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

In 2023, the new energy automobile market will be more differentiated and industry competition will intensify. In the open and secret war, some enterprises choose to insist on investment in technology research and development and temporarily give up short-term profits. A persistent pursuit of R & D, such as the firm Wei Lai.

Recently, some media have taken stock of Wei's losses in recent years, which immediately triggered heated discussion.

In fact, Wei Lai's losses are no longer news, let alone hot events. It can be seen from the data previously disclosed by Weilai that over the past five years, Weilai has invested more than 30 billion yuan in research and development. As of the end of October 2023, the total number of pending and granted patents worldwide reached 7,600. Without these inputs, Weilai would not have a full stack of technologies, advanced and intelligent products, let alone perfect energy supplement service infrastructure. Without these inputs, Weilai would not be able to give users an experience beyond expectations.

Evaluation Wei Lai, unable to bypass the full stack of technology

Looking at the whole industry, brands that attach importance to technology self-research often go through the loss stage. Tesla, for example, has been losing money for 16 years since its establishment, with a net loss of more than $2.2 billion (more than $16 billion) in 2017. However, Tesla, instead of failing, has turned around, narrowing its losses from the second quarter of 2018 to full-year profits by 2020.

If you put aside the technical achievements, only from the data level to see Wei Lai's losses, Wei Lai's performance is really poor. However, in fact, the core technology brought by Weilai's long-term investment already has a global competitive advantage.

This year's "NIO IN 2023 Weilai Innovation and Technology Day" has attracted wide media attention, especially the "Weilai Technology Full Stack," which covers the full picture of smart electric vehicle business. Specifically speaking,"Weilai Technology Full Stack" includes 12 key technical fields such as chip and vehicle-mounted intelligent hardware, battery system, electric drive and high-voltage system, vehicle engineering, vehicle global operating system, panoramic interconnection, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, intelligent energy, intelligent manufacturing, artificial intelligence and global digital operation, meeting Weilai's three dimensions of intelligence, electric power, automobile, product, service, community, multi-brand, multi-platform and multi-region. R & D and operational requirements of the nine elements.

In addition, the systematic efficiency of Weilai has been significantly improved this year. At present, 8 second-generation technology platform models of Weilai have been fully delivered, and the strongest product matrix continues to play its role, fully meeting the diversified needs of users in the price range of 300,000 - 600,000 yuan, covering the main sales market with 80% sales volume of BBA.

Data show that in the first 10 months of this year, Weilai delivered a total of 126,067 new cars. Among them, Weilai delivered 55,432 new vehicles in the third quarter of this year, up 75.4% year-on-year, and the quarterly delivery volume reached an all-time high.

Entering 2023, the "price war" in the new energy automobile industry has come and gone, and some brands have chosen the strategy of "exchanging price for quantity." Under this background, Weilai keeps its price system basically stable. After the delivery volume in the third quarter hit an all-time high, the monthly delivery volume is still stable at a high level, with extremely high gold content.

Some insiders said that the R & D of Weilai core technology to improve product quality will help it improve gross profit, and promote the improvement of operation efficiency and R & D efficiency, and then there may be visible loss narrowing.

Pay attention to energy service investment, user experience has been guaranteed

Some reports compare Weilai's losses with peer brands, but some professionals believe that such simple comparison is unreasonable, because Weilai pays more attention to energy technology and services, invests more in this area, and brings more convenience to users.

It is understood that Weilai continues to promote the construction of power-on service system and expand to more application scenarios. At present, Weilai has become the double champion of China's charging layout. As of November 14, Weilai has deployed 2,112 power conversion stations, 3,397 charging stations, 19,813 charging piles and more than 1,460,000 third-party charging piles worldwide, providing users with more than 32 million power conversion services.

The increase in the number of energy service facilities and the innovation of superimposed technology and service mode will change from quantitative to qualitative, helping Weilai to make it convenient for users to go anywhere. At present, Weilai's service infrastructure has formed joint efforts with products and user communities to create strong system competitiveness. Through qualitative change, Weilai is expected to have a more positive impact on the new energy vehicle market, thus generating stronger thrust for the development of the intelligent electric industry.

Just as Wei Lai founder Li Bin said in an interview earlier: "We should resolutely do what we should do and don't do what we shouldn't do. If it is something meaningful in the short term, medium term and long term, we will resolutely invest in it. If it is too long-term, we really can't take care of it and can only give it up reluctantly." "According to Wei Lai's development rhythm, the investment period may last for some time, but it has laid the foundation for long-term development.

If there is no investment, how can we talk about "leading the high-end"?

Contrary to some of the voices on the Internet, Weilai's leading position in China's high-end pure electricity market is constantly being strengthened.

The latest data shows that from January to October this year, Weilai has an average price of more than 300,000 yuan in the high-end brand pure electricity market share of 60.6%. Among them, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai accounted for 51.0% of the total sales volume in China, while in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, the average transaction price of more than 300,000 high-end brand pure electricity market.

In fact, Wei Lai can lead the high-end pure electric market, not just pure high-end positioning, but from solid quality support. From a global perspective, the quality of Weilai products has been professionally recognized.

In July this year, ET5 and EL7 (ES7 in China) both won the Euro NCAP five-star safety rating (new regulation 2023), one of the most authoritative safety testing organizations in the automotive industry. In October this year, ET5 Touring (ET5T in China) became the third Weilai model to receive a Euro NCAP five-star safety rating (new regulation 2023). In the same month, ET5 won the Innovation Award in the "D.R.I.V.E."2023 annual selection organized by Reuters, which has considerable visibility and authority in the global press to recognize outstanding brands and products in the automotive industry. In addition, the brand-new ES6 is the only model with a comprehensive evaluation of all G (excellent) among more than 60 models tested by the car.

Weilai can lead the high-end pure electric market, mainly from continuous investment in technology research and development, and realize innovation and breakthrough on the basis of century-old technology accumulation in the automobile industry.

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