On November 3, the domestic automotive industry once again came with heavy information. In response to the recent rumors of NIO's layoffs, which have been circulating on the Internet a few days ago, Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, issued a letter to all employees to officially respond to the rumors of layoffs. Li Bin saidThe company will reduce the number of jobs by about 10%, and the relevant adjustments will be completed in November.
What are the reasons for NIO's layoffs?
NIO laid off 10% of its workforce, but in the final analysis, its sales target for this year was not achieved.
In terms of sales volume, in the past October, NIO's deliveries were only 160,000 units, although it increased by 277%, but it still failed to reach the monthly sales of 20,000 units that Li Bin hoped for. All models in NIO have completed NT2With the switch of 0 platform, the launch of the new ES6 strategic model, and the fact that it has just experienced a wave of sharp price cuts not long ago, unless there is another big price cut, it may be difficult for NIO to stimulate a significant increase in terminal sales. On the whole, from January to October this year, NIO delivered a total of 12 new cars60,000 units, with an annual delivery target of 2450,000 units) is just over half.
On the other hand, NIO's competitors almost all handed over relatively beautiful report cards in October: Li Auto has increased its monthly sales to 40,000 units; Xpeng Motors reversed the decline and broke through the 20,000 mark; The AITO Wenjie brand also swept away the weakness of this year, and achieved a monthly delivery of more than 10,000 units of a single model in October. As for Leapmotor and ZEEKR, they have also set monthly delivery records, and the upward momentum is very obvious.
Low sales volume will naturally affect the performance of financial results. According to the second-quarter financial report disclosed by NIONIO's revenue in the second quarter of this year was 8771.7 billion yuan, down 148%, gross profit was 87 million yuan, down 935%, with a net loss of 6055.8 billion yuan. Although NIO has also raised a lot of money from local tyrants in the Middle East this year, if the speed of loss is not stopped in time, then even if Li Bin will raise funds again, the cash reserves on NIO's account will be exhausted one day. Not to mention, there is considerable uncertainty in the current global economic environment. The Federal Reserve's continued interest rate hikes and keeping interest rates high have led to the repatriation of US dollar capital from around the world, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for NIO and other companies to raise funds in overseas markets.
Volkswagen's full-stack self-development is facing a turn
Coincidentally, almost at the same time as NIO's layoffs, the news of layoffs at Cariad, a subsidiary of Volkswagen in Germany, was announced. According to the relevant information, Volkswagen will cut up to 2,000 jobs in Cariad.
In the Diess era, CARIAD was the core asset of the entire Volkswagen, undertaking the development of intelligent networking for the entire group, and was personally managed by the CEO of the Volkswagen Group at that time. But it is precisely because he is in charge of CARIAD that it has become the most important reason for Diess to leave his job. Due to the major delay in the delivery of CARIAD, almost all the pure electric models of the Volkswagen Group have been affected, and even affected the overall new energy transformation process of brands including Bentley, Porsche, and Audi.
Not long ago, Volkswagen invested in Xpeng and will produce two models based on Xpeng's Fuyao platform; At the same time, Volkswagen also officially announced that its brand will cooperate with SAIC and introduce Zhiji-related technology to SAIC Audi for production. Cooperation with domestic car companies will inevitably not be a free lunch, Volkswagen has invested part of its resources in Xpeng and Zhiji, which means that Cariad can be allocated fewer resources. Not to mention that at Cariad's German headquarters, companies including Bosch and Mobileye have also begun to move in and carry out joint development with Volkswagen. The Cariad-related functions themselves are already redundant. Not to mention that CARIAD itself still needs to invest a lot of money in the research and development of existing projects, and the losses are serious.
In the Diess era, Volkswagen determined the strategy of full-stack self-development. In the future, in terms of a new generation of electronic and electrical architecture and autonomous driving technology, Volkswagen will rely more on the introduction of technology from Heshang and partners such as Xpeng and Zhiji to digest, absorb and re-innovate. For today's public, this practice is the most economical and also the fastest. This will most likely become a trend in the global automotive industry in the future.
The global automotive market will trigger a new round of change
It's not that we are alarmist, but this round of layoffs from NIO and CARIAD will have a very big impact.
In the domestic auto market, NIO is recognized as a company with relatively strong financing capabilities. Once NIO is under pressure and starts laying off employees, it really means that many companies are not having a good time. In 2024, the alarm bell has sounded for new power car companies whose sales are still hovering at a low level and have no way to achieve self-profitability. After all, the current NIO, although the sales performance is not impressive, but if the sales of more than 15K still cannot ensure the survival of a car company, then I believe that more well-known car companies will be further marginalized next year.
From now until the first half of next year, NIO has no new cars on the market. This means,If NIO wants to increase sales, it can only start cutting prices further. And price reduction has always been a double-edged sword for the NIO brand. There is still some uncertainty about whether it can pull up sales, but the damage to brand value and consumer confidence is a high probability event. What is even more worrying is that if the sales of the Alpine brand do not reach the expected level next year, then NIO may face an even greater crisis. After all, the market competition that Alps will face in the next week may be more fierce than the current market segment in which the NIO brand is located. Volkswagen, GM, and BYD, Geely, Changan, Aion, etc., which have hoarded a large number of electric vehicle models, are all eyeing each other. Not to mention other new power car companies such as Zeekr, Leap, Xiaopeng, Nezha, and AITO.
As for Cariad's layoffs, behind it is that multinational car giants have begun to adjust their strategies. They will start full-stack self-development from the model of believing in Tesla in the past, and will become more pragmatic. Adopt what strategy can make your smart electric vehicle product strength improve rapidly, and what can make your electric vehicle business model profitable. If you are familiar with Germany, you know how difficult it is to lay off employees in Germany, especially for a company like Volkswagen, which is still relatively profitable. Under such circumstances, the public is still willing to offend the union and tear up, which shows the great determination of the public. Next,It remains to be seen whether Volkswagen will adjust the functions and structure of CARIAD China, or even reorganize the R&D departments of Volkswagen in the north and south.
In today's challenging times, there is a lot of pressure on every professional. In the face of layoffs, there is really nothing we can do. The only thing we can do is to work hard and improve our competitiveness in the workplace, so that even if the layoffs affect us, we may still find suitable positions in other companies. In any case, the Chinese auto market is still the largest in the world, and our electric vehicles are very competitive in overseas markets.
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