The author | Yu Kun
Editor| Hu Zhanjia
The inscription | Weilai official micro
Produced | Zero-State LT (ID: LingTai_LT)
It seems that Li Bin, the helmsman of Weilai Automobile, will not be able to hold back.
On April 10, Weilai announced through its official Weibo that the starting price of some of its models was raised by 10,000 yuan, in addition, the battery rental service fee has also increased. Just a day before the official price adjustment, WEILAIgang said that since March this year, due to the impact of the epidemic, WEILAI's supply chain partners in Jilin, Shanghai and Jiangsu have stopped production one after another and have not yet recovered. Affected by this, WEILAI vehicle production has also been suspended.
First the suspension of production, then the price increase, weilai has a future?
At the end of the first quarter of this year, under the influence of the complex and changeable international situation, the new energy vehicle industry chain ushered in a sharp price increase, and many new energy vehicle manufacturers directly facing C-end consumers also reacted to the cost increase: First, Tesla raised the price of some of its products three times on March 10, March 15 and March 25, such as the Model Y long-endurance version before and after the two price increases of 10,000 yuan and 18,000 yuan, Model The Y rear-wheel-drive version of the model rose by 15,000 yuan; Ideal Auto also announced on March 23 that it will adjust the price of the ideal ONE, and since April 1, 2022, the national unified retail price of the ideal ONE has been raised from 338,000 yuan to 349,800 yuan, an increase of 11,800 yuan.
▲Weilai price increase announcement (Figure: Weilai official micro)
In such a wave of price increases, Weilai initially showed a posture that can be called a "clear stream". On March 21 this year, Weilai said in response to the surging news, "Price stability is good for the interests of users and the market, and we have no intention of increasing prices in the short term." At present, the international raw material price, including chip supply and demand, has made the cost of the entire supply chain change greatly compared with before. We will also make flexible decisions based on changes in the objective environment."
Just a few weeks later, Weilai's body still turned very honestly, combined with the suspension of production trouble encountered, from this seemingly hesitant price increase on the surface, the outside world can get a glimpse of the difficulty of Weilai's current situation.
In 2019, Weilai has encountered serious capital chain problems, the boss Li Bin in order to save Weilai from water and fire, almost all year round between potential financial owners, was ridiculed as "the most miserable person in 2019", when to 2022, Weilai's life still looks bad, so will Li Bin be unfortunate to become "the worst person in 2022"?
01
Stop production and increase prices
Weilai abandons the "proud bone"
The news that Weilai officially announced the suspension of the whole vehicle is both a bit reasonable and somewhat unexpected.
On April 9, under the announcement entitled "Explanation on the Recent Production and Delivery Situation" released by Weilai through the official APP, Weilai boss Li Bin also left a message to express his views, mentioning that "in mid-March, some of our parts were cut off, relying on some parts inventory to barely maintain until last week." Recently, there have been epidemics in Shanghai and Jiangsu, and many partners cannot supply goods and can only suspend production. This situation is not ours alone, many manufacturers have suspended production. ”
The obstruction of parts supply has not only forced WEILAI to suspend vehicle production, but also will inevitably affect the order delivery of some users who have placed orders, and then affect the subsequent delivery performance of WEILAI Automobile. Some users have reflected a similar situation on the NIO APP, where the system shows that their scheduled vehicles have been produced, but they cannot be delivered to their cities at the moment. In this regard, Weilai also replied that at present, vehicle transportation logistics need to follow the epidemic prevention requirements of various places, and the vehicles ordered in Shanghai cannot be transported in at present.
On April 1, NIO disclosed the recent deliveries of its vehicles through its official Weibo: in March 2022, NIO delivered 9,985 new cars, an increase of 37.6% year-on-year; in the first quarter of 2022, NIO delivered 25,768 new cars, an increase of 28.5% year-on-year; NIO ET7 has started delivery, delivering 163 units as of March 31.
▲ Picture: Weilai Guanwei
In fact, this is not the first time that WEILAI has been hit by the impact from the supply chain level. In August 2021, NIO delivered only 5,880 vehicles, down 26% month-on-month. For such poor results, Weilai explained that this is due to the impact of the epidemic in August 2021 in Malaysia, Beijing and other places, resulting in a serious restriction on the supply of individual parts of the vehicle, especially the production end of ES6 and EC6, so it affected the delivery performance in August.
