On September 2, we learned from the relevant person from NIO that it has already launched a “no down payment” financial car purchase policy in Shanghai, which is applicable to the NIO ES8 and ES6 models. At present, this policy only supports consumers in Shanghai and has not covered Beijing for the time being.
In fact, in order to attract more customers, recently, NIO frequently moves in the purchase of car discounts. On September 1st, NIO upgraded the limited time financial and battery rental program, users who pick up the car during the period from September 1st to 30th (all models, including ES6 Standard Version), can choose the following preferential car purchase plans: one for 3 years 0 Interest financial plan (the ES8 user with vehicle guidance price of higher than 500,000 yuan and the ES6 user with price higher than 450,000 yuan), the minimum down payment is 30%, the 36 period / 0 interest rate; the second is the battery rental (optional 84kWh battery pack user), the car price is reduced by 150,000 yuan, monthly supply of 2,500 yuan, a total of 60 period.
The industry insider believes that NIO frequently launches new preferential policies related to sales pressure. In July this year, due to the recall and other factors, NIO delivered only 837 new cars, down about 37.5% from the previous month, including 673 ES6 models and 164 ES8 models.
Compared with the previous 2019 sales plan, the data is far from the same. It is reported that NIO’s sales target is 40,000-50,000 in this year. However, the latest news shows that NIO’s cumulative delivery volume this year has been 8,379 units, only about 20% of the target.
It is worth noting that in addition to various financial preferential policies, in August of this year, NIO also launched an unlimited number of lifetime free replacement services for the purchase of the first owners of NIO ES8 and ES6. Last year, NIO has deployed 80 power stations (including highways and urban power stations) in nine cities across China. According to the plan, by 2020, NIO will build 1,100 power stations.
However, the mode of free batter swap has not won a favor, because “free” means that NIO will pay more for the cost of capital. At present, the revenue and funding situation of this EV startup company is not optimistic.
According to the financial report, in the first quarter of this year, NIO’s total revenue was 1.631 billion yuan, which was better than the market expectation of 1.54 billion yuan, but decreased by 52.5% from the previous month; the net loss was 2.623 billion yuan, a decrease of 25.1% from the previous month and an increase of 71.4%.
Affected by cost pressure, NIO has twice announced layoffs this year. In April, NIO announced that it will lay off 3% of its employees and control the total number of its company to less than 9,500. On August 22, NIO founder Li Bin sent an internal mail saying that the company will further control spending, improve operational efficiency, and gather resources. In the core business, the number of layoffs was around 7,500 before the end of September.
As a car startup that has not yet achieved profitability, whether it can continue to finance is of great importance to NIO’s survival. Recently, in response to the rumors that NIO intends to split NIO Power‘s independent financing, NIO co-founder and president Qin Lihong said that NIO Power is indeed in the process of independent financing, and the specific time is expected to be in the fourth quarter of this year. He estimates that NIO has invested more than 26 billion yuan so far, and until the end of the second generation of product development (2022-2023), NIO will also carry out financing of about 3 billion US dollars.
