Seeing Li Bin's New Year's speech from Weilai, I couldn't help but sigh. In December, the year-end peak season just past, NIO failed to jump over the profit and loss line of 20,000.
NIO has no shortage of products, as many as 8 models, covering sedan MPV and crockpots, and concentrated in the luxury high-end market in the range of 30 500,000 (market transaction price); NIO has no shortage of technology, four-wheel drive, four Orin-X, and LiDAR are all standard equipment in the whole system. Self-developed battery swapping, 900V, cockpit and intelligent driving chip; NIO is not short of funds, not only with the endorsement of Hefei, but also with the support of local tyrants in the Middle East.
What NIO lacks is powerful marketing.
There are not many opponents in the 300,000-level pure electric SUV market like ES6, and only Denza N7 and AVATR 11 can play. Therefore, the entire third quarter was the world of ES6, and with the launch of M7 in the fourth quarter, it greatly diverted pure electric users, and ES6 was quickly beaten down. If you want to fight against range extension, the only way is to increase the range to more than 800 kilometers, and the range of NIO's 100-degree battery is only 625 kilometers, which is indeed too weak (Edamame Y long-range 78-degree battery is 688 kilometers). Therefore, it is imperative to break through the three-electric technology and achieve a 100-degree battery range of 850 to 900 kilometers. At the same time, the four ORIN-Xs are not only flashy, but also extremely incompatible with the cockpit 8155, either all of them are replaced with self-developed chips, or two ORINs are cut and upgraded to 8295.
The 300,000-yuan pure electric sedan market of the ET5 series will be a new blue ocean this year, and AVATR 12 Zhijie S7 is an extremely strong opponent. The size of the ET5 has already withdrawn from the competition, and if you still want to keep the threshold of 300,000, you must launch the ET6 to meet it head-on.
In the end, NIO's product definition has not kept up with the market trend, and today, when more than 200,000 yuan is already the standard of 532 (car length, wheelbase and width), or 4.8 meters B-level 300,000 yuan products will of course be marginalized.
It is said that the selling point of NIO is service, and I often hear various legends about the myth of NIO's service. I've always wondered, if the service really impresses customers so much, why didn't it get the sales growth contributed by referrals? It wasn't until I saw the complaint of the big V Yan Chuang last year that I understood a thing or two. There's nothing wrong with marketing based on service, but when a customer's high expectations are met with any unsatisfactory experience, word-of-mouth can backfire.
As the leader of the national strategy of battery swapping, it is also one of the few independent brands that insists on high investment in R&D, and sincerely hopes that NIO can go further in the competition.