*This article is reproduced from autocarweekly WeChat public account.
Author: Karakush
Yesterday (April 7), NIO’s 100,000th production car was rolled off the production line at the Hefei factory.
After the ceremony, An Jin pulled Li Bin, who was greeting the crowd, to the side of the car and said, “Li Bin, this is worth taking a picture.”
Most people know their difficulties along the way, but they cannot empathize with the hardships behind them.
In 2016, when NIO only had PPT, Li Bin approached Jianghuai to discuss the creation of a first-class intelligent electric vehicle in China. Facing this far-fetched invitation, An Jin really invested billions and built this high-end, all-aluminum, and intelligent factory.
“This is the biggest vote.” Li Bin said, “All of our colleagues at NIO will remember this trust for a lifetime.”
One party dared to think, and the other party dared to do. This is the beginning of the 100,000 vehicles, and also the beginning of the 100,000 tons of pressure.
Since the confirmation that “Jianghuai NIO” will arise in the world, the negative has far exceeded all doubts, expectations, and wait-and-see sums about it. This “innovative cooperation model” means lack of money, lack of manufacturing intentions, lack of high-end genes, and lack of chances of success in the eyes of the outside world.
“At that time, if you asked ten people, maybe nine of them thought it was unreliable.”
The nine people probably didn’t expect that the two sides would cooperate for five years, produce for three years, and produce three new models. The current 100,000 vehicles are not imaginary numbers. Adopting order delivery, each vehicle is actually sold. And the average selling price up to 100,000 exceeds 420,000 yuan.
Today, it is no longer important to ask ten people what they think. If facts cannot convince them, money can.
A media friend asked, after the annual worst, what is the biggest change at this moment of high light?
Li Bin said, embrace the vicissitudes.
Everything in the past is just a prologue
Both Li Bin and Qin Lihong tried not to be too excited or sentimental, and looked at the 100,000 vehicles with a very restrained attitude, “Just like celebrating a birthday, it is a natural result, and living is definitely not for pursuing birthdays.”
After all, compared with the overall market, NIO is still at a very early and small starting point. While secretly proud, they have even greater expectations for themselves, not so natural expectations-yearly sales of one million vehicles.
Li Bin once said that he wanted to share three parts of the world with BBA.
Yesterday, he clearly stated how to allocate that share. The high-end market last year was about 3.5 million vehicles, and it is still growing. If we make an optimistic prediction and subdivide the market to 4 million vehicles, if NIO can achieve a 25% market share, that is one million vehicles. If it can achieve a 30% market share, that is more than 1.2 million vehicles.Translated English Markdown text with preserved HTML tags:
This is not just a math problem. For Shanghai, the ES8, ES6, and EC6 are already number one in their respective price ranges, surpassing all gasoline cars. NIO is very confident that they can have more markets like Shanghai. In proportion, if they can hold 40% of the market share in the high-end electric car market above RMB 350,000 as gasoline cars continue to convert to electric vehicles, it will be beautiful.
From the periphery, the difficulty of “holding” seems to be getting higher.
Despite NIO becoming more and more stable, external rivals seem to be posing new threats. Many traditional car companies have fallen behind while many tech companies are waiting in the wings, making the market suddenly chaotic and crowded.
However, in NIO’s view, these are not so much challenges as they are verification of their correct direction. “The scariest thing in the world is to do a lot of things that no one pays attention to, and not even willing to copy. It is very gratifying to see that many people recognize our innovation.”
Lao Fan’er’s words are not just polite remarks, but the recognition that the logic of winner takes all is not applicable to the car industry. Not to mention the winner, even staying in the competition is quite difficult.
First of all, high-end is a system capability that others cannot copy. “If you only set a high price and think that the car has entered the high-end market, it is a bit naive.”
According to NIO’s understanding, high-end is distinguished from luxury. The latter also refers to cars that cost over ten thousand, and it is a relative concept of luxury at a certain point.
In contrast, high-end requires excellence in various aspects such as technology, quality, service, and product. For example, it must have leading technology, which requires exceeding investment in research and development. For example, the ET7, which features various technologies of the new platform that were launched half a year to a year ahead of the industry and pushed the pace of industry mass production; just like the EyeQ4 was adopted in 2018, which was at least eight months to a year ahead of the industry.
Investing in intelligence and electrification alone is not enough. As a car, it must also live up to its price, and the standard of measurement is to have an advantage over traditional gasoline cars that cost as much.
That is, everything.
Secondly, it is not about being high-end for the sake of being high-end, but depends on one’s ultimate thinking.
