Reporter | Jiang Ruijie
Edit | Xiao Wenjie
"It's 30,000 yuan cheaper than the Model Y." In this way, NIO's second brand, Ledao, announced that it has officially entered the fiercest competition in the field of electric vehicles. Throughout the press conference, Ledao L60 is directly compared with Model Y, this positioning method is the same as when Xiaomi released its first production car more than a month ago, the only difference is that at that time, Xiaomi SU7 was benchmarked against Model 3.
The price war of China's new energy vehicles will become more and more fierce in 2024, and the NIO brand, which is positioned at more than 300,000 yuan, has no new cars in this year, although the monthly sales can still maintain around 15,000 units, but it is getting farther and farther away from the industry leader, and the sales of its best-selling models are also difficult to break through the 10,000 mark. NIO needs to have a real running volume model, and the new brand Ledao, which is positioned in the household market of 200,000-300,000 yuan, is its new hope to achieve this goal.
Anchoring the first car to the Model Y was indeed a pragmatic path. The Model Y is the best-selling car in the world in 2023, with 1.2 million units delivered for the year. Its starting price of 249,900 yuan in Chinese mainland is also in the most mainstream family car price band. The Ledao L60 uses the Model Y as a benchmark, which also shows NIO's expectations for its sales.
At the brand launch conference on May 15th, Ai Tiecheng, president of Ledao, divided the selling points of L60 into two aspects: to meet the needs of home users as much as possible, and to reduce the cost of use throughout the life cycle as much as possible. After sinking to the range of 200,000-300,000 yuan, Ledao reversed the previous high-end tonality of Weilai, did not pursue high brand premiums, and focused on economic benefits. This means that Ledao's products will not pursue power performance and hardware configuration excessively like the main brand of NIO, but will spend money on the most obvious aspects of user perception such as interior space, central control screen, and chassis stability.
The first model of NIO's second brand, the Ledao L60, was released on May 15.
Judging from the content of the press conference, L60 has been optimized for Tesla Model Y in the above aspects, and the effect is relatively obvious. In addition, the drag coefficient is also the lowest 0.229Cd in the world's mass-produced SUVs, which is combined with the design of the 900V electrical architecture to reduce the energy consumption per 100 kilometers to the lowest level in the industry of 12.1kWh, aiming to reduce the cost of car use for users.
This conference is a bit like Xiaomi's automotive technology conference at the end of December last year, showing the main features of the product, but it is still far from being delivered. According to the schedule announced at the launch, the official price of the L60 will not be released until September, and deliveries will begin, four months before the start of pre-ordering. Ai Tiecheng's explanation for this is that family users need to compare and contrast with each other when buying a car (unlike luxury car consumption, which often has a certain impulsiveness), and it takes about 3-6 months to make a decision.
But in fact, the waiting period of up to 4 months is not conducive to the conversion of orders, but in the first half of 2024, the pure electric vehicle market of 200,000-300,000 yuan has added a large number of strong competitors, in addition to Xiaomi SU7, brands such as Zeekr and Zhiji have also launched their main products in this range, and in the second half of this year, the ideal car that also focuses on the family market is expected to launch a pure electric SUV. In order to capture the minds of users as much as possible, Ledao needed to put itself on the shortlist of potential consumers as soon as possible.
For Ledao, the bigger test may be productivity. In that year, under the situation of hot pre-sale orders, due to the impact of the epidemic and its own implementation problems, the production capacity of NIO was slow to climb, resulting in the loss of a large number of users.
Today, Ledao and NIO are co-produced and can share a total of 600,000 units of NIO's annual production capacity, of which the NIO brand only used a quarter last year.
In the pure electric mid-size SUV track, there is currently no brand with monthly sales of more than 10,000 units except for the Model Y. There are many popular products for higher-priced mid-to-large SUVs or lower-priced compact SUVs, but even among mid-size SUVs like the Song L, monthly sales have dropped from a peak of 10,000 units to less than 5,000 units in April. Song L size, battery life and L60 are similar, the starting price is 30,000 yuan cheaper, and relying on BYD's strong sales network, sales are still poor, and it is not easy for Ledao, a new brand, to expand its share in this market.
The potential advantage it can rely on is the resources already in place in the parent company. In addition to the sharing of R&D results and production co-line, NIO will also share a charging and swapping network and after-sales service network with Ledao. The shared battery swap network means that Ledao already has more than 1,000 battery swap stations at the time of its release, which can greatly improve the energy replenishment experience of Ledao owners - among the 200,000-300,000 yuan of family car users, the proportion of no home charging piles will be relatively higher.
However, it is worth noting that Ledao will build its own sales network, and in an interview on the second day of the press conference, Ledao made it clear that its channel logic will be completely different from that of NIO. Although Ledao will continue to operate directly, it will consider cooperating with dealers in terms of store space. The new store will not only be opened in the business district, but also in the automobile city where 4S stores are gathered. Many of the traditional brand dealers in these auto cities have withdrawn from the store, and working with them on the site is expected to help Ledao reduce leasing costs, reduce the pressure of upfront investment, and also help to keep marketing and sales expenses low.
This reflects Ledao's intention to sell efficiency and cost control. "We demand a higher return on investment from Ledao, unlike NIO, as a high-end brand, which allows it to spend some money to 'raise a raise'. The turnover of Ledao's outlets will be very fast, and three months after the opening of a store, we will continue to iterate and update according to the performance. Qin Lihong, president of NIO, told YiMagazine.
Li Bin, chairman and CEO of NIO, said in an interview that the number of Ledao stores will exceed 100 when the L60 is released, and the team is required to have the ability to "jump in place" to open 150 stores every month. Unlike NIO, which concentrates on cloth stores in first- and second-tier cities, Ledao will spread its net more widely and cover first- to fifth-tier cities while spending money more cautiously, which means that it may go deep into some cities that NIO did not previously cover. In these cities, Ledao's after-sales service network can be shared with NIO car owners, which in turn will increase NIO's service capabilities. At this stage, Ledao will give priority to the construction of hundreds of service outlets, and will test the water at a slower pace in terms of sales stores.
Although Li Bin emphasized that the gross profit of L60 is positive, only by trying to reduce various expenses can there be a chance to make the gross profit really become profit.
It is also in 2021 to start the project to build a car, and compared with Xiaomi Auto, which can rely on Xiaomi's sales network and brand traffic, Ledao needs to spend more time as a new brand to let the market understand. NIO mobilized its own community of car owners to watch the Ledao press conference, but for non-NIO users, Ledao's brand image still needs time to accumulate.
Li Bin, the founder of NIO, made a clear distinction between the positioning of the two brands: "NIO will gradually focus on business needs, take care of family, and then bring a little personalization and performance, while Ledao will focus on family." Li Bin now spends one day a week on NIO and Ledao products, "The main thing in Ledao is to let the team always focus on home users and not lose focus." ”
In the embryonic stage of the market and brand, it is not difficult to ensure that the brand positioning is not out of focus, but today's Chinese new energy market is no longer a greenhouse, in the fast-paced fierce competition, Ledao will not have as much room for trial and error as NIO at the beginning, L60 must succeed.
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