Entering March this year, under the influence of multiple factors such as chip shortage and rising upstream raw material prices, new energy vehicle companies have begun to raise prices. Following Tesla's price increase on March 10, domestic car companies such as BYD, Chery, Xiaopeng, Nezha, Zero Run and Geometry Automobile have officially announced price increases, ranging from 2,000 yuan to 30,000 yuan.
On March 19, Li Xiang, CEO of Ideal Automobile, also said through social platforms that the car companies that have increased prices are brands that have contracted with battery manufacturers to determine the price increase in the second quarter, and most of the prices that have not yet increased are because the price increase has not been negotiated, and once it is negotiated, the price will also increase.
In the face of this situation, Weilai was initially "everyone is rising and I am not rising", Weilai co-founder and president Qin Lihong also commented on the article about the price increase news of electric vehicles shared by others in the circle of friends, saying that "Weilai does not increase prices, at least not yet." ”
However, such a "Zhengzheng proud bone" is still unable to resist the actual blow, and the latter does not only come from the suspension of vehicles caused by the epidemic.
02
Deliveries have been falling
NIO has been squeezed out of the top three
Judging from the sales report card of each new car brand in March this year, Weilai, which was once known as the "new force brother", has fallen out of the top three camps.
In March this year, the best performer in the market was Xiaopeng Automobile, with a delivery volume of 15,414 vehicles, which also made it the monthly sales crown of "Wei Xiaoli" after January this year; followed by Nezha Automobile, which delivered 12,026 vehicles in March, and only one of its ideal cars on sale, ideal ONE, won the third position with the data of 11,034 vehicles; Zero Run, Weilai and Extreme Kr ranked fourth, fifth and sixth respectively.
Xiaopeng Automobile's deliveries in March this year surged by 148% month-on-month and 202% year-on-year, including 9183 Xiaopeng P7, 4398 Xiaopeng P5 and 1833 G3 series models. It is worth mentioning that the monthly delivery of Xiaopeng P7 exceeded 9,000 units for the first time, creating a record for the delivery of pure electric models of the new car-making brand.
In this latest report card, the performance of Zero Run and Nezha Automobile, which were previously classified as second-tier new car brands, is particularly eye-catching. Judging from the performance of delivery volume, the two have been among the first echelon of new car brands.
The market is unpredictable, and although the single-month performance is not a fixed pattern, this is not the first time that Weilai has fallen out of the top three ranks of single-month sales. According to the delivery data released by each company in February this year, the top three are the ideal 8414 vehicles, Nezha's 7117 vehicles and Xiaopeng Automobile's 6225 vehicles, Weilai ranked fourth with the performance of 6131 vehicles, combined with the data in March, Weilai has continued the 5-month decline.
Such "endless ups and downs" certainly cannot be attributed to external factors such as the impact of the epidemic, because all car companies are also undergoing this test and blow from external factors, and Weilai's internal factors may account for a greater proportion.
▲ Li Bin responded to Weilai's price increase
First of all, although Li Bin claims that the mass-market brand is progressing smoothly, WEILAI is in an awkward stage of incomplete delivery products at present.
Leaving aside the 163 ET7s delivered as of March 31 this year, which constitute the new force of NIO's current delivery models, it can basically be considered as old models, such as ES8, ES6 and EC6, and their first delivery times are June 2018, June 2019 and September 2020, respectively. On the new model, the ET7 developed by NIO based on the NT2 platform has been delivered, but because it has only been delivered recently, sales are still small, and ET5 and ES7 are expected to start delivery in September and the third quarter of this year.
In the wave of new energy car manufacturing with rapid iteration of products, it is difficult for old models to maintain combat effectiveness all the time. In the fourth quarter of 2021, NIO delivered 25,000 vehicles, a slight increase of 2.4% sequentially, the lowest record in nearly seven quarters.
Price and positioning aside, just talking about sales is a bit of a "hooligan". At present, the average selling price of NIO's models on sale is more than 400,000 yuan, which is higher than the average selling price of Xiaopeng and Ideal of about 200,000 yuan and about 300,000 yuan respectively. A higher selling price is tantamount to a higher threshold for consumption, so they cannot be equated with market performance.
