NIO welcomes the "battle of life and death"?
Author |Shengma Finance Xin Zimo
Edit |Ouyang Wen
In 2023, after experiencing a series of troughs such as sales declines, price cuts, financial losses, and layoffs in the first half of the year, NIO has once again triggered the outside world to start thinking more about the life and death of the industry for this company full of "ideals".
Shengma Finance learned that the data shows that NIO in 2023 experienced a trough in sales at the beginning of the year, with sales of 8,506 units in January 2023 and only 6,155 units in June, and only rebounded from July to October. For the whole year of 2023, NIO delivered a total of 160038 new vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 307%。
But judging from the financial data, NIO still seems to be a little stretched.
According to the financial report, in the third quarter of 2023, NIO's revenue will be 190700 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 466%, but the net loss was 45600 million yuan, an increase of 10 percent year-on-year8%。In the first three quarters of 2023, NIO's revenue totaled 3851.3 billion yuan, with a net loss of 15.3 billion1.5 billion yuan. Since 2018, NIO has accumulated losses of 80 billion yuan. According to incomplete estimates, the company loses 200,000 yuan for every car sold.
In addition to solving the problem of losses, NIO is also facing the threat of "latecomers".
At present, the hot spot pursued by the high-end market is no longer limited to electrification, but has begun to shift to the direction of intelligence. Huawei, Xpeng, Tesla and other brands have been accumulating for a longer time, and they will enter the first camp in 2023. In the first week of 2024, the sales volume of the Wenjie brand, which relies on Huawei's intelligent driving technology and intelligent cockpit, will reach 0590,000, surpassing Ideal, Deep Blue and Weilai, ranking first in the sales volume of new power brands in the Chinese market, with fierce momentum. However, NIO started late, and its reputation in intelligent driving has not yet been established.
In the face of all kinds of crises, everyone is thinking-How long can NIO, which continues to burn money and lose money, hold on?
NIO survived with a "broken arm".
Of course, NIO itself is aware of the problem. When the scenery is gone, NIO also began to abandon its former "ideals" and embarked on the road of self-revolution of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency". And the first thing it broke off was also the "service" that NIO was most proud of in the past.
In June last year, NIO announced that the free battery swap service will no longer be used as a basic car right, and users can choose to pay a single fee for battery swapping. This is the first time that NIO has divest the battery swap rights from the vehicle** to reduce the purchase of the whole vehicle**. At the same time, NIO announced that the price of all new cars will be reduced by 30,000 yuan.
The effect of this initiative was immediate, and NIO's deliveries rose from 10,000 to 20,000 in the following month.
On January 25 this year, NIO released the 2024 version of the worry-free service product. Compared with last year, the 2024 version of the worry-free service will bind insurance and service fees, and adopt the model of car insurance + service charges, which is divided into premium version, happy version, and light version, ** 4999 yuan, 1399 yuan, and 499 yuan respectively.
Taking a closer look at the service, NIO not only reduced the scooter points, but also lowered the value-added service coupons from the previous 35 to 20, and canceled the 750 safe driving points issued every month (free maintenance will be issued next month if you don't use it in the current month), and the maximum number of points for the whole year is 9,000 points (10 points = 1 yuan); If you have not been insured in the previous year, you will no longer have 20,000 points for purchasing "24 Edition of Worry-Free Service"; Cancel maintenance for more than 24 hours, do not use free maintenance scooters, reward 3,500 points per day, up to 7 days (24,500 points) and so on.
Shengma Finance learned that previously, on a second-hand platform, 1,000 NIO points could be discounted by about 80 yuan. For Weilai users, the inexhaustible value-added service coupons can also be used, and they can not only enjoy the "Haidilao-style" service for a year, but also rely on wool to "make a small profit".
After all, from the user's point of view, NIO, which provides high-quality services like "Haidilao", has always been regarded as a symbol of high-end and premium confidence. Many users feel that spending more than 5,000 yuan to buy worry-free services is too cost-effective to buy insurance directly, but as the number of users grows, maintaining the same standard under the "Haidilao" model requires more investment - which means that the financial pressure is increasing.
According to Weilai's internal data, Weilai's worry-free service has an average loss of 4,000 yuan per order, which is equivalent to using money to paste the service upside down.
At the user communication meeting of worry-free service products, Li Bin also publicly responded to the difficulties of carrying out the worry-free service project - "This year, we must be careful in our calculations, and the overall direction of NIO this year is cost management." The previous worry-free service was definitely a loss, and if the user base was large, it was indeed difficult to continue. ”
However, in recent years, with the increase of operating pressure, NIO's various special services have shrunk, and the brand's advantages are also lost after the user experience is discounted.
Entered the sinking market
NIO has a full-price brand
In addition, NIO is finally no longer limited to high-end brands.
On August 29, 2023, Li Bin revealed at the NIO Q2 financial report** meeting that the first model of NIO's sub-brand "Alps" will be officially released in the second half of 2024, and the second model of Alps is currently under development.
It is understood that the Alps brand is positioned as a mid-range car series, with a price of 200,000-300,000 yuan, and is expected to be launched.
The four or five products are facing competition from brands such as Tesla modely, Xiaopeng, and Zeekr.
After Alps, NIO launched a third brand, codenamed Firefly, which mainly promotes small cars and mini cars, covering the market below 200,000 yuan. At present, NIO urgently needs to enter the sinking market through two new low-end brands to regain blood.
Finally, starting from the end of '23, NIO also optimized its internal organizational structure and laid off 10% of its workforce. And at the beginning of 2024, Li Bin issued an internal open letter, saying that he would completely cut off ineffective and inefficient investment, and make good use of every penny handed over to the company by shareholders.
In fact, compared with all the new car-making forces, NIO is definitely an "idealistic" car company, and even its slogan is blueskycoming (committed to a better future and clear sky), compared with other new forces, NIO also has a different business model. Li Bin once revealed that in the early days of NIO's establishment in 2015, the company had done business thinking internally, and the high-end market could allow NIO to have a higher premium ability in exchange for gross profit than directly entering the large-scale market.
But idealists tend to be far from reality. The realization of the ideal also requires a long time and a lot of investment, so in the face of the cruel reality and life-and-death competition, the first thing NIO has to consider is to survive.
Of course, Weilai did not completely compromise, and while other peers were seizing the sinking market by "hurting the enemy by one thousand and losing eight hundred", Weilai still launched the ET9 with a price of up to 800,000 yuan. However, judging from various shrinking service strategies, NIO has to compromise with reality.
Therefore, it is not difficult to see that in 2024, NIO may still continue to move forward in this "swing", but as for which side the balance will tilt more towards, it is also necessary to consider the changes in the automotive market and the strategies of decision-makers, and for NIO, the real critical moment has just arrived.
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