Delivery Volume Retreats To The Third Place Of New Force: Weilai Vice Brand Is On The Way

? ? ? ? On August 2, Weilai released delivery data showing that 7931 new cars were delivered in July, up 124.5% year-on-year, but declined month on month. This year, a total of 49887 vehicles have been delivered, exceeding the annual delivery volume of last year.

? ? ? However, Weilai's monthly sales volume was overtaken by Xiaopeng automobile and ideal automobile, ranking third among the new forces of China's car making. Since Weilai took the lead in delivery in June 2018, the previous monthly sales volume has always been the top of the list of new automobile manufacturing forces.

? ? ? Compared with the gradual increase of market share of Xiaopeng and ideal sales volume, due to the more high-end brand positioning, the monthly sales volume of Weilai has stabilized at around 7000 vehicles since this year, and the bottleneck of market scale has appeared. How to expand market share has become a new challenge for Weilai.

New progress has been made in Weilai's plan to launch a sub brand. Recently, some media reports said that AI Tiecheng, former general manager of Wework Greater China, has become vice president of Weilai strategic new business, that is, he is responsible for a medium and low-end brand independent of Weilai, and directly reports to Li Bin, chairman, founder and CEO of Weilai.

This pair of brands will focus on the mainstream market range of 150000-250000 yuan, which is separated from the high-end electric vehicle market of Weilai brand. Some technologies such as vehicle manufacturing, charging and swapping will be common, but there will also be independent teams and channels.

On August 2, a reporter from the 21st century economic report asked Weilai for confirmation, but Weilai did not comment.

In June this year, Weilai announced that the new entry-level model "Gemini", which will be launched next year, will continue to use Weilai brand and maintain its high-end positioning.

However, Li Bin said in an investor conference call that Weilai may enter the mass market, but it is not through Weilai brand, but by new brand development. Moreover, when Weilai's 100000 vehicles came off the production line in April this year, Li Bin also said that he would sell 1 million or even 1.2 million vehicles a year. Such a goal is obviously difficult to achieve only by relying on the current average price of more than 400000 yuan of Weilai brand.

In addition, on April 29 this year, on the first anniversary of the signing of the strategic cooperation agreement between Hefei city and Weilai China, Hefei Xinqiao intelligent electric vehicle industrial park was officially started. The planned production capacity of the park is 1 million vehicles / year. Although according to the previous information, the production capacity is not completely owned by Weilai automobile, but it also provides the basis for Weilai's plan to enter the mass market.

Can "from high to low" work

Since 2020, Weilai has stepped out of the "intensive care unit" and gradually established its foothold in China's high-end electric vehicle market.

On the one hand, it benefits from its reputation of relying on service and user experience, on the other hand, it is also because the traditional luxury car companies such as Mercedes Benz, Audi, BMW and so on have been slow in their electric transformation, and there are no competitive electric products in the same price range.

"If Weilai auto can sell more than 100000 vehicles by the end of this year, it is still a small company. It will sell more than 300000 vehicles a year at least. The pressure on service, supply chain and cost will also increase with the growth of scale." Some people in the automobile industry told reporters.

Wei has been known as "China Tesla" since its birth. They have many similarities. In fact, Tesla's brand building is from high to low, from high-end to mass market. First, through model s and model x, we quickly established the brand positioning and image of high-end electric vehicles, at the same time, we realized the accumulation of technology and improved the supply chain system; Then through model y and model 3 to achieve scale, so as to turn losses into profits.

However, Tesla's success depends more on technology driven, in this case, it is not difficult to enter different market segments. Weilai is positioning itself as a household enterprise, and service is its core advantage.

In the past few years, Weilai has created a high viscosity user community, thus shaping high-end tonality. However, there are obvious differences between the target audience groups of 200000 yuan and 400000 yuan. If the same method is used again, the existing brand tonality may be affected. Weilai may not be able to use a single brand like Tesla, and achieve a product leap of 200000 yuan to 1 million yuan.

However, even if it is a new sub brand, the brand tonality will not be too low-end, but like Xiaopeng automobile and Tesla Model 3, it will focus on the segment market with the range of 200000 yuan. This market will also be Volkswagen, Toyota and other traditional car companies in the field of electric vehicles. Another potential competitor is Xiaomi.

"Weilai is learning from Xiaomi model to build a user-oriented enterprise. However, Xiaomi made a high-profile announcement to build a car. Judging from the previous playing method, it is likely to continue the cost-effective playing method, which will bring great challenges to Weilai Some people familiar with the auto industry said.

He believes that entering the 200000 yuan range, the focus of competition will be on the system strength, cost control ability and intelligent level of automobile enterprises, and Weilai does not have an advantage in these fields.

Scale pressure and supply chain challenge

Although the delivery volume continues to rise, but Weilai is still in a continuous loss, and it is difficult to predict when it will turn around. In the future, more funds should be invested in the development of new models and intelligent and automatic driving technologies.

Last year, Tesla realized its first turnaround in 15 years since its establishment, but this was largely due to carbon trading. In terms of automobile production to sales, Tesla has not made money, although its annual sales volume has approached 500000.

From the development experience of Tesla, only when the sales volume reaches a certain scale and the costs are shared, can the new car company be profitable.

With its cost control ability, Tesla has obviously adopted a low price strategy in the domestic market. The downward exploration of the price enables its products to radiate more consumers, and also affects more fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles with the same price.

In July this year, Tesla once again wielded the price butcher's knife, the domestic model y and the domestic model 3 successively reduced prices. According to Tesla China official, the price adjustment reflects the actual situation of cost fluctuation. With the improvement of model 3 localization rate, the cost reduction and structure optimization of upstream supply chain, in theory, Tesla's products have the possibility of continuous price reduction.

There are also forecasts in the industry that the price of Tesla's entry-level models still has room for continued downward exploration. In addition, Tesla has plans to launch new entry-level models to further drive down the price. This will undoubtedly bring great challenges to the participants of the whole new energy vehicle market.

In fact, Weilai is also trying to reduce its own costs by improving its supply chain.

"Planning the park with a capacity of 1 million vehicles in Hefei is to attract more automobile enterprises to Hefei and let more industrial chain companies pass by, so as to realize scale-up. But whether other car companies are willing to play with Weilai or not depends on how much support the local government can give. " In July this year, a person familiar with Weilai automobile told the reporter of the 21st century economic report.

The consensus of the industry is that in the mainstream competition of intelligent electric vehicles, the focus of electric vehicles is the ability of scale and cost control, and ultimately tends to be homogeneous, while the competition of intelligent vehicles is the technical strength.

However, with the application of intelligent technology and automatic driving in the automotive industry, the threshold for consumers to use smart cars will also be lowered, and smart cars will become standard like smart phones. The Moore effect of smart electric vehicles will be more obvious.

At present, in the first echelon of the new forces of car making, Weilai's advantage is high-quality service, and the ideal advantage is cost control. Xiaopeng is relying on the concept of intelligence to open up the situation at the level of 200000 yuan. In the future, intelligent and automatic driving level will become the focus of competition.

Li Xiang, chairman and CEO of ideal automobile, once said frankly that in terms of automatic driving, compared with Tesla and Xiaopeng, they are making up lessons. The research and development of new products and the development of automatic driving technology are the development priorities of ideal automobile.

Weilai is also speeding up the development of automatic driving. According to the plan, at the beginning of next year, Weilai will release its first self driving car et7. The level of automatic driving of this car will verify whether Weilai has the ability to compete with Tesla depending on product strength.

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