The debut of the Lideal i8 caused Li Auto's stock price to soar, and Letao seemed to be jealous. Yesterday, Ledo Automobile's official Weibo released a picture of the same frame of Ledo L90 and Ideal L9, with a side-by-side comparison. This move was ridiculed by many netizens, saying that "the popularity of chasing ideals is very low."
But what netizens don't know is that Ledo is actually under a lot of pressure - at the 2024 Guangzhou Auto Show, Ledo Automobile President Ai Tiecheng gave annual goals and said, "If you can't complete it, you will be dismissed!" But currently, its monthly sales are far from expected.
It is worth noting that Li Bin has also set the goal of doubling sales in 2025 and making profits in 2026. However, NIO’s “have more children” strategy has not yet yielded results. The sales contribution of its Letao brand is unstable, and Firefly has been criticized for being too ugly... With the annual net loss expanding by 11%, can Li Bin really achieve the new flag?
Monthly sales are not up to standard,trapEmployees buy carsTroubles
According to NIO’s previously announced sales volume in January 2025, a total of 13,863 new cars were delivered, a year-on-year increase of 37.9%.
At first glance, this report card is not bad, but when taken apart, it does not perform well. Among them, 7,951 new cars were delivered under the Weilai brand and 5,912 new cars were delivered under the Ledo brand. In January 2024, the Ledo brand had not yet been launched, that is, the delivery volume of new cars of the NIO brand in the same period last year was 10,055 units. In contrast, the sales volume of the NIO brand in January this year did not rise but fell.
Judging from the sales volume of Ledo brand, it is not ideal either.
In September 2024, the Ledo brand's first model, the Ledo L60, will be officially launched. On the night when the Ledo L60 was launched, Li Bin, the founder, chairman and CEO of Weilai, released a short video saying that this new car was "a huge hit". According to the plan announced by Li Bin in the interview, Ledo L60 production capacity is expected to exceed 5,000 units in October 2024, and will be increased to more than 10,000 units in December. In January 2025, the car's production capacity will reach at least 16,000 units, and will climb to 20,000 units in March.
Subsequent data released by NIO showed that Ledo L60 will deliver 4,319 new cars in October 2024 and 5,082 new cars in November 2024. The performance of production capacity ramp-up and delivery is quite satisfactory, and there is still a gap between the "explosion of orders" claimed by NIO.
Facing the pressure of external public opinion, at the Guangzhou International Auto Show in November 2024, Ledo Automobile President Ai Tiecheng was "anxious". He gave a clear goal: to deliver more than 10,000 units in a single month in December 2024, to hit 15,000 units in January-February 2025, and to reach 20,000 units in March. A flag was even set up: get out of class will be dismissed if the class is not completed.
In December 2024, the Ledo brand delivered 10,528 new cars, which can be regarded as completing the first goal set by Ai Tiecheng. However, judging from the delivery situation in January this year, the delivery volume of Ledo 5912 units is far from the target. Can it reach 20,000 units in March this year? It's even more unknown.
Against this background, Ledo has also frequently been involved in public opinion turmoil, with rumors of forcing employees to buy cars and order fraud.
In January this year, a screenshot of a chat log on a social platform showed, "Ledo Motors forces every salesperson to buy a car of its own. If you don't buy it, get out. The company said it would recycle it in six months, but there is no contract agreement." At the same time, some car bloggers broke the news that a certain car brand had an order fraud problem, resulting in a large backlog of existing cars. This matter also pointed to Ledo.
Xia Qinghua, Vice President of Ledo in charge of sales business, responded that the so-called forcing employees to buy cars is actually a car purchase policy tilted towards front-line colleagues; as for order fraud, he believed that Ledo was jealous and maliciously attacked.
Recently, another Ledao employee posted on a social platform that the company required in-app purchases of cars. In order to divert traffic to the store, he linked his car to Xianyu, but he was notified by the company that he stepped on the red line and "persuaded him to quit." Relevant people from Ledo responded that they had never forced employees to buy cars. After purchasing a Ledo L60 due to the company's preferential in-house purchase policy, the employee illegally entrusted a second-hand car dealer to resell the vehicle, violating the company's sales restriction commitment, and resigned after negotiation.
On February 18, the employee posted again that the company did not force car purchases, apologized for the previous radical move, and said that HR had communicated with him and withdrew the previous company notification.
Is NIO’s strategy of “having more children” reliable??
The year 2024 can be described as an eventful year for NIO.
NIO's previously announced financial report for the third quarter of 2024 showed that the company's total revenue during the period was 18.6735 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 2.1%; the net loss was 5.0597 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11%.
As the financial situation continues to not improve, Weilai is also frequently involved in rumors of acquisitions, bankruptcy and closure.
In August 2024, there were market rumors that NIO officially declared bankruptcy. NIO's Legal Department subsequently issued an announcement claiming that the party responsible for creating malicious rumors had been captured by the police; in November 2024, a person certified as a BYD employee stated that BYD and NIO Group cooperated to establish Bifuture Automobile Group. After the acquisition, the new group directly controlled NIO. BYD and NIO executives have come forward to refute the rumors; in January this year, Haitong International even speculated in a research report that Xiaomi would acquire NIO in 2025.
In the face of constant public pressure from the outside world, NIO’s legal department issued an announcement this month, announcing that it would publicly solicit clues and evidence from the public for malicious attacks by black public relations and cyber trolls with a reward of up to 1 million yuan.
In terms of sales, Weilai adopts the strategy of “having more children”. Li Bin once said that Weilai wanted to build multiple brands since its establishment to achieve coverage of multiple price ranges. With the official release of Firefly at NIO Day 2024, NIO has gathered three major brands: NIO, Letao and Firefly, targeting the high-end market, family market and personalized market respectively.
In the 2024 third quarter financial report conference call, Li Bin set the goal of doubling sales in 2025 and achieving profitability in 2026.
Judging from the current sales situation, the Ledo brand's contribution to NIO's overall sales is unstable; and the Firefly brand also got off to a bad start. After the debut of Firefly's first model, the official "triple" three-eye headlights were complained by netizens for being ugly, with some even calling it the "iPhone rear camera." According to the plan, the first Firefly model will be officially launched in April 2025, targeting BMW mini and Mercedes-Benz smart. With complaints about its exterior design, Firefly's sales may also be tested.
Text | Sina Technology Zhang Jun