Just when the workers denounced the "exploitation" of the capitalists themselves, the capitalists also began to roll themselves up in person. The head of a listed car company, two hours and forty minutes, more than 140 questions, and only drank water twice in the middle of the whole process, this series of keywords are connected together, not to mention in the automobile circle, even in the entire business world is extremely rare and explosive.
Battery swapping, products and technologies, market, management and efficiency, strategy, in this face-to-face communication meeting, Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, showed the general attitude of a fledgling entrepreneur facing investors who saved you from fire and water.
Weilai's volume is always inadvertent, and unlike other car company heads who pick a few questions to answer, Li Bin's way of passing through one by one is indeed too realistic. However, sincerity is also a nirvana to defeat everything, and Li Bin's honesty allows everyone to see a more promising NIO.
Li Bin and Li Xiang, the founder of Li Auto, are both from the top people, but he respects people more, which is a kind of level-headed respect and has nothing to do with interests.
The editor of Caiquan Club & Dao Ge Says Car has heard this sentence more than once: "Li Bin is a kind man and strategist, if Li Bin's NIO fails, it will be the sadness of this industry." ”
There is no merit and hard work
There is such a line in the movie "Nezha": The prejudice in people's hearts is like a mountain, no matter how hard you try, you can't want to move.
In the eyes of many people, Weilai's high-quality service system is a manifestation of indiscriminate spending, and some people even try to push Weilai into a plot, thinking that the boss is very mediocre.
But in fact, the real NIO is only showing elegance to the outside world, which does not mean that it will not endure hardships. Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of NIO, said that he and Li Bin have been sharing a 12-square-meter office, and they are responsible for the cost of traveling in business class and staying in hotels beyond the 400 standard, which is no different from the company's front-line employee travel standards. If you want to roll up the income and office space of the startup boss, it is estimated that no one will roll over NIO.
Being yourself is to be able to make better products. It is reported that NIO has 7,700 global patents in nine years, which is enough for others to work for more than ten years, even if it is regarded as hard work. Talking about Weilai's technology investment, Li Bin also said that in general, more than 3 billion yuan will be invested every quarter, and no matter how hard the days are, they can't work research and development. Therefore, around doing or not doing, the core logic of NIO is that R&D for gross profit is a high priorityFixed assets for gross profit, can be pushed back;Changing scale for gross profit is a thing to do;It is also a must to manage the change of gross profit.
Judging from NIO's R&D investment data in the last three years, in 2020, R&D expenditure was 248.8 billion yuan, compared to 45900 million yuan, 10.8 billion yuan in 2022, and 94600 million yuan, it is the most willing to spend money to invest in the future of the new car-making forces. Therefore, even if the outside world questions the efficiency of NIO's technology R&D investment to generate economic benefits, Li Bin also believes that high-end brands have some differentiated pursuit of personalization, although doing less things can save money, but users like NIO because of the brand's differentiation strategy.
From the perspective of product delivery, this year, NIO has released and delivered five new cars in four months, and in any case, it is also a performance of high efficiency to deliver these cars on schedule. Recently, NIO's high-speed battery swap stations have exceeded 700, and the total number of battery swap stations has exceeded 2,200, which can be called the "infrastructure madness" of the car circle.
Not only is it an infrastructure maniac, but also a technology maniac, and the technical content of NIO's battery swap station is also very high, and it has participated in the compilation of more than 20 battery swap standards. This also makes it so that since the beginning of this year, Changan, Geely and other companies have reached battery swap cooperation with NIO, which is considered by the industry to be the opening of the battery swap mode and usher in the landing moment.
Just when the outside world thought that with the expansion of the NIO battery swap alliance, the moat of NIO would become deeper and deeper, Li Bin admitted frankly that his biggest wish was not that NIO sold well, but that the battery swap cars cooperated with NIO sold well. Because battery swapping has never been a burden for NIO, the end game is opening up to the outside world, and the battery swap plan only has win-win benefits without any risks. For a long time, some people have always thought that Weilai's battery swap business is not a serious business, but for Weilai, Chinese brands want to gain a certain degree of differentiation in the world if they want to gain a foothold in the world, which is not a simple war of words and a war of words.
