Xpeng Motors and Li Auto were 5.5% and 22.2%, respectively, with NIO higher than Xpeng and lower than Ideal.

In 2023, NIO's R&D expenses will reach 13.43 billion yuan, and its sales and distribution costs will also reach 12.88 billion yuan, making it the brand with the highest expenditure of its kind among all new forces.

The bigger "burden" is the battery swap business that NIO is proud of. In 2023, NIO will build 1,035 new battery swap stations with an investment of more than 3 billion yuan. In addition, NIO plans to continue to expand its battery swap business in 2024. Previously, NIO had said that NIO's third-generation battery swap stations can achieve breakeven with an average of 60 battery swaps per day, and about 20% of the battery swap stations have reached this standard.

In the past year, NIO has reached cooperation agreements with many large car companies such as Changan Automobile, Guangzhou Automobile Group, and Chery Automobile. However, for now, there is still no third-party battery swap model to support NIO's battery swap station, and it remains to be seen whether other car companies will redesign the chassis system for the sake of battery swapping when CTB (body battery integration) is gradually becoming the mainstream of the market.

The battery swap station is an asset-heavy business, which requires a lot of capital investment and time to build, and the most important thing is that it needs to be like a gas station, the more vehicles used after completion, the faster it can get rid of losses and achieve profitability. Therefore, whether Ledao can quickly increase sales will be the key factor that determines whether NIO's battery swap business can operate healthily and continuously.

Ledao makes NIO's strategy more flexible

Starting in March 2023, the price war will spread in the auto market. Since the beginning of this year, BYD, Tesla, Geely, etc. have pushed the price war to a climax. However, price reductions are easy and price increases are difficult, especially for luxury brands, and the damage to the brand is quite obvious. This is also the reason why new luxury brands such as NIO, Ideal, and Zeekr have publicly stated that they will not follow up the price war.

In the wave of price cuts one after another, although NIO has also made certain responses, it has always been a little constrained by adhering to the positioning of "luxury brand".

In March this year, NIO released a new battery rental service (BaaS) solution, which reduced the price of the car by 70,000 yuan, and the monthly rent of the standard range and long-range battery pack was reduced to 728 yuan and 1,128 yuan respectively, a decrease of 35% and 49% respectively. And the rent paid can be partially deducted from the battery buyout fee, and from now until May 31, users who choose the BaaS plan to buy a car can also enjoy the battery rental service fee pay 4 free 1, 60 free battery swap coupons for a limited time.

In April, NIO also announced that it would provide an optional subsidy of 10,000 yuan to fuel vehicle users who purchase new 2024 models, with a total subsidy budget of 1 billion yuan.

In May, NIO launched a "zero down payment" car purchase plan, and an exclusive subsidy of up to 20,000 yuan for "trade-in".

However, no matter how the promotion is made, NIO has nominally never broken through the bottom line of less than 300,000 yuan, and its insistence on positioning as a "luxury brand" has forced NIO to consider the possible negative impact of the price war, so the adjustments it can make are very limited. In contrast, the ideal L7 price starting at 300,000 yuan has already been reduced to 200,000 yuan, and it can compete with Huawei's blessing M7.

In the auto market, where price wars are inevitable, NIO needs more flexibility and richer strategies to cope with the rapid changes in the market.

Therefore, Ledao, which is no longer bound by the "luxury brand", will be a weapon for NIO to "fire on its full firepower".

In general, the significance of Ledao to NIO is mainly to increase sales, inject more orders into the battery swap business, and obtain more room for market strategy adjustment. NIO's "half-life" is in the hands of the newborn Ledao.

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