In China's auto market, adhering to the concept of "multiple children are good to fight", it is not new to breed sub-brands, and such actions have also come from independent car companies to new power brands.
Recently, the second brand of Weilai Automobile (hereinafter referred to as "Weilai") officially landed on the market, and at the same time brought the first model of Ledao - Ledao L60, the pre-sale price of the new car is set at 219,900 yuan, and it is expected to be officially launched and delivered in September.
Li Bin, CEO of NIO, introduced at the press conference that NIO had plans to become a second brand as early as 10 years ago when it was first established, because more brands and more cars can better help NIO achieve the goal of carbon reduction, "However, NIO really decided to become a second brand from 2021."
Li Bin at the auto show (photo by Sun Wanqiu)
Performance targets are difficult to achieve
In the past 10 years, NIO has taken root in the mid-to-high-end brand market of more than 300,000 units, and the product matrix has been improved to 8 models, but the sales volume has never been able to make a huge breakthrough, and the highest monthly sales volume is still more than 20,000 units in a single month in July last year, and the grand occasion lasted only one month before falling back to 10,000 units.
In the first four months of this year, NIO sold a total of 45,600 vehicles, with an average monthly sales of only 11,418 units, which not only widened the gap with the ideal, but was even surpassed by Zeekr, which was established only three years ago.
A cruel reality is that NIO's first-mover advantage is gradually weakening, and in the current fierce competition in the auto market, it seems to be a little lacking. Li Bin skillfully played social software and went into battle with his family, trying to recover the decline through traffic.
Even though NIO lowered its performance target to 230,000 this year, the first four months have passed, and its performance completion rate is still less than 20%. This also means that if NIO wants to achieve annual sales, it needs to sell more than 23,000 units per month in the next eight months. At present, all of NIO's models have been replaced, and no new cars have been released in the future, so it is not realistic to tap the sales volume increase from the existing models, which is not realistic in the current auto market environment.
Promoting the launch of new brands and sprinting sales has become one of the few cards in NIO's hands that can be played.
With the entry of Ledao, industry insiders believe that its development results are linked to the "life and death" of Weilai. However, Ledao wants to attack the important area of the impulse of most car companies, and it is expected that it will succeed?
Benchmarked against Model Y
As previously reported, its price is 30,000 yuan cheaper than Model Y, and the cost is 10% lower than Model Y.
The body length, width and height of Ledao L60 are 4828mm, 1930mm, 1616mm, wheelbase 2950mm, the car is equipped with front MacPherson + rear five-link independent suspension, the appearance continues the design concept of the Weilai family, the overall style is relatively simple, and the headlights adopt a split shape.
In terms of safety, Ledao L60 is equipped with 45 active and intelligent safety assistance functions, using 2000MPa ultra-high-strength steel materials. After a crash test with a speed of 90 km/h and a 70% offset, the high-voltage power of the body is instantaneously powered off, and the hidden door handle quickly pops out, and the actual test only needs 78N to easily open the door.
In order to save costs intelligently, Ledao did not use the same lidar as NEO, but chose to be equipped with 7 8 million pixel cameras and 30 perception hardware including 4D imaging millimeter-wave radar as standard, with an NVIDIA Orin-X chip. In terms of function, Ledao L60 will open high-speed NOA and urban NOA scenarios when it is delivered, which will be more introductory than NIO's NOP+.
Energy consumption is another highlight of Ledao, the whole system is based on the 900V high-voltage architecture, with low wind resistance, to achieve 12.1 kWh of energy consumption per 100 kilometers, lower than the 12.5 kWh of Tesla Model Y, and the 12.3 kWh of Xiaomi SU7.
In addition, the type of battery it is equipped with is different from that of NIO and its supplier. Previously, it was reported that the three batteries of Ledao L60 will be provided by CATL, Fodi Power and China Innovation Airlines, on this basis, the three battery life of Ledao L60 include 555 km, 730 km and 1000 km, but the specific mileage provided by each will not be announced until the official launch.
After the pre-sale meeting, Li Bin revealed, "24 hours have not arrived, the order has been two to three times higher than the original expectation, it should be far beyond expectations, the order can be refunded now, and the final delivery shall prevail." According to Li Bin's previous expectations, the monthly sales target of Ledao's three cars is 50,000 units.
In fact, there are many cars in the market that benchmark Model Y, Xiaopeng G6, Zhiji LS6, Ideal L6, and even Xiaomi's SU8 has been called the slogan, but in the whole of last year, Tesla Model Y sold 456,300 units in China alone, which is currently unsurpassed by any single model.
L60 (Photo by Wu Di)
The loss widened to be resolved
In the increasingly competitive Chinese market, NIO urgently needs to break the situation.
Based on the mid-to-high-end attributes of the NIO brand, it is not willing to abandon the price of the 200,000 yuan market model, which is why NIO has been limited by the sales scale of the mid-to-high-end market.