However, at present, NIO's models on sale are gradually transitioning from the NT1 platform to the second-generation technology platform of NT2, and the resulting new models have not yet fully entered the delivery stage, and the plight of the old models is in a weak sales situation. Especially in 2022, such a dilemma has been more obviously confirmed by Weilai's delivery performance.
Weilai in 2022 successively not smooth, the new car-making force sales ranking has undergone obvious changes, for which some people have commented that "the old three strong era has passed, the new five will come to the era." ”
03
Will Li Bin become the "most miserable person" again?
In October 2019, an article titled "Weilai Li Bin, the most miserable person in 2019" swept across the Internet, to some extent, which also made entrepreneur Li Bin break the circle.
In 2019, facing the huge losses and plunging stock prices of TENS of billions of yuan, Li Bin, who was under great pressure, constantly tossed between all parties, trying to save the building from falling. In the end, with the efforts of him and others, NIO obtained a strategic investment of 7 billion yuan from the Hefei State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, and NIO's China headquarters settled in Hefei, Anhui Province, which gave WEILAI a chance to breathe.
Weilai, which was breathless, delivered quite amazing answers in 2020 and 2021, and also added a more convincing footnote to the title of "most bullish venture capital" of Hefei SASAC. However, new energy vehicles are a very competitive field, and by 2022, Weilai is facing many new challenges.
Weilai has always been in a state of loss, for the loss, Li Bin once said at the performance meeting that "we will not compromise", this intransigence is also reflected in Weilai's insistence on temporarily not raising prices in March this year. At that time, This behavior of Weilai stemmed from the obvious trend of Weilai's sales in the fourth quarter of 2021 being overtaken by other market competitors, and in 2022, Weilai will list three new cars successively, compared to the pursuit of profit schedules, sales are more important for the current Weilai.
▲ Picture: Weilai Guanwei
However, even if Weilai knew that the price increase would impact the sales volume that was already somewhat weak, it still chose to officially announce the price increase on April 10, which undoubtedly demonstrated the pressure that Weilai is facing at present.
User experience has always been a great importance to Li Bin, and it is also a moat he is trying to create for Weilai. This makes NIO bear higher operating costs than other new car-making forces, including high sales, general and administrative costs, in 2021, NIO's expenses were 6.88 billion yuan, a sharp increase of 95.4% year-on-year, and 5.34 billion yuan, 5.45 billion yuan and 3.93 billion yuan in the three years from 2018 to 2020, respectively. Ideal Auto's expenditure on sales, general and management in 2021 was 3.49 billion yuan, much lower than that of NIO.
Higher operating expenses have become the main reason restricting Wei's profitability, but this year is also a year for Li Bin to choose to invest heavily in research and development, compared with 2021, Weilai's investment in research and development in 2022 has more than doubled. By the end of this year, Weilai's R & D personnel are expected to reach about 9,000 people. Therefore, this year, weilai's financial pressure will be more obvious.
This year is also a year to honor the sinking new story that Li Bin has previously told, and NIO will enter the mass market through new brands. According to Li Bin's public statement, in the business for mass market brands, the core team has been built, the strategic direction and development strategy have been clarified, and the first batch of products has entered a critical research and development stage.
However, Weilai, which has previously positioned itself more high-end, has explored an inherent marketing and service model, entering the mass market, and whether it can adjust and adapt to another large consumer group, there are still many uncertainties in the middle.
▲ Picture: Weilai Guanwei
In addition, in order to achieve a better interconnection experience between mobile phones and cars, self-developed mobile phones have also become the business that Li Bin wants to touch, for the market rumors that Weilai is ready to make mobile phones, Li Bin responded in a recent interview column, "Weilai mobile phones are still in the preliminary research stage, and the planned mobile phones are more for defensive purposes than expansion purposes." ”
The suspension of production of the whole vehicle and the increase in product prices, behind this overwhelming action, to some extent reflect the helplessness and powerlessness of Weilai. Looking back at the past, Li Bin in 2019 is undoubtedly busy and anxious, but Li Bin who survived also sat on the flowers and applause after that.
But now the situation that Weilai is in seems to be getting more and more difficult, and it is obvious that it will not be a smooth road in front of Weilai and Li Bin, and I hope that Li Bin will not become the "most miserable person in 2022".