Although the sun is still shining in Beijing in November, the warm foot has clearly entered the early winter. In the Weilai Center of Oriental Plaza on Chang'an Avenue, many of the busy young workers are still wearing T-shirts or singles, which is a good example of the vitality of this new car-building force. At the
100kWh battery launch event, Li Bin also appeared in a casual sports outfit. Before the event, President Qin Lihong even joked that Li Bin’s appearance today is like a high school student. Although there will be an important product launch conference in a while, from top to bottom, every member of the Weilai team looks relaxed as if to attend a party of their own.
The good things of the recent past are the reason for the relaxed team atmosphere. The first good thing is that the stock price continues to rise. As of the close of US stocks on November 6, NIO’s stock price closed at US$41.63. The market value of US$56.155 billion has surpassed GM, BMW, SAIC and other established auto companies, and has become the world’s top ten manufacturers. . Another good thing, of course, is the record sales. In October, Weilai’s sales reached 5,055 units, breaking through 5,000 units for the first time. For a high-end Chinese brand with an average selling price of more than 400,000 units, this is indeed a good one. Historic breakthrough. This 100kWh battery launch event also started with Li Bin’s introduction of sales. “Now Weilai’s unit price is about 150,000 higher than Tesla’s in China. Our users and Tesla users are no longer the same type of users. I like electric cars, but the average price difference is 150,000. There is already a significant distinction in the brand range." At the moment when almost all electric car brands are trying their best to "bind" Tesla, Li Bin is calm. Yun Dan dismissed the relationship with it. The
100kWh battery is the protagonist of the day, and a press conference for a battery pack can be held. Looking at the entire automotive industry, there is currently only Weilai. Compared with the 70kWh battery in the basic model, the 100kWh battery pack is not just as simple as increasing the capacity by more than 40%. Li Bin set a not low tone for him when he came up. "Nio’s entire product and service system is It is designed around the 15 characters of “car and electricity separation, battery rental, rechargeable, replaceable and upgradeable”, and the launch of the 100kWh battery pack not only closes the issue of upgradeability, but also completely replaces Weilai’s 15 characters. Proverbs is closed."
"The 100kWh battery pack is very good, and the technology is very good." Li Bin praised his own products with the simplest and rude description. Although only Tesla and Weilai currently produce 100kWh batteries, Li Bin’s “bull” is obviously not just referring to power, but more about boasting about battery safety.
“We have achieved a safety design without heat spreading. Once the battery pack is out of control, it will only smoke but not catch fire,” said Zeng Shizhe, assistant vice president of NIO battery system. The realization of "no fire" specifically depends on three methods. First, the engineers installed a 24-hour non-sleeping thermal runaway sensor inside the battery pack. If there is a pressure change, the system will immediately wake up and turn on the water circulation system on the car. , To achieve active cooling. Secondly, the thermal insulation material between the cells has also been improved, and the thermal insulation efficiency is many times higher than the original aerosol, which can better function as a firewall. If the battery pack heats out of control, the barrier-free flue becomes the last guarantee. Using the space created by the expansion of the shell, engineers have reserved more smoke exhaust channels, which can quickly exhaust the smoke within 30 seconds to avoid Explosion.
When it comes to power increase, the 100kWh battery pack is not simply packed with more cells. The highly integrated CTP process is also part of what Li Bin calls "bull". After canceling the internal structural parts, the overall size of the 100kWh battery pack remains unchanged, the strength is unchanged, and the volume utilization rate of 19.8%, the energy density of 37%, and the thermal management performance of 17.5% are improved. With 40% reliability, Niu’s is justified. The all-weather temperature control technology also makes the life of the 100kWh battery pack more realistic. Compared with the previous temperature control technology, the 100kWh battery pack has achieved a 10% increase in summer cruising range, a 7% increase in winter cruising range, and a 30% increase in temperature control efficiency. . Another innovative technology of
100kWh is the BMS solution of vehicle and cloud integration. It can optimize the algorithm for each battery of each car to ensure that each battery pack is in use.Quality and quality in use and circulation.
