On January 20, author XueQiu, who is also a NIO car owner and individual NIO shareholder, posted an article on myzaker.com to state his reasons for investing in NIO. Below is the digest.
The most differentiated ones are battery swap mode, high-end positioning and emphasized services
Buffett said that a good business model is to find differentiation, and a business with high homogeneity is difficult to become a good business model.
With regard to battery swap, the author XueQiu checked the cost of NIO’s second-generation power swap station is 1,250,000 yuan, and the supercharger station is 1,120,000 yuan. The swap station occupies 6 parking spaces, and the supercharger occupies 12 parking spaces. In terms of total cost, the supercharger station is higher than the swap station. Then in terms of user experience, battery swap is far better than fast charging at present, and car owners who have experienced highway charging during the holidays understand it.
At present, in terms of user experience, battery swap is better than supercharging several levels, so spending money on user experience is not a wrong strategy, and there are usually some NIO supercharging stations around the power swap station. These supercharging stations are also open to other brands. According to previous data, the total number of charging piles used by other brands of electric vehicles using NIO exceeds that of NIO vehicles (because there is battery swap), and the largest proportion is BYD owners. On the one hand, it shows that BYD is indeed selling well, but on the other hand, it shows that BYD is far behind its sales in the construction of charging piles. It can be seen that NIO helped BYD invest in this matter, and these will not respond on both financial statements.
When it comes to investment, NIO has carefully considered the locations of service stations on highways, and charging and swapping stations within cities, and these geographical locations are non-renewable resources, first-come, first-served, similar to Starlink launching satellites. Earth orbit resources are first come, first served. The charging and swapping station may not be so exaggerated, but if a latecomer deploys these, the cost will definitely increase geometrically. NIO has opened up a highway power swapping network across the country. This is a symbolic step and a step of sowing seeds. In the rapid development stage of the industry, it is more effective to sow more seeds and invest more than blindly saving money and reducing costs.
NIO’s high-end positioning
High-end is not something you talk about by your own mouth. You must anchor some objective comparison points. Only when you are far ahead in these points can you be qualified to be called high-end.
The first point: In the field of electric vehicles above 400,000 yuan, NIO’s market share is far ahead
The second point: NIO’s service is far ahead
The third point: All NIO models are dual-motor, and the average power performance is far ahead (Tesla’s sales are all single-motor models, because they are cheap)
Only when the high-end position is established, can you be able to resist Tesla’s price cut storm.