In the past year, price wars have been fierce. All electrification companies are actively adjusting prices. On the one hand, they want to have better competitiveness, and on the other hand, they are also squeezing out water.
But there is one company that is very determined. It has been in the high-end market for many years, Weilai . It can be said that it has not adjusted the price of any product in the past year.
The price of battery-grade lithium carbonate has dropped from 600,000 per ton a year and a half ago to more than 90,000 per ton today. The price reduction of core raw materials is a good thing for pure electric vehicles. The reduction in manufacturing costs also provides The enterprise brings a certain profit margin.
The reason why Weilai does not cut prices is also very simple. It insists on high-end products and does not backstab old car owners. It maintains the height of the brand and buys time for profitability.
Indeed, NIO is too difficult. NIO's net profit loss in the q4 quarter of 2023 was 5.593 billion. Although it narrowed by 4.34% year-on-year, it still cannot solve the problem of profitability.
Not making money is a very real problem facing Weilai.
One of the important reasons is that NIO’s necessary expenses are too fixed, and its focus on services means that every NIO unit sold needs a corresponding service team to keep up with it. At the same time, the pressure of battery replacement will also increase. In order to make The experience of battery swapping is not lagging behind, and the investment pressure for additional battery swapping stations is not small. An important reason for the increase in losses of
in the fourth quarter of last year was the sharp decline in sales. The sales volume in the entire fourth quarter was only 50,000 units. Under fixed expenses, production efficiency was not fully realized, leading to the expansion of losses.
From the perspective of consumption ports, Weilai’s opponents are actively adjusting.
et5 wants to trip up its rival BMW 3 series . Today’s terminal market price has dropped to about 230,000. The price of i3 has even dropped below 220,000. The price of aito m7 has been adjusted from the previous 290,000 to 250,000. .
The prices of Jikrypton , Denza, BBA, Ideal, , Xpeng are all falling rapidly, and the strong NIO is forced to expose the problem of "insufficient cost performance".
Although the guide price has not been reduced, NIO's terminal prices have actually been significantly reduced. Many models have seen price drops of more than 30,000 yuan. In addition, NIO has just announced a price reduction of baas, from the previous 980 yuan to 728 yuan. , and buy 4 and get 1 free.
In other words, Weilai is actually also reducing prices, but the reduction is much smaller than that of other brands.
For example, the comprehensive decline of Denza n7 has reached 70,000, but the decline of higher-priced NIO is only 30,000-40,000. NIO's strategy is to adjust the price, but not excessively.
After all, NIO has not yet gotten out of the plight of losses.
The main reason why NIO will not cut prices is that the Alpine project that Li Bin has been planning for a long time will be launched in a few months. In an interview with the media, Li Bin said that targeted Alpine models will be launched for families of different sizes.
The Alpine project is a model that focuses on the sinking market. Because of NIO’s technical reserves, the Alpine project will definitely enjoy these technical dividends, which means that NIO will have a big turnaround this year.
Considering the stabilization of losses, Weilai can stimulate sales through price cuts to a certain extent, but it will not put the brand into a collapse situation. After all, the expenses are huge and more funds are needed to maintain the operation of the brand and support it. The implementation of new projects.
