Wei Lai played a lore.
Text/Xiao Ying
The battery swap mode promoted by NIO has been controversial. Looking at it now, power exchange may become a killer tool for NIO to respond to market competition and improve operations.
012 billion tuition fees
On August 20th, Weilai Automobile officially released the battery rental plan (BaaS), and simultaneously released Wuhan Weineng Battery Assets Co., Ltd. Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile, introduced that this will be a a completely independent enterprise that will be responsible for battery asset management. The shareholders behind it include: Weilai, Ningde Times, Hubei Science and Technology Investment and Guotai Junan, each invested by the four parties 200 million yuan, holding 25% of the shares. More capital will continue to enter in the future.
The service model of BaaS is not complicated. To put it simply, users who choose the BaaS model to buy NIO cars do not need to buy batteries when buying cars. NIO sells cars to consumers, sells the batteries to asset management companies, and the asset management companies lease the batteries to consumers. .
NIO’s business logic has always revolved around user experience. Li Bin said frankly at the press conference that the model of separating cars from electricity and renting batteries has already been brewing since the establishment of Weilai Automobile. After 5 years, it was finally polished.
From the perspective of user service, the battery rental model has three obvious advantages: lowering the threshold for buying a car, improving the user experience, and increasing the preservation rate of used cars. Specifically:
Lower the car purchase threshold: If the user chooses to rent batteries, take a 70kWh battery pack as an example, the monthly rent is 980 yuan, but they can pay 70,000 yuan less for car purchases, and directly transfer the Weilai ES6, The purchase cost of the EC6 has dropped below 300,000 yuan. From the perspective of use, 70,000 yuan is approximately equal to the user’s 6-year car rental cost. If the user intends to change the car within 6 years, use the rental powerLife cycle cost control is expected to be further strengthened, which may become the key to its ability to gain a foothold in the Chinese auto market.
However, none of this can be accomplished overnight, and it will take some time to verify and polish.