The first half of 2024 is temporarily over.
On July 1, a number of car companies, including Weilai, Ideal, Zeekr and other car companies, released sales data for the first half of the year, and in June, Weilai's sales exceeded 20,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 98%, a record high; In the second quarter of 2024, NIO delivered 57,373 new vehicles, up 143.9% year-on-year. In the first half of 2024, NIO delivered a total of 87,426 new vehicles, up 60.2% year-on-year. To date, NIO has delivered a total of 537,020 new vehicles, becoming the first Chinese brand in the high-end pure electric vehicle market to exceed 500,000 units in terms of deliveries.
Specifically, at the model level, the delivery volume of NIO's two SUV models on the Double 6 exceeded 10,000 again this month, exceeding 10,000 units for two consecutive months, surpassing the BMW X3/X4 combination and ranking in the first echelon of China's high-end mid-size SUV market.
Although price wars in the auto market have come and gone, NIO's market share advantage in the high-end pure electric market is more obvious. From January to May this year, NIO ranked first in China's pure electric vehicle market with an average transaction price of more than 300,000 yuan, with a market share of more than 37%, a further increase from 33.4% in January and April.
In the eyes of industry insiders, NIO's ability to maintain high-end leadership in the current market environment shows to a certain extent that with the popularization of new energy vehicles, the competitive logic of the intelligent pure electric vehicle market is changing. Although the volume price, volume configuration and volume flow once became a trend, with the rise of young consumers and the increase in the proportion of replacement users, users have higher requirements for product intelligence, the convenience of energy replenishment facilities and the quality of products throughout the life cycle.
The "killer feature" behind breaking 20,000 again
NIO's sales have continued to grow since 2024, which to a certain extent conforms to consumers' comprehensive demand for smart pure electric vehicles. First, the 2024 product will be switched in the first half of this year, and the competitiveness of the product will increase; Second, BaaS strategy and price adjustment to promote users to accept the battery rental model, and 80% of new users currently choose the BaaS model; Third, the expansion of the sales network and the continuous improvement of sales capacity; Fourth, the basic layout of battery swap stations and the continuous expansion of the battery swap alliance allow users to have a clearer understanding of the convenience of energy replenishment brought by battery swapping and the benefits of battery life and attenuation. In addition, the rebound in the value retention rate of NIO models has also alleviated users' "residual value anxiety" about electric vehicles.
In the first quarter of this year, NIO announced a new policy for the adjustment of BaaS battery rental services, which not only reduces the monthly battery rental fee, but also lowers the threshold for users to purchase a car. Whether it is compared with BBA users of the same level or NIO users who buy out batteries, NIO BaaS users enjoy lower car ownership costs. In addition, NIO has also dedicated BaaS limited-time benefits to new users. Taking the purchase of the 75-degree battery NIO EC6 with a guide price of 358,000 yuan as an example, users who choose the BaaS solution save an additional 1,681 yuan in purchase tax because the car price drops to less than 300,000 yuan.
Not only that, combined with BaaS innovation, NIO does not need to bear the high replacement cost and depreciation of the vehicle price due to the degradation of the battery after the battery is out of warranty. Qin Lihong, co-founder of NIO, once said that battery swapping is equivalent to providing every NIO user with a lifetime warranty on the battery. "Suppose a user never changes the battery, and when it comes to 7 years and 364 days, you go to the NIO battery swap station to change a battery, and your battery life is extended again. Therefore, the battery is immortal for NIO owners. ”
It is understood that NIO has built more than 2,400 battery swap stations across the country, and the fourth-generation battery swap stations have been launched. Combined with the latest intelligent and battery swap technology, car owners can voice control the NOMI robot, find a nearby battery swap station, and then complete the battery swap in three minutes, solving the big anxiety of energy replenishment that plagues new energy vehicle owners.
According to Shen Fei: "There are more direct reasons to buy NIO because of battery swapping, one is that battery swapping lowers the threshold for buying a car, and after the separation of vehicle and electricity, you don't need to pay for the battery in full when you buy a car, it changes the one-time payment to a monthly payment." The second is to reduce the user's car purchase cost, coupled with the problem of purchase tax, the car purchase tax can save thousands to nearly 10,000 yuan. ”
This means that the battery swap solves the two major anxieties of new energy vehicle owners about energy replenishment and battery life, and makes consumers have a better impression of the battery swap model. In addition, with the cooperation between mainstream car companies such as China FAW, GAC, Changan, Geely and NIO in battery swapping, especially in May, NIO Energy received 1.5 billion yuan of government investment, so that NIO has a more authoritative endorsement for battery swapping, and more and more people believe that this energy supplement model may become the mainstream and will be more assured to buy.
