Ledo L60 Sales Surge! NIO Launches "Downward" Offensive

The highly anticipated volume model from NIO has finally unveiled its final veil.

Recently, the first model of Le Dao, the L60, was officially launched.

As the second brand of NIO, Le Dao is positioned to fill the gap in the mid-to-low-end market that the NIO brand lacks, with product prices ranging from 200,000 to 300,000 yuan.

The competition in China's automobile market is becoming increasingly fierce, and many new energy vehicle companies are adopting a strategy of moving downwards in terms of brand positioning.

Now that Le Dao has entered the market, NIO has officially begun its "downward" offensive.

As a new brand with low prices but still profitable, Le Dao urgently needs a "blockbuster" to prove itself.

On September 20th, NIO's chairman, William Li, said, "After last night's launch, the official server capacity of Le Dao was increased fivefold, but it was still congested.

In short, the Le Dao L60 has been a massive hit."

However, he did not disclose the order volume, "We will not disclose the order volume like other car companies.

There will be details of each month's delivery, and then we will know Le Dao's performance."

The Le Dao L60 is the first model under Le Dao, and this time two configurations were released, with a standard range of 60kWh priced at 206,900 yuan; and a long-range version of 85kWh priced at 235,900 yuan.

The lowest price was reduced by 13,000 yuan compared to the pre-sale price, and if you choose BaaS (Battery as a Service), the price starts at only 149,900 yuan, with a standard version battery monthly rent of 599 yuan, and a long-range version at 899 yuan.

Faced with the impact of low prices, William Li said in an interview that thanks to the help of Le Dao's suppliers, the Le Dao L60 will still have a good gross profit performance, and the company will not sell cars at a loss.

In terms of positioning, Le Dao focuses more on family cars.

William Li believes that the NIO brand tends to be more high-end and business-oriented, while Le Dao revolves more around family users.

Looking at the orders for the Le Dao L60, the proportion of NIO users is only 2%-3%, "If users are comparing Le Dao and NIO, I suggest buying NIO if they have the money."

As a family car, the comfort of the interior space and the safety performance of the vehicle are particularly important.

The Le Dao L60 has dimensions of 4828mm in length, 1930mm in width, and 1616mm in height, with a wheelbase of 2950mm.

Inside, it features a 1.9 square meter skylight, 160mm of knee space in the second row, 1420mm of shoulder space, and 1010mm of headspace, ensuring comfort for passengers.

In terms of safety, it adopts a cage body structure, which can maximize the dissipation of impact in the event of a collision, providing protection for passengers and the core components of the vehicle.

It also uses an oversized steel-aluminum hybrid body, with a double front bumper of 1500MPa to provide protection.

In addition, the Le Dao L60 comes standard with 45 active and intelligent safety assistance features, and its AEB (Automatic Emergency Braking) can stop at a maximum speed of 120 kilometers per hour at night.

In the family car segment, Le Dao has entered the market late, and Ideal has already achieved profitability with its positioning as a family car and a "dad car."

Now, whether it can seize a share of this segment has become the key to Le Dao's success or failure.

Regarding this, Le Dao's CEO, Ai Tiecheng, believes that the market share of family cars is large enough, "Assuming China has a 22 million car user market, the market size of the 150,000 to 350,000 yuan market last year was over 8 million vehicles, and it may exceed 10 million vehicles by 2025, with 85% being family users.

At this time, it depends on which brand can meet user needs."

As for the future product planning of Le Dao, William Li revealed that Le Dao will not produce many models, currently planning to release one car a year, and there will be a mid-to-large SUV on the market next year.

NIO's "downward" attack on China's automobile market has been going on for 21 months, and this war without smoke has been particularly fierce this year.

BYD lowered the price of its Class A cars to 80,000 yuan at the beginning of the year, which is unprecedented in the market; Tesla has adjusted prices several times, and the starting price of the Model Y is now only 249,900 yuan, a reduction of nearly 40,000 yuan compared to last year's 288,900 yuan.

New force car companies have also been unable to escape the impact of the "price war," with NIO, Ideal, and NIO all officially reducing prices, trying to gain more market share through this.

However, simply reducing prices is not a good strategy, and insiders believe that this will only affect the company's brand image and have a negative impact on the current market.

In order to cope with the impact and avoid "stabbing" old car owners, car companies have changed their thinking and started to adopt strategies such as releasing low-priced high-configuration models, developing low-end brands, and expanding the product price range to actively seek growth in the lower-end market.

This year, Ideal launched the Ideal L6 with a price of only 240,000 yuan, which is the only model in the brand that has broken through the 300,000 yuan starting price; Xiaopeng MONA's first car M03 directly set the price to 120,000 yuan.

