When Li Bin, the founder of Weilai, announced that the 150 degree battery pack could increase the cruising range of Weilai's new car to more than 1000km, the audience cheered, but Li Bin went on to say that this battery pack would be mass-produced in the fourth quarter of 2022, and the audience was silent; Similarly, when the price of ET7 was announced (starting from 448,000 yuan before the subsidy), cheers rang again, and some car owners shouted "Buy it", but Li Bin later announced that delivery would begin in the first quarter of 2022, and the audience fell silent again.
To sum up, the product is pleasantly surprised and the delivery time is too far away. Li Bin himself may have anticipated this. After the audience was silent twice, Li Bin volunteered to add: "Please understand that we really used too many new technologies."
It is understandable to release the product in advance, which is the habitual operation of most electric vehicle startups. The pre-sale time of ET7 is not even long in the industry. "Tesla pre-sales are two years ahead of schedule." Li Bin told China Business News in an interview after the press conference. But as far as Weilai itself is concerned, the waiting time of this new car has indeed become longer, or the release time has been "advanced"-the release and delivery interval between ES8 and ES6 was 6 months before, and the third car EC6 was 9 months.
Qin, president of Weilai, was also "prepared for a rainy day" when interviewed two weeks ago by NIO: "Now the automobile industry is selling futures more and more seriously. Once we say it, we will give you a clear mass production time. " Why did Weilai "advance" the release time of heavy products? The problem itself is not complicated, and it is also a good observation entrance, from which we can understand the challenges faced by Weilai, a company that has just experienced the trough and peak.