NIO hits back at Tesla: You show the price, I show the "muscle"

 "2020 is a year of rebirth for NIO."

On January 9, Li Bin, who led Weilai to cross the line of life and death and bottomed out, appeared on the stage of 2020 NIO Day.

Compared with the NIO day held in Shenzhen a year ago, Li Bin's state looks a lot easier. At that time, NIO was in trouble, but now NIO is heading for glory.

Li Bin’s speech is the most eye-catching part of NIO Day every year. In this part, he will release NIO’s new products and some new plans, which is a window for the outside world to get a closer look at NIO’s development.

On NIO Day in 2020, the second-generation power station, 150-degree battery pack, and the first pure electric car ET7 will appear in succession.

At the time of Tesla's price war and crazy sinking, NIO showed off its muscles, super computing power, super battery life, etc. are the highlights of this NIO day. Wei Lai, who insists on not cutting prices and taking the high-end route, is hitting Tesla back on the curve?

1

More charging stations + 150 degree battery pack, battery life over 1000KM

Li Bin's first announcement on NIO Day was the second-generation power station.

He mentioned that the second-generation power station will have up to 13 batteries, with an average daily service frequency of 312 units, and support automatic parking. The owner does not need to get off the car, and the car will start automatic battery swap with one button.

On the 2017 NIO Day, Li Bin once boasted about going to Haikou, claiming to deploy 1,100 replacement power stations by 2020; however, now, Weilai has not achieved this goal. But Li Bin said, "We are determined to deploy more for power plants will not change. This year we will add fast cloth bureau."

At present, Weilai has 100 overcharge stations, 792 overcharge piles, and 117 swap stations, with a total of more than 1.49 million power swaps. By the end of 2021, the total number of NIO replacement power stations will reach 500.

In addition to charging stations, in the BAAS aspect, Wei Lai also released the 150-degree battery pack that has attracted much attention. The battery pack uses mass-produced solid-state battery technology to achieve a 50% increase in energy density.

Li Bin introduced that the 150-degree battery pack adopts solid-liquid electrolyte with in-situ curing process, silicon-carbon anode with inorganic pre-lithiation process, and ultra-high nickel cathode with nano-scale coating process, which guarantees the life span while the energy density rises. Improved charging efficiency.

NIO 150 degree battery pack process

"Through the innovation of materials and processes, an ultra-high energy density of 360 watt-hours per kilogram has been achieved." He cited as an example, the 2018 es8 equipped with a 150-degree battery pack can have a battery life of more than 730km. The three vehicles sold by Weilai are equipped with The 150-degree battery pack has a battery life of more than 1,000km. "This is a landmark milestone."

It is reported that the 150-degree battery pack is stepping up mass production and is expected to begin delivery in the fourth quarter of 2022.

2

The first sedan ET7 shows off muscles, sold from 448,000

In the entire NIO Day, the most concerned is probably NIO's first sedan ET7.

In the past, NIO’s main products were mainly electric SUVs, but there was a gap in the car field. The ET7 launched today fills this gap.

Li Bin highlighted many highlights of ET7 at the press conference.

For example, in terms of power, ET7 uses a front permanent magnet rear induction motor, the peak power of the front permanent magnet motor is 180kw, the peak power of the rear induction motor is 300kw, the maximum power of the vehicle is 480kw and 650 horsepower, the peak torque is 850 N·m, and the acceleration time is 100 kilometers. In 3.9 seconds, the braking distance of 100 kilometers is 33.5 meters. The vehicle has a 0.23 drag coefficient, a 70-degree battery pack has a range of 500 kilometers, a 100-watt battery pack has a range of 700 kilometers, and the 150-degree battery pack has a follow-up range of 1000KM.

As a smart car, intelligent capabilities will not be absent. The new 12.8-inch central control screen and the second-generation digital cockpit of NIO, which uses Qualcomm’s third-generation digital cockpit computing platform. Li Bin said that he has the strongest in-vehicle mobile internet and communication capabilities, integrating 5G, WIFI6, and V2X, and has comprehensively improved computing power, graphics processing, and multimedia processing capabilities.

In appearance, Weilai ET7 uses three-dimensional LED headlights, while parking spaces use through-type heartbeat taillights. The new car has a wheelbase of 3060 mm and a length of 5,098 mm. It uses the world's first UWB digital key to achieve centimeter level. High-precision positioning, truly non-inductive entry and exit, all standard power distribution suction doors, when approaching the vehicle, the door handle pops out in parallel.

NIO ET7 product map

In terms of interiors, ET7 focuses on the design concept of the second living room. Key words include "spacious, comfortable, refined, and warm." The interior uses a 1.9 square meter double-layer heat-insulating glass dome, and all systems are equipped with a meteorite chrome plating process as standard. In addition, the entire car uses tropical rain forest regenerated rattan wood at 14 locations. There are also 23 speakers inside.

From the perspective of positioning, ET7 is consistent with Weilai's SUV, focusing on the high-end market. In terms of price, the pre-sale price of 77KWH battery pack ET7 without subsidy starts at 448,000, while the price of 100KWH battery pack without subsidy is 506,000 yuan. If the battery rental plan is adopted, the price of the two models is 378,000 yuan. The monthly battery fee is 980 yuan per month for the former and 1480 yuan per month for the latter.

Weilai Automobile ET7 price announced

3

Autonomous driving PK Tesla

In terms of autonomous driving, Weilai also has new trends.

On this NIO Day, Li Bin mentioned that Weilai has established NAD full-stack autonomous driving technical capabilities from map positioning to perception algorithms, from underlying systems to control strategies.

He focused on NIO's achievements in perception and computing capabilities. In terms of perception, the world's first 8-megapixel high-definition camera, which is six times higher than the 1.2-megapixel camera used by Tesla.