As a supporting service, NIO provides a variety of upgrade solutions for 100kWh battery packs. Users can choose to upgrade flexibly or permanently buy out. NIO users can now be divided into BaaS users, non-BaaS users, and founding version Users and old users who completed the Dading before March 31, 2019, and non-BaaS users who have upgraded 84kWh before... Flexibility in the business model is an innovation of NIO, but if you are not a pure NIO fan, you really need to use your brain if you want to fully understand the various plans and policies. The
"brain-burning" label actually exists in the new car purchase link of Weilai. Should I get the full amount or choose the BaaS battery rental service? These options are not actually friendly for users who are born with difficulty in choosing. Especially the BaaS model launched by Weilai in August. You don’t need to buy a power battery pack when buying a car. You only need to rent or upgrade different capacities according to your personal needs. But BaaS is not just a cost-related application question. "Incomplete cars" are also a challenge to traditional consumer concepts. "There are more and more users choosing BaaS, and the proportion has been rising. It must have met our expectations, especially in first-tier cities, such as Shanghai, which is significantly higher than other places. This is also a good opportunity we see. ", Li Bin first expressed satisfaction with the performance of BaaS over the past two months, but after that he changed his conversation. "We are not so care about the choice of BaaS. The original intention of BaaS was to allow users of gasoline cars to think more about electric cars. For users who have already decided to buy electric cars, it does not make much difference whether it is BaaS or non-BaaS. "Z1z
These new consumption models, which have been exquisitely designed and highlight the innovative spirit of NIO, will be effective for front-end sales in the future, but it is clear that users at this stage are more likely to accept those simple and crude traditional methods. Even if the unit price is 150,000 more expensive than Tesla, Weilai users do not like to "work their heads." Li Bin also admitted that the proportion of users who purchased the full range of Weilai top models is particularly high, especially for ES8 users. This has also caused the average price of Weilai ES8 to exceed 500,000. It is easy to get rid of the focus on price reduction. The cost of Tesla.
Compared with the various innovations proposed by Weilai on the consumption model, users can easily accept the power exchange method that can directly appreciate the benefits. Up to now, Weilai has completed 1.18 million power exchanges, and on average, one Weilai is fully charged from the exchange station every 18 seconds. NIO has 158 swap stations nationwide, but this number is obviously too thin compared to the cumulative number of more than 60,000 vehicles. Especially in first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, the swap business already needs to queue up. For this reason Lai also spared no effort to accelerate the layout of the substation. Starting from April, the number of new replacement stations has increased at a rate of almost one station per day. Weilai hopes to add 300 stations next year. The cost of the second-generation station currently being developed by Weilai is only half of that of the first-generation station. After its launch, it should be able to solve the needs of users for battery replacement as soon as possible. After
launched the 100kWh battery pack, the 150kWh capacity battery pack has also been planned by Weilai. While the battery life is greatly improved, the charging time will also increase accordingly, so the advantages of battery replacement will become more obvious. Will the battery swapping method eventually replace charging completely? This is also a topic that many electric vehicle users, including the media, have been arguing about. Li Bin gave a very rational answer. "Charging and battery swapping are not opposites. Power station swapping is an Olympic gold medal. Charging is a basic standard test. The standard test must be tested well. I definitely hope that there are charging piles everywhere. We do not treat battery swapping as a business alone. Electricity exchange is just like JD Logistics. We treat it as a fulfillment service."
Although the exchange mode has been supported by policies, the new energy vehicle subsidy policy introduced in mid-April also made Weilai the only one not affected by the "30 New energy companies are restricted by the “ten thousand yuan subsidy threshold”, but the high cost of the replacement model is also a double-edged sword for companies. Some media once estimated that the average operating cost of each power station in Weilai was 400,000 yuan. Since 2018, Weilai has invested more than 500 million yuan in power station business. Therefore, whether the fully rolled out battery swap mode will really be like Li Bin said, it is just a "performance service", including users upgrading from 70kWh to 100kWh Whether the price of 58,000 for the battery pack can really be called "economy" is not an instant judgment.
When talking about technology, Li Bin once said that the technology of electric vehicles will eventually converge, and there will be the day when they collectively reach the ceiling. Therefore, a good user ecology and product reputation are the real "moat" of the brand. Therefore, continuing to pet fans and being silly to users will definitely be the real competitiveness of Weilai in the future, so there are good reasons to trust Weilai.