Now, NIO's second brand Le Dao has set the product price at 200,000 yuan in the same way, and is also planning a third brand "Firefly" with a lower price.

Insiders believe that the "price war" may only be an external factor for NIO to accelerate the landing of low-end brands.

Internally, the company's delivery volume needs the help of Le Dao.

In the first 8 months, NIO's monthly delivery was 16,000 vehicles, and William Li once frankly said that the increase in future delivery is expected to be helped by Le Dao.

In William Li's view, the price of Le Dao is aimed at a market with a scale of more than 8 million vehicles.

Combined with BaaS, battery swap networks, etc., it is very competitive.

In terms of sales volume, its upper limit is much higher.

"Due to the entire supply chain and production capacity, there will be a ramp-up process.

This year, the target for Le Dao L60 is to complete a monthly delivery of 10,000 vehicles, and it is expected to reach 20,000 vehicles per month next year, and the supply chain will gradually catch up."

With the addition of Le Dao, William Li expects the company's future monthly sales to reach about 50,000 vehicles.

Under internal and external pressures, Le Dao cannot afford any mistakes, and the key after the listing is production capacity and delivery.

In the group interview after the new car launch conference, William Li introduced the expected ramp-up of Le Dao's production capacity in more detail, "Le Dao is expected to produce 5,000 vehicles in October this year, and reach 10,000 vehicles by December, with a plan to produce 20,000 vehicles per month in March next year.

The current production capacity of Hefei's new bridge NIO second factory can support the production of 10,000 NIO vehicles and 20,000 Le Dao vehicles per month."

Le Dao L60, which directly competes with Tesla, is in the price range of 200,000 to 300,000 yuan, and the competition is particularly fierce this year.

Many brands have entered this price range with new cars, including Zeekr, Ideal, Xiaopeng, etc.

In the group interview, William Li told the reporter of the International Financial News that the competitiveness of new energy vehicles in the 200,000 to 300,000 yuan price range is very strong.

Data shows that as of the end of August this year, there are 78 models of pure electric vehicles in the 200,000 to 300,000 yuan market, and only 3 models can achieve monthly sales of more than 10,000 - Tesla Model Y, Model 3, and Xiaomi SU7.

Among them, the Model Y has been on the market for 5 years, and has always been the target for Chinese new energy vehicles to surpass.

With the strengthening of domestic independent research and development technology, the Model Y has gradually been surpassed in terms of intelligence, endurance, hardware configuration, and cost performance.

However, this five-year-old pure electric "veteran" still occupies the top sales position of pure electric SUVs, with sales reaching 45,300 vehicles in August this year.

Le Dao L60 directly targets the Model Y, and Ai Tiecheng defines it as the "Model Y that can be swapped," hoping to surpass Tesla comprehensively.

Compared with the Model Y, the starting price of Le Dao L60 is 206,900 yuan, which is 43,000 yuan cheaper than the rear-wheel-drive version of the Tesla Model Y at 249,900 yuan; in terms of energy consumption, Le Dao L60 is equipped with a self-developed mass-produced 900V electric drive system, with a per hundred kilometer energy consumption of 12.1kWh, and the four-wheel-drive model only has 0.6kWh more energy consumption per hundred kilometers than the two-wheel-drive model, while the Tesla Model Y has a per hundred kilometer energy consumption of 14.4kWh.

The confidence to surpass Tesla comes from its other "killer feature" - battery swapping.

This is a unique system of NIO, and it has built more than 2,400 battery swap stations so far.

Le Dao plans to access 1,000 of them by the end of this year, which will alleviate the time consumption of charging electric vehicles, and also become a differentiated manifestation with the Model Y.

Another advantage of battery swapping is that it allows the price of Le Dao L60 to drop again.

If you choose its unique BaaS, the price of the whole car drops to 149,900 yuan.

For this pricing, Ai Tiecheng said that Le Dao is not only targeting Tesla, but also breaking the barriers of joint venture fuel cars with the help of BaaS.

He believes that 150,000 yuan is the last barrier of joint venture fuel cars in the Chinese market, and the proportion of fuel cars in the 150,000 to 200,000 yuan market is the highest.

Data shows that in the first 8 months of this year, the fuel car in the 150,000 to 200,000 yuan market increased by 5.8% year-on-year, which is the highest growth rate of fuel cars in the sub-segment.

NIO has been thinking about entering this market for a long time, but due to the high overall price of the NIO brand, the lowest-priced ET5 is also around 290,000 yuan, and William Li believes that fuel cars above 300,000 yuan have no competitiveness, on the contrary, in the lower-priced market, consumers still have a higher dependence on fuel cars.

Now that Le Dao has entered the market, it has taken on the important task of breaking through the upper limit of delivery volume and accelerating the company's profitability.

On September 28th, Le Dao L60 is about to embark on the journey of delivery.