With the continuous investment in the research and development of new cars and the layout of the energy replenishment network, NIO has not yet achieved self-hematopoiesis, and its losses continue to be large. For the whole of last year, NIO's net loss reached 20.72 billion yuan, an increase of 43.5% year-on-year, which is far from Li Bin's goal of predicting profitability in 2024.
To this end, NIO urgently needs a car with a lower price and higher sales volume to help it share investment costs and increase profits, the emergence of Ledao meets the above needs, and its relationship with NIO may be more appropriate to use "mutual assistance", Ledao helps NIO seize market share in the low-end market, and NIO empowers Ledao with years of technology accumulation and marketing channels.
In the group interview after the meeting, Li Bin said frankly, "Ledao is undoubtedly very important to NIO", in his opinion, Ledao relies on NIO's existing R&D system, which is of great benefit to the company's overall R&D investment, and at the same time, with the decline of supply chain costs, the apportionment of manufacturing is also very important. Li Bin believes that the current pre-sale price of 219,900 yuan is still a good gross profit, "We will not sell one and lose one, Ledao also has to earn money to support the family, and now it is time to realize it."
The battery swap service was questioned
In the same way, NIO has given Ledao not only support in manufacturing technology, but also in the company's overall multiple systems, including the company's service system and charging and swapping system. At the press conference, Ai Tiecheng, president of Ledao Automobile, emphasized that Ledao L60 can enjoy NIO's services from the beginning.
Perhaps in order to isolate itself from the NIO brand, Ledao did not receive all the battery swap support in the system. In NIO's discourse system, Ledao supports NIO's third- and fourth-generation battery swap stations, and has 1,000 battery swap stations since birth, and as of the end of April, NIO has officially announced a total of 2,411 battery swap stations, which also means that more than half of the battery swap stations cannot be used.
For the market to pay attention to whether the shared battery swap station will affect the experience of old users. Li Bin said, "As a high-end brand, NIO's exclusive services must not be discounted. In his opinion, this is a "happy" trouble, "after the listing of Ledao, its users have a climbing process, the initial shared charging and swapping power will be very small, with the increase of users in the later stage, we will also increase the amount of charging and swapping stations accordingly, and NIO will always be laying out new battery swap stations."
In other words, Li Bin is not afraid of many people using charging and swapping equipment, but is even more afraid that no one will use it, "If there are thousands of users a day, how can I lay out a rich charging and swapping network, if there are millions of orders a day, I will only become stronger and stronger."
In terms of channels, Ledao's delivery will be fully connected to the service network resources of the NIO brand, and the after-sales service will be shared with NIO. Ai Tiecheng said, "Ledao's management model still adheres to the direct sales model, and at the same time, there are currently 100 service stores, and there is no specific number of sales stores. In this regard, Li Bin added, "Ledao must have the largest number of stores opened among all new brands, at least more than 100 when it was launched in September."
In addition, NIO did not build another factory because of Ledao. Li Bin said that the Ledao L60 will be produced in the second factory in the future, and if NIO is produced alone, it will definitely not be as high as the capacity utilization rate of the two brands produced together, and the manufacturing cost of the bicycle will also be significantly reduced.
After being empowered by NIO, whether Ledao can help NIO break through the sales bottleneck and accelerate the realization of the profit target still needs to be determined by the market reaction after the official listing.
Access to global markets
"We definitely want to enter the global market, and Ledao also pays attention to the development of overseas markets", this is Li Bin's description of Ledao's overseas plan.
In fact, in recent years, the market share of the domestic market has been fiercely competitive, especially in the low-end price market. According to the data of the passenger association, last year, a total of 3.73 million vehicles were sold in the range of 200,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan in the vehicle market, accounting for 17.2% of the total sales, and before it was the market of 150,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan accounting for 17.5% and the market of 100,000 yuan to 150,000 yuan accounting for 34%.
Ledao superimposed BaaS policy and time-limited subsidies, will enter the price market of 150,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan, at that time, it will enter the most fierce price market alone, facing more "old-fashioned" competitors, even if there is NIO empowerment, it is still a problem to create high sales in a short period of time.
On this basis, Ledao also chose to go to sea to seek quantity.
Li Bin said that 90% of the global market for high-end brands is in China, the United States, Europe, South America, Africa, Southeast Asia and other places, "The NIO brand is also positioned as high-end, and the price is relatively high, and our price in Europe is more expensive than Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi." But the Ledao brand will be different, it has a wider coverage, and we have the opportunity to be able to enter the global market more actively."
Because it is optimistic about foreign markets, Ledao has designed according to the global car as early as the beginning of research and development, which has laid a certain foundation for the global layout. At the same time, the experience accumulated by the NIO brand in foreign countries in the early years has also paved the way for Ledao, "including how to enter the world for products, how to enter the world for services, how to enter the global charging and swapping network, etc., NIO has accumulated experience, which is also a very good foundation for the Ledao brand to quickly enter the global market."