Following the reduction of delivery volume in the first quarter of this year by Li Auto, NIO also announced the reduction of delivery volume in the first quarter.
Recently, NIO issued an announcement to reduce the delivery volume in the first quarter. The official said that according to the recent business progress, it is expected that about 30,000 vehicles will be delivered in the first quarter of this year. As a comparison, the official target for the first quarter was 31,000-33,000 vehicles, which has now been reduced by 1,000 to 3,000 vehicles.
In fact, it is not difficult to understand NIO’s decision. In 2024, the sales performance of NIO in January and February was not very good.
Data shows that the delivery volume of NIO in January and February was 10,055 and 8,132 respectively. If calculated according to the earlier official target of 31,000 vehicles, the sales volume of NIO in March must exceed 12,000 vehicles to reach the minimum quarterly sales target set earlier. Now that the delivery target for the first quarter has been lowered, it only needs to reach 11,813 vehicles to achieve the sales target for the first quarter. Referring to NIO’s performance this year, it is still very promising to reach a sales volume of 11,000 vehicles.
Of course, NIO made this decision out of necessity. After all, the current new energy market is highly competitive. At the beginning of the year, BYD and Tesla initiated a price war, and then many auto companies have launched preferential activities one after another. The price reduction range is sometimes as high as tens of thousands of yuan. Such a table-turning price war has also put great pressure on NIO. In addition, since February, BYD has successively launched a number of honorable editions of models, with the slogan of “lower electricity than oil”. The newly listed models have a wide coverage, involving the A0-class sedan, C-class sedan, compact SUV and other fields. The configuration has also been further upgraded, and the price is more advantageous. Such a trump card operation also puts pressure on other auto companies.
In this context, NIO naturally also needs to adjust its strategy. In order to face the fierce competition among auto companies, NIO has introduced a series of measures, including adjusting the pricing strategy of BaaS battery as a service. At the same time, it will accelerate the launch of the second brand “Lido Auto”. The official said that the new model of Lido Auto will have a larger screen than the Model Y, and the price will be 10% cheaper than the Model Y. It is not difficult to see that NIO wants to increase sales faster, and the sales of “Lido Auto” is the key and also bears the burden of improving NIO’s finances.
As we all know, since the start of car manufacturing, NIO has been in a loss-making state. Data shows that in 2023, NIO’s total revenue was 55.62 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.9%. It is worth noting that although NIO’s total revenue has achieved year-on-year growth, the net loss is still increasing. Last year, NIO’s net loss for the whole year was as high as 20.72 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 43.5%.
The launch of a new sub-brand may be beneficial to the increase in NIO’s sales volume, thereby improving the state of financial loss. Because, increasing sales is the most important thing for NIO at the moment. After all, with the intensification of competition in new energy vehicles, NIO needs to accelerate its hematopoietic ability if it wants to go further.
According to the official plan, the annual target delivery volume this year is 230,000 vehicles, excluding the 30,000 vehicles in the first quarter. This means that NIO needs to reach nearly 30,000 vehicles per month in the next 9 months to achieve the annual target. Judging from the current sales performance of NIO, it is still very doubtful that the annual target sales volume can be achieved. Although Li Bin of NIO once said that he is confident that the sales volume will return to 20,000 vehicles, it should be noted that at this stage, the competition in the auto market is becoming more and more fierce, and it is not easy to gain more market share.