There is no merit and hard work"Everything that NIO does and what seems to be stubborn behavior will always give people this feeling. It is worth mentioning that recently, Li Bin also started working as a test driver. On December 17th, Li Bin set off from Shanghai at half past 6 in the morning, and broadcast live for 14 hours in a row, testing the battery life of 150 degrees.
Give up illusions and sell cars well
Two years ago, Li Bin's sentence "Why do people still buy gas cars now?".The remarks directly put the fuel vehicle users on the opposite side and instantly detonated the Internet, and Li Bin also became an arrogant and ignorant person in the eyes of many netizens. Two years later, when Li Bin talked about this topic again, he said that it was the most regrettable thing in the past two years.
First of all, I have to admit that I said the wrong thing, so many people buy fuel cars, there is a reason, I said it too early, maybe it will be better in another 10 or 5 years. I said this sentence must be reviewed, and it may be right to say a word at an inappropriate time, but I said it five or six years earlier, so I said it less. ”
In addition to the theory of "fuel vehicles", some of the flags that Li Bin had set up before were also embarrassingly turned out. In this regard, Li Bin seemed very calm, "If you slap your face, who can guarantee that everything you say is right." What I ask of myself is that at this point in time, what I say is what I really think. If I say a word for 10,000 years, I'm not a god, I can't do it. There is a kind of "whatever, it doesn't matter" meaning in it.
After all, compared with those miscellaneous ** whirlpools, Li Bin is more concerned about selling cars well, which is also his only expectation for the upcoming 2024. Since the beginning of this year, the intensity of market competition has risen sharply, and the first battle was once crazy, and next year's battle in the automobile circle will be more intense. In this regard, Li Bin said that NIO's strategy is to improve the gross profit margin in exchange for an increase in sales volume by improving the system capability of sales and service.
It is reported that NIO has about 3,000 sales professionals, and by the second quarter of next year, the newly recruited user consultants will become mature, "We are very confident in the sales increase after the second quarter of next year." Li Bin specifically pointed out that the biggest lesson this year is that sales capacity building is lagging behind, resulting in the loss of many intended orders.
Within Weilai, Li Bin has also been warning his colleagues to give up illusions, first, to give up illusions about the fierceness of market competition, it must be very miserable;Second, we must give up the illusion that NIO will exchange price for volume, and the decision is easy to make, but in fact, it will not achieve the strategic goal.
Li Bin repeatedly mentioned that NIO's top priority at the moment is to increase sales, and he said that he hopes that the outside world will not use "long-termism" to "paralyze" NIO, "You say that NIO is a company that pursues short-term execution, and it is okay to say that we are short-sighted, so we will be encouraged, we are a company that pays attention to execution efficiency." ”
At the same time, Li Bin also emphasized that the original intention of NIO's long-termism remains unchanged, but long-termism is not an excuse for not doing a good job in short-term implementation. Long-termism tends to create a culture in a company that doesn't look at short-term deliveries, which is certainly not good.
Li Bin and Weilai, who are so pragmatic, also decided to launch their second brand and new models later, the reason is that they want the market to roll up first, and they will turn the table last. "When everyone is exhausted, let's go in again, otherwise there will be no splash in the price reduction now. Li Bin said that the same is true for the MPV that has been approved. "If it's late, it's not in a hurry, just take the lead. ”
Along the way, it has not been easy for Li Bin and NIO, but even if they continue to face huge challenges, they are much better than the darkest moments in 2019. "At the end of the third quarter of this year, there was still 45.2 billion cash on the account, and at least we knew where next month's salary was. Behind the light breeze is the joy of hardship that entrepreneurs have always been good at, and in the experience, lessons and misunderstandings, Li Bin and NIO are still fighting alone.
Zhou Shengguang, the founder of Ruixiu luxury car, is very optimistic about NIO, the future of new energy vehicles is pure electric, with the rapid construction of battery swapping and supercharging network, the problem of range anxiety will be completely solved, and range extension and plug-in hybrid will be eliminated. NIO's battery swap network will be the moat of its development, and NIO's market share of pure electric vehicles of more than 300,000 has exceeded 40%, and with the listing of Alps next year, it will occupy a place in the market of 20-300,000 yuanWhen Firefly goes on the market and continues to precipitate into the downstream market, it is not a dream for NIO to sell millions a year.