Since the 8-megapixel autonomous driving camera can detect vehicles more than 680 meters away, cones more than 260 meters away and pedestrians more than 220 meters away, the farthest distance that can be detected is Three times the 1.2 million pixels.

In addition, in terms of perception, the lidar jointly developed by Weilai and Innovusion has an ultra-wide viewing angle of 120 degrees, a high resolution equivalent to 300 lines, and a maximum detection distance of 500m.

Li Bin said that the laser radar uses a 1550-nanometer laser to avoid the 900-nanometer wavelength that is sensitive to the human eye, and can better take care of others' safety while improving performance.

Unlike Tesla's dismissive attitude towards lidar, Li Bin believes that lidar is very important to improve the safety of autonomous driving, especially in situations such as high-speed driving at night.

Combined with 8 million high-definition cameras and 33 high-precision sensing hardware, ultra-long-distance ultra-long-distance high-precision lidar, the AQUILA super-sensing system is formed. Li Bin said that the 8-megapixel high-definition camera coupled with ultra-long-distance high-precision lidar has greatly improved the nad's perception ability, "enhancing the safety of autonomous driving by two levels."

Under the pressure of 8G per second of data processing by the AQUILA Weilai Super Sensing System, Wei Lai has also created the ADAM Weilai Supercomputing Platform, which claims to be the most powerful mass-produced mobile computing platform so far. The platform is equipped with 4 NVIDIA Orin chips, 48 ​​CPU cores, 256 matrix operation units, 8096 floating-point operation units, a total of 68 billion transistors, and a computing power of 1016T, which is the power of the Tesla FSD platform 7 times.

NIO's product layout in the field of autonomous driving

These autonomous driving capabilities, Weilai also imitated the BAAS method for monthly rental. Weilai ET7 will adopt the service subscription model ad AS A service, which is opened monthly and paid monthly, and it only costs 680 yuan per month.

4

In 2021, where is Weilai going?

2020 is the year when Wei Lai walked out of the quagmire and survived the disaster.

The theme of NIO day held in Shenzhen in 2019 is "Believe in Better". At that time, the outside world lacked the most for Weilai to believe, "We were almost beaten on the ground by the left, then got up, got beaten up again, and got up again." Li Bin said.

As the lyrics of "Electric Vehicle Owner's Self-cultivation" wrote: "Chang'an Street has also been nestled, and the stock has fallen into one piece."

In October 2019, the share price of Weilai Automobile once fell to $1.19, and the outside world once believed that Weilai was facing the risk of delisting.

Perhaps no one thought that Weilai's stock price could achieve a shocking reversal in an epidemic year like 2020.

As of December 31, 2020, Weilai’s stock price closed at US$48.74 per share, with a market value of US$76.596 billion. Compared with the historical low of US$1.19 in October 2019, it has soared more than 40 times in more than a year.

Even from the perspective of 2020, the share price of Weilai went from $3.72 on January 2 to December 31, and the stock price rose by more than 1,200% during the year.

Tesla's stock price chart in the last year

Behind the increase is the brilliant performance of Weilai Automobile in 2020. This year, Weilai Automobile delivered 43,728 vehicles in total, an increase of 121% year-on-year. In particular, the delivery volume exceeded 7,000 vehicles in December, and the monthly delivery reached 7,007 vehicles, setting a new high in single-month delivery for five consecutive months.

In 2020, Weilai has fulfilled its previous promise of positive gross profit margin. In the second quarter of 2020, the gross profit margin of Weilai Automobile reached 9.7%, which is the first single quarter gross profit margin of Weilai in 6 years to recover. The gross profit margin continued to increase to 12.9% in the third quarter.

In terms of the progress of batteries and charging piles, NIO launched a 100kWh long-life battery in 2020, and then implemented NIO’s battery rental service BaaS (Battery as a Service) and a flexible battery upgrade program.

In terms of financing, Weilai also achieved a significant breakthrough in 2020. From January to March 2020, NIO announced a convertible bond financing of US$435 million; in April, Hefei signed a cash investment agreement of 7 billion yuan; in July, NIO China received 10.4 billion from six banks including China Construction Bank Anhui Branch Line of credit. In August and December, Weilai received US$1.7 billion and nearly US$2.7 billion in financing through additional issuance of ADS.

In terms of market value, as of the close of January 8, Weilai’s stock price was close to $59, with a total market value of $92 billion, second only to BYD among all Chinese car companies.

With the rapid increase in the market value of new car companies such as Weilai, the competition between Weilai and Tesla will become more intense in 2021.

Recently, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in an interview with the media that Tesla’s biggest competitor is likely to come from Chinese companies. Although Elon Musk did not clearly indicate which company in China the competitor is from in the interview, Weilai is currently among the new domestic electric vehicle forces. Ideal and Xiaopeng are obviously the most concerned as the first echelon.

At the beginning of the year, Tesla presented a blockbuster of Model Y price reduction: the domestic Model Y long-life version that will be officially delivered starts at 339,900 yuan, and the Model Y Performance high-performance version starts at 369,900 yuan. Compared with the previously announced 488,000 yuan and 535,000 yuan respectively, the prices were reduced by 148,100 yuan and 165,100 yuan.

This means that Model Y has dropped from around 500,000 yuan to more than 300,000 yuan. The price has a significant impact on Weilai EC6.

After the announcement of the Model Y price reduction, there was news on the Internet that Weilai EC6 suffered a large-scale return. But Weilai officials denied this.

And many times in the Bin autopilot, point the camera aspects of special Tesla products, apparently in 2021 may be more intense competition between the two sides.

At the beginning of 2021, Tesla will start a price war and a sinking war in China; what kind of curve will Weilai, which insists on not cutting prices so far, go out this year?