Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Tesla's price reduction at the beginning of the year triggered a price war for new energy vehicles in 2023. Within a month, domestic independent brands, Xiaopeng, Nezha, Feifan and other car companies also followed suit one after another, and officials announced time-limited preferential measures to cope with the competitive pressure in the market. Even Wei, who once insisted on not reducing prices, can no longer sit still.

On February 2, it was reported that Xilai began a price reduction promotion for 2022 ES6 and ES8 models, with a maximum reduction of more than 100000 yuan, and ES7 also had a certain discount range.

In response to the rumors of a 100000 price cut, Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of Weilai, responded that at present, there are some exhibition cars and existing cars in ES8, ES6 and EC6, and there are some additional preferential policies according to the age and status of cars, but there is no "across-the-board price reduction" that has been overinterpreted by outsiders. It is also not accurate for voices to superimpose our various measures and get a "drop of 100000".

However, the official community of Weilai issued a limited-time car purchase plan in February 2023, including state subsidy discount, long-term car exhibition discount, replacement discount and so on.

The plan shows that at present, for a small number of 2022 ES8, ES6 and EC6 long treasury age exhibition cars, according to different storage age and vehicle conditions, Lailai officials offer additional discount: purchase ES8 exhibition cars, enjoy up to 24000 cash discount; purchase ES6, EC6 exhibition cars, enjoy up to 18000 yuan cash discount.

In addition, at present, car purchases can also enjoy local subsidies, as well as superimposed financial incentives, full car purchase concessions and replacement incentives provided by the authorities of Xilai. Consumers who meet the above policies can indeed enjoy some concessions.

Li Bin, chairman of Lvlai Motor Co., Ltd., said in an interview with the media that the price reduction is an emotional injury to regular users and that keeping the price stable is responsible to users. "be grateful to the users who have chosen us and be kind to them. This is the bottom line of an enterprise, and the bottom line of each enterprise is different."

However, in the face of such a highly competitive new energy car market in 2023, Weilai also had to cut prices in exchange for sales.

Data show that a total of 122486 new cars have been delivered since 2022, achieving only 81.7 per cent of the annual target. Only 8506 vehicles were delivered in January this year, down to a certain extent from the monthly record of 15815 in December. Although objectively affected by the Spring Festival holiday, there is still a lot of pressure in 2023.

Weilai's sales target in 2023 is to surpass Lexus fuel vehicle sales, which is about 200000 vehicles, according to 2022 Lexus sales data. Weilai has previously targeted the luxury brand BBA, the goal and its "four parts of the world", but Weilai CEO Li Bin also admitted that there is still a gap, but is still very confident to surpass Lexus. If you want to achieve this year's target, Weilai must sell at least 17400 vehicles a month.

In addition, due to the huge investment in the early stage and the persistently high R & D costs, Weilai is still in a state of loss. In a conference call on the third quarter of 2022, Li Bin said that the brand could break even in the fourth quarter of 2023. If you want to achieve this goal, Weilai needs to sell more cars.

Weilai to sell more cars Weilai brand established at the beginning of the establishment of the high-end brand route, with the current most entry-level model ET5 pricing point of view, Weilai brand will be firmly locked in the price of more than 300000 yuan, SUV model price is generally more than 400000 yuan.

Although the higher price has brought a good gross profit margin for Ulai, the market scale of the new energy vehicle market of more than 300000 yuan is limited at present, and the price range of the main selling models of the major brands is generally about 150000-300000 yuan, while the single model with the highest sales volume in 2022 is the Wuling Hongguang MINIEV, and the price of the main model is within 70,000 yuan.

If Weilai wants to break even or even make a profit as soon as possible, it needs to win a higher market share. At present, Tesla and BYD, which are already profitable brands in the new energy vehicle industry, Tesla sold 439800 vehicles in China in 2022, and BYD sold more than 1.86 million vehicles in 2022.

Weilai needs lower-priced models to grab the market, and Weilai's strategy is to launch sub-brands.

According to previous news, the internal code name of the second brand is Alps, with a pricing range of 200000-300000 yuan, and is expected to achieve mass production and delivery in 2024. In June 2022, Li Bin said at a user communication meeting that Xilai was speeding up the research and development of more than 200,000 models and launching a new mass market car brand, which will be directly comparable to Standard Tesla Model Y and Model 3, but at a price about 10 per cent cheaper than Tesla. The brand's products are expected to carry batteries produced by Weilai and support high-voltage fast charging.

The third brand of Weilai, code-named "Firefly", will focus on the small car and minicar market, with a price range expected to be around 100000-200000 yuan. Qin Lihong said at a user communication meeting that the brand will debut in Europe and is expected to be launched in the third quarter of 2024.

From the current planning, the future three brands will cover different consumer groups, the Weilai brand will still focus on the luxury car market, the second brand will focus on the middle and high-end market, and the third brand will continue to cover the middle and low-end market.

Does the sub-brand still support power exchange? As we all know, the most important feature of Xilai car is its rechargeable and exchangeable energy supply. As of January 31, Weilai had installed a total of 1313 power stations in China, including 348 expressway stations, according to official data from Weilai.

According to the plan, a high-speed power exchange network covering the "nine vertical, nine horizontal and nineteen major urban agglomerations" will be built in China in 2025, and a total of 4000 exchange power stations will be built worldwide.

At the NIO Day 2022 held at the end of last year, Weilai also released the third generation power station, which will be fully deployed from March 2023. The third generation power station adopts a new three-station cooperative power exchange mode, which increases the service capacity by 30% compared with the second generation power station, increases the maximum power exchange capacity to 408 times a day, and further shortens the single change time. In addition, the third generation power station will also be equipped with 2 lidars and 2 Nvidia OrinX chips, with a total computing power of 508TOPS, which can realize the function of vehicle summoning and power changing.

For a long time, whether the Weilai sub-brand supports the change of electricity is an issue of concern to many consumers, if it does not support the change of electricity, is it still coming?

At present, there are two battery packs, 75kWh's standard battery pack and 100kWh's long-life battery pack. According to the brand positioning, TechWeb speculates that the second brand of Weilai may support the replacement of 75kWh standard battery packs, but the third brand can basically conclude that there is no chance to change power.

There are two main reasons, the first is that the third brand of Weilai will focus on small cars and minicars, and the body size is doomed to be unable to match the existing battery pack of Lulai; second, due to brand positioning, it is difficult to install the battery pack of the third brand model with a price range of 100000-200000 yuan. At present, the battery capacity of pure electric models at this price is generally around 60kWh.

If it is not possible to match the specifications of the existing battery pack, and then redesign the rechargeable battery pack, it means that it is impossible to use the exchange station that has been deployed so far, and it is almost impossible to redeploy or replace the existing one.

In addition, user service is regarded as the core competitiveness. At present, Weilai users can enjoy a variety of services such as one-click power-up, door-to-door car maintenance and so on, which is called "Haidilao in the car world".

Weilai hopes to boost sales and seize market share through sub-brands, and with the increase of users, it is bound to seize service resources to a certain extent and affect the service experience of existing users. In the future, changing power stations during the peak period can withstand more and more power exchange demand, which is also an important factor affecting the user experience.

Weilai wants to create resplendence in the sub-brand. At present, there is still a lot of work to be done, and we are very much looking forward to what kind of answer we will hand over next year.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.