According to Shen Fei's interpretation, battery swapping has expanded the potential user group, increasing potential users by at least two times.
Intelligence has become a "new anchor" for competition
In addition, Huawei and Xiaomi have successively set foot in the smart electric vehicle market, which has also brought a huge drainage effect to the industry and existing car companies. NIO's deep layout in the field of intelligence has also provided a competitive boost for the transformation of traffic into sales.
In the first half of 2024, NIO ushered in the launch of all 2024 models. The performance of ADAM, the central computing platform for all NIO 2024 models, has been further improved, and the mass production computing power has once again refreshed the industry ceiling, integrating one of the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 intelligent cockpit chips and four NVIDIA Orin X intelligent driving chips. Compared with the previous generation 8155, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 chip has about 2 times more CPU computing power, 3 times more GPU computing power, and 8 times more AI computing power. 4 NVIDIA Orin X chips, 48 CPU cores, 256 matrix computing units, 8096 floating point computing units, a total of 68 billion transistors, and a total computing power of 1016TOPS, will continue to be the ceiling of automotive intelligent driving computing power in the coming year.
Because of this, NIO is at the forefront of the industry in the field of intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving. On June 4, NIO was admitted to the L3/L4 autonomous driving test pilot by four ministries and commissions including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and was one of the first batch of new start-ups to be selected, reflecting NIO's advantages in intelligent driving R&D infrastructure, software and hardware redundancy design, comprehensive safety assurance and other system capabilities. Previously, NIO has fully pushed the NOP+ urban function of global pilot assisted driving to Banyan users, and it is reported that this is the largest and most extensive urban intelligent driving application push in the country.
Full life cycle quality assurance
In the era of smart electric vehicles, many changes have taken place in the user's car scenarios. The cockpit of the car has become a movie theater, a karaoke room, a lunch break room, and a business negotiation room, the voice assistant in the car has become smarter, and intelligent technologies such as intelligent driving have also developed rapidly. The design and function of automobiles have become more complex, and the number of personalized scenarios for users has increased, which has also greatly increased the difficulty of quality control.
On June 26, NIO announced the full life cycle quality system (ATQ), which manages the whole process in terms of pre-development quality, partner quality, manufacturing logistics quality, and user service quality.
"In the era of smart electric vehicles, we need to start from the user's perspective, user scenarios, and user interests, pay attention to the interests of the whole life cycle of the user's car, and we need to have a quality thinking and quality system for the whole life cycle." Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, said.
In fact, the ATQ was already working within NIO before it was announced, and the quality of NIO's products was recognized by international professional organizations.
On May 30, J.D. In the 2024 China New Energy Vehicle Product Attractiveness Index study released by Power, NIO ES6 won the first place in the luxury pure electric vehicle market, and NIO ET5/ET5T won the first place in the mid-size pure electric car market. On June 6, J.D. Power released the 2024 China New Energy Vehicle New Vehicle Quality Study, in which NIO ES8 ranked first in the luxury pure electric vehicle market, and NIO ET5/ET5T ranked first in the mid-size pure electric car market. From 2019 to the present, NIO models have won the quality crown of the institution for six consecutive years.
At present, the trend of new energy vehicles replacing fuel vehicles is clearly visible, and the new energy vehicle market is expected to form a new pattern. It can be said that NIO's current sales growth is mainly due to the large investment in technology, manufacturing, energy replenishment and other fields in the early stage. It is predicted that the high-end pure electric market will enter an explosive period in 2024, and NIO, which is in the stage of smooth sales, is likely to have reached the moment of "flipping the table".
When the sales volume exceeded 20,000 in May, Li Bin revealed that the delivery volume was the maximum output that could be produced that month. At that time, Li Bin also said: "This is a happy trouble. With the monthly delivery reaching a new high, it is obvious that Li Bin's "troubles" will continue in July.