The cost of NIO's car manufacturing has always been a topic of concern to the outside world.
A few days ago, Bai Jian, vice president of Weilai, published a Weibo, which also responded to questions from the outside world.
Bai Jian's Weibo mentioned that NIO's smart hardware accounts for roughly 20% of the cost of the whole vehicle.
For the two parts of intelligent driving (two Orin versions) + digital cockpit 8295, he said that compared with its peers in the industry with Tier1, NIO's cost is reduced by 30%, mainly due to two reasons:
1. Self-developed, no gross profit is required.
As long as we ensure that the annual cost savings are much greater than the team and R&D expenses (emphasized, our expenses are included in the R&D expenses and do not affect the gross profit of the whole vehicle).
In terms of design capabilities, many of the top tier1 peers are also very good. But the better the team, the more it needs Maori to nourish it.
2. We are full-stack self-developed, and the architecture can be optimized. In terms of design indicators, we know best which trade-offs can be made.
Not only that, Bai Jian also added that NIO is still the world's No. 1 in terms of cumulative shipments of Orin's domain control (number), accounting for 40% of all global Orin shipments.
He also revealed that the most complex Orin design to date is NIO, and the most cost-optimized Orin design is also NIO.
It is understood that in recent years, NIO has invested a lot in the field of research and development, and has recruited a number of technical talents to join. Let's take Wei Xiaoli as a comparison, from the data of the last three years:
In 2020, Li Auto spent 109.9 billion yuan, and Xiaopeng Motors was 172.6 billion yuan, and NIO's R&D expenditure reached 248.8 billion yuan;
In 2021, Li Auto spent 32900 million yuan, and Xiaopeng Motors is 411.4 billion yuan, and NIO's R&D expenditure reached 45900 million yuan;
In 2022, Li Auto spent 6.8 billion yuan on R&D, Xpeng Motors 5.2 billion yuan, and NIO spent 10.8 billion yuan on R&D.
In the first three quarters of 2023, Li Auto spent 7.1 billion yuan on research and development, and Xpeng Motors was 39800 million yuan, and NIO's R&D expenditure reached 94600 million yuan.
In addition, at the 2023 NIO Innovation and Technology Day, Li Bin, Chairman and CEO of NIO, said that NIO currently has more than 11,000 R&D personnel and more than 7,300 patents.
Li Bin said that in the future, the current R&D investment intensity will continue to be maintained, which will remain at about 3 billion yuan per quarter.