eastwest connect

NIO’s assistant vice president of sales and operations talking about the current auto market


According to Electric Planet News, on March 14, around 11 o’clock this morning, its reporter had a communication with Pu Yang, NIO’s assistant vice president of sales and operations, about the current auto market.

Below is the digest and summary of the communication.

Puyang’s previous photo

Is there any pressure?

Let me first answer whether NIO feels pressure?
After listening to the normal communication meeting, I think there is.

For example, although Pu Yang said that in terms of their feel, last weekend was a relatively representative weekend, and the number of NIO’s store visits and test drives exceeded the new highs of the past 12 weeks.

However, he later added, “Although we convert users as a whole, as everyone said, there will be some wait and see.”

Yes, wait and see! This is the pressure that NIO is currently feeling, and it is also the sentiment prevailing in the entire market.


Why does NIO not cut prices

– External factors

First of all, from the perspective of the general trend, although this wave of price cuts has a greater impact on the sentiment of the entire electric vehicle purchase, the most impacted is the model with a price below 200,000 yuan.
“The lower the price, the greater the volatility.”

Secondly, the “diving” of fuel vehicles this time is actually mainly concentrated on joint venture models.

Pu Yang believes that the competitiveness of many mainstream models of joint venture models has had obvious problems last year. Therefore, in his opinion, the “price reduction” of these models, “this year is definitely an inevitable thing, but I didn’t expect them to be so rough.”

In other words, he believes that this wave of big dives is essentially the inevitable result of the lack of competitiveness of fuel vehicles.

– Internal factors

Pu Yang said that at the beginning of the year, NIO had actually predicted that the market would change in general, so it increased the overall investment in power swap station at the beginning of spring.
Inside NIO, it is called “Thousand Stations Plan”—— “All the investments this year are three-generation power swap stations. Compared with the second-generation power station, the service capacity has increased by 1.5 times.”
Total number of power swap stations to be added will reach 1000.

In NIO’s view, “This is what we think in this economic environment, under the changing consciousness of consumers, it is a means and method that can really speed up the arrival of the cycle and go through the long-term cycle.”

Secondly, NIO believes that their products are extremely cost-effective in the existing price range.

Pu Yang said, you can take a look at it casually, use the 328,000 yuan ET5 with the lowest configuration, and compare those products with the same performance and roughly the same level of intelligence horizontally. Such as Tesla, and Mercedes-Benz EQC and so on. Horizontal comparison shows that ET5 is a very cost-effective product.

In the same way, whether NIO’s other products compete with fuel vehicles or electric vehicles, “we are very competitive.” In the end, it’s how you win.

Of course, internally, improving efficiency and speeding up the launch and delivery of new products is also a must to go through the cycle.

Pu Yang revealed that starting from the second quarter of this year, NIO will release very good, compact vehicles that are in line with the interests of users and the overall delivery rhythm. “From release to test drive to delivery will be very smooth.”

At the Shanghai Auto Show starting on April 18, NIO’s EC7, the new ES8 and some other “more exciting products” will be unveiled one after another, and will be launched in the second half of this year. “These are important product cycles.”


Can NIO still grow this year?

According to Pu Yang, in the high-end smart electric vehicle market of more than 300,000 yuan, NIO has been an absolute leading figure until today.

Even, judging from the current actions of fuel vehicles, he believes, “If your competitors make such a big move, it means that you have achieved a certain type of dominant position in the process of market competition.”

Therefore, with the overall big dive of this wave of fuel vehicles, the total number of electric vehicles, especially luxury electric vehicles, will increase in the second half of this year.
“We will maintain today’s penetration rate of about 60%, and we are very confident that we will reach a new high this year. As for how high it is, whether it can exceed our expectations and the industry’s expectations for us is something worth looking forward to.”


Progress of NIO’s second brand, Alps

Pu Yang said that he is not the best answerer to Alps-related questions, but judging from the information he has learned so far and the penetration rate of the pure electric market, he is very confident in Alps.

“We hope that Alps can be very well prepared and can be launched to the market with strong competitiveness. Of course, everyone can look forward to it.”

In addition, in the past week (March 6-12), China’s new energy penetration rate was 33.86%.