On December 21st, NIO celebrated its tenth year of NIO Day, amidst years of questioning about "how long can NIO live.
Guangzhou Haixinsha has become a watershed for NIO's "next decade" - the highest end flagship executive coupe ET9 has been released, and the cheapest "Firefly" among the three brands has finally appeared. After ten years of preparation, NIO, which has finally gathered three major brands, has brought many suspense and expectations to the market. A high and low brand and product showcase NIO's diverse layout in technology, brand, and market strategy.
Upward ET9
As the most important protagonist of NIO DAY this year - ET9. NIO founder Li Bin spent a full hour giving a detailed introduction, which is almost the same as the time when the car was first released a year ago. This shows that NIO hopes to continue to strengthen potential users' impression of the brand's high-end innovation in market positioning, technological leadership, and design direction.
From Li Bin's introduction, it can be seen that the ET9 has a lot of high-level configurations, including design, space, comfort, sound, intelligent systems, intelligent driving, safety, three electronics, and driving and riding. It also has twelve self-developed full stack technology achievements from NIO, with a total of 1081 patent applications. Including ET9, it is the second production car in the world to have a steer by wire system after Tesla CyberTruck. It is reported that the ET9 is priced at 788000 yuan and 999 units of the first limited edition will be released simultaneously, with a price of 818000 yuan. Delivery is planned to begin in March 2025.
From the perspective of user profiles, ET9 is mainly aimed at high-end audiences such as corporate executives and industry elites. As a flagship car priced at 800000 yuan, Li Bin hopes that the ET9 can refresh the current landscape of the executive sedan "78S" (BMW 7 Series, Audi A8, and Mercedes Benz S-Class) into a new "789S". However, according to industry feedback after the release of NIO DAY, if positioned as an administrative flagship, it is not easy for ET9 to replace Mercedes Benz S in the minds of bosses. Moreover, mantises catch cicadas, while yellow sparrows come behind. Targeting the ET9 of the "78S", it also faces the threat of Huawei's "Zunjie S8".
The next day, NIO founder Li Bin responded positively to these skeptical voices. High end administrative products are actually the fortress market of international high-end brands. Chinese brands going to the high-end administrative market or very expensive market together to break through will make many users realize that Chinese brands can be administrative flagships. And several companies can do it, which will shake the monopoly position of traditional BBA in the high-end administrative market
In Li Bin's opinion, the launch of ET9 comes second in terms of sales volume, and the most important thing is to "set the tone" for the NIO brand. Although NIO has successively launched lower priced models such as Ledo and Firefly, Li Bin believes that NIO's high-end positioning is unshakable. The higher the price in the future, the more products there will be, while the lower the price, the fewer products will be
Obviously, NIO is well aware that the ET9 is a flagship product that cannot excessively pursue sales. In terms of sales in 2023, the Mercedes Benz S-Class, BMW 7 Series, Audi A8L, and Porsche Panamera have a cumulative sales volume of 82000 units in China. In recent years, multiple Chinese brands have been constantly striving for the high-end market, hoping to "defeat giants with technology". However, there are only a few Chinese luxury car models that have successfully entered the top ten. So far this year, only BYD has looked up to this SUV to emerge from the midst of numerous million dollar luxury cars.
Although the NIO ET9 has not set a sales flag, Li Bin revealed that "999 units of the first limited edition NIO ET9 have been sold out". In contrast, the Zunjie brand has even greater ambitions, with an annual production capacity of 35000 vehicles. From this perspective, in the future, as expected by Li Bin, the pattern of the high-end administrative market will change under the impact of Chinese brands.
The downward firefly
Compared to 'upward', NIO is indeed more adept at 'downward' penetration. The firefly brand, which is known for its "free glow," made a high-profile mention of the smart and mini benchmarks before its release, igniting market expectations.
From the release situation, Firefly Firefly, designed by international designers, focuses on the global market and has a pre-sale price of 148800 yuan. It will be officially launched in April 2025. The industry expects that under the battery rental plan, the price of Firefly models may exceed 100000 yuan. Not only can it compete with the Volkswagen ID.3 for market share, but it can also compete with the BYD Dolphin in this price range. However, Li Bin clearly pointed out that the demand for high-end small cars in China is limited and the focus is on overseas markets. "The small car market still has huge potential in Europe and globally." When Chinese electric vehicles face tariff barriers from Europe and America overseas, how much can Firefly contribute?
As a user oriented enterprise, NIO has always attached great importance to user voices. Many users on the NIO app have expressed confusion and concern about NIO's release of two models that are not very popular. Especially, more car owners hope that NIO can promote more "popular models" and the brand can "survive" with high quality.
According to statistics, since May of this year, NIO has sold over 20000 vehicles for seven consecutive months. On the road of NIO's "sitting 2 and looking 3" strategy, compared to other car companies of the same period such as Zero Run and Xiaopeng, they have already reached the level of monthly delivery of 30000 to 40000 yuan. It can be seen that NIO will face significant pressure to increase sales next year. This also indicates that NIO's sales in the 200000 to 400000 yuan market are currently facing a bottleneck.
To increase sales, the strategic significance of the Ledao brand in supporting NIO's basic market is becoming increasingly apparent. According to the numbers, from October to November this year, more than 4000 and 5000 units of the Ledao L60 were delivered respectively, while the main brand NIO's models slightly declined. According to Li Bin's previous disclosure, the Ledao L60 will be delivered 10000 units in December and gradually increase until the production capacity reaches 20000 units by March 2025. Obviously, the continuous release of Ledao's production capacity is necessary for NIO's sales to break through 3.
The reporter noticed that 2025 will be a big year for NIO's products, and its products will start switching to the NT3.0 platform. The second brand Ledao will launch two new cars next year, and the third brand "Firefly" will also begin delivery in the first half of next year.
NIO needs to make profits in the next ten years
In 2024, which marks the tenth year of NIO's establishment, NIO DAY was finally held in Guangzhou, the core city of the Greater Bay Area that has rapidly taken off since the reform and opening up, after user voting. This time, all three brands have made their debut, and the heavily invested battery swapping station will also enter the "decisive sprint" of "county to county communication" next year.
A towering building rises from the ground, with every brick and tile serving as its foundation. Li Bin, who has always emphasized long termism, has mentioned many times before that NIO is not in a hurry to make profits. He cited building as an example: "NIO built the foundation according to the standard of building a 100 story building. Once the foundation is built well, the floors on the ground can be built faster and faster." Li Bin said that the foundation for building a 100 story high-rise building is different from that of a five story high-rise building. Just like ET9, this is a decade long technological innovation crystallization, a benchmark model for the core competitiveness of underlying technological innovation; The battery swapping station, arranged like capillaries, is NIO's unique resource.
In the face of the "next decade", NIO hopes to approach its "tipping point" infinitely, with "1+1+1" greater than 3. In November of this year, Li Bin released an internal letter proposing two key goals: doubling sales next year and achieving profitability by 2026. Based on the doubling of NIO's sales of approximately 220000 vehicles this year, the future sales target for next year is approximately 440000 vehicles. He also stated that achieving profitability by 2026 "cannot be compromised" and will ensure profitability from four aspects: sales growth, gross profit improvement, cost control, and operational efficiency enhancement.
In the increasingly fierce automotive market, the entry of Xiaomi and Huawei has disrupted the market, causing consumers to begin to lose interest in the first batch of "new forces". The "moat" built by NIO in ten years has reached the time of acceptance.