NIO aspires to be high-end based on rational thinking at that time. When they discussed positioning in 2015, they found that the cost of intelligence, batteries, etc., cannot be absorbed into the hundred thousand Chinese-made products; they are not excellent enough to PK gasoline cars of the same price. This is why there has not been a best-selling new brand electric car in the ten-thousand-yuan price range to date.Before creating the products, they spent a longer time discussing what kind of company to establish. These seemingly fictional stories of vision, mission, and DNA eventually created the winning formula of “user enterprise.”
Starting with the end in mind is actually a simple business principle. Only in this way can today’s investments and accumulations have meaning and value.
According to Li Bin, looking at what was said to investors in 2015 and what was said in interviews starting from 2017, it can be found that there wasn’t much change in NIO’s direction. “We emphasize making long and difficult decisions, rather than short-term ones. This is our internal tone.”
If we have a clear understanding of why this company must exist and have a clear view of underlying thinking, then any temporary difficulties are just ripples of life.
For example, production stopped for five days due to chip shortages some time ago. Apart from the possibility of delaying the delivery ceremony a bit, there was no impact. NIO took this opportunity to transform its production line. This factory’s production capacity has reached 400 cars per day and 10,000 cars per month. By the end of this year, NIO can achieve an annual production capacity of 300,000 vehicles with double shifts.
Although there may be some pressure on the supply chain, production capacity is a short-term problem that can be solved with time. The long-term issue is whether there will be enough customers to buy cars.
Related to this is how to maintain product superiority. Li Bin believes that the final product form of cars will be formed within the next 3 to 5 years.
“Is the product we define right? Is it the mainstream technological route for the future? This pressure is still significant because it takes three to five years to realize it. Just like battery swapping, it was implemented in 2015, but it took eight years to think about it before that (starting from 2012) until it became feasible.”
Cars are marathons on muddy roads.
This matter is still Li Bin’s responsibility. It is said that ten R&D departments in NIO report directly to him. In addition to defining the technological route and the product from the user’s perspective, Li Bin’s top priority is to find more senior technical talent for NIO – this is a serious job posting.
The longer-term challenge is to provide high-satisfaction services in complex environments as the user base, scenarios, and team size grow.# Translation
Qin Lihong said that he often has industry friends ask him for the methodology of enterprise users, how to use digital tools, and if there are any quantifiable standards. He always replies that those are all tricks of the trade, and the only key point is whether you really want to do it. If you truly want to do it, there is no technical difficulty. He believes that the outside world has exaggerated NIO’s service, and they themselves believe that they have not done as well as they should.
“Hit with one fist, leave one hand.”
A contrasting example of a peer is at the offline ceremony. On this normal working day, not only did the 100,000th car owner take a leave to participate in the delivery, but also a group of car owners put aside their own busy schedules to become part of the atmosphere team, and even gave new car owners gifts. Undoubtedly, this is still a small fortunate event that was randomly drawn, and more friends can only express their respect by bidding for limited commemorative car models in the surprise mall.
Do Not Disappoint This Great Era
Unconcealable pride, of course, is difficult to express in words.
However, both Li Bin and Qin Lihong do not believe that this is solely NIO’s achievement. They are always grateful for this and grateful for that, and not just being polite.
“We are very lucky to live in the best era,” Li Bin said. “The three words ‘intelligent electric vehicle’ represent the industry foundation, the supply chain foundation, the talent foundation, and the market foundation. We are very lucky.”
In such an era, NIO thinks that it can aim higher.
Overseas missions have also been set since 2015. They aspire to become a global brand and have established an international team at the same time. Even in the worst year of 2019, they did not shut down completely.
The first stop is Europe, and they do not expect it to be as smooth as in China.
Especially in today’s international political situation, companies with a Chinese background will face greater pressure when entering the global market. They need to earn others’ trust and make extra efforts to get things done right. Compared with the open and tolerant Chinese market, there is no second chance outside.
Li Bin said that someone has to do it, besides NIO, who else will do it? “We definitely have to bear greater risks. If we can pioneer a path, it will be easier for the brand of intelligent electric vehicles in the future. This is what we have to do.”
No one in this industry has done it before, but NIO is willing to try, willing to invest, and willing to pay. This has gone beyond not disappointing the bestowed era, but actively accepting the moral responsibility of the era.
付于武说，我们不要给一个企业太多的行业的、产业的、民族的、国家的压力。但是也要看到，在这么一个新势力，一个六年的少年英雄的企业面前，他们折射出中国汽车人创新的意志、创新的力量、创新的品质。
这个时代，非常幸运。
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.