In the spring of 2025, at the NIO headquarters in Anting, Shanghai, the rustling sound of printers spitting out paper is much sparser than before. In order to save costs, meeting materials have been circulated in electronic documents.
In the corner of Li Bin’s office, there are several boxes of recycled environmentally friendly paper, which is the product of the "capillary revolution" that he personally promoted in March 2024.
NIO is shifting from idealism to operational efficiency.
Previously, an open letter from a former employee pushed NIO into the whirlpool of public opinion. The letter directly pointed out the long-standing problem of "being more idealistic than practical", and Li Bin rarely posted the letter to all employees, and replied: "I will improve my business awareness, starting with myself."
Meanwhile, in Guangzhou, on the other side of China, cranes are working day and night at the construction site of Xiaopeng Motors' new headquarters. This 400,000-square-meter building will house a flying car and robot team. When He Xiaopeng talked about the possibility of a robot giant emerging in Guangdong in the next decade, the car company, which had fallen to the bottom due to its bloated organization, is now verifying the effectiveness of its "scraping the bone to cure the poison" reform with sales exceeding 30,000 for two consecutive months.
The two new car-making forces that once ran neck and neck are in completely different situations in the spring of 2025.
The moat turns into a financial black hole
In 2018, NIO, under the name of "user enterprise", built a brand moat with NIO House, battery swap stations and user communities.
However, as of the end of 2024, NIO's total liabilities reached 87.9 billion yuan, the average annual loss of each battery swap station was 500,000 yuan, and the annual operating cost of a single NIO House store exceeded 30 million yuan.
In December 2023, CFO Feng Wei warned Li Bin: at the current rate of burning money, cash reserves would only be enough to support 18 months.
During the Spring Festival of 2024, Li Bin discovered at the Hefei factory that 200 cars were stranded in the semi-finished product area every day due to insufficient production capacity of the seat frame supplier. "Are we making cars or creating problems?" He immediately asked all executives to rotate production lines and launched a supply chain reconstruction plan.
This scenario is actually similar to Xiaopeng's "G9 listing crisis" in 2022. At that time, Xiaopeng lost orders due to SKU confusion. He Xiaopeng learned from his mistakes and compressed the decision-making chain from 11 layers to 5 layers, which eventually increased the supply chain efficiency by 40%. Although Weilai's reform came later than Xiaopeng, it still started with the "printing paper" at the beginning of the article.
Li Bin wrote in an internal letter: "If the founders don't care about costs, why should they ask employees to do so?" He required department heads to review expenditure details every month, and even "whether color printing is necessary" was included in the assessment. The annual per capita activity cost of a car club in a certain city was 12,000 yuan, but the conversion rate was only 0.7%. Such inefficient projects were all cut.
Re-evaluating “user services”
It is reported that in January 2025, NIO launched the "Basic Business Unit" (CBU) reform, with each department setting up an independent cost settlement center and clarifying ROI (return on investment) indicators.
For example, the supply chain team changed the door hinges from imported to domestic ones, and the cost per piece dropped by 60%; the R&D department cut non-core projects and focused on intelligent driving chips and high-voltage architecture. This is similar to Xiaopeng's "three-level architecture reform" in 2023. At that time, Xiaopeng shortened the vehicle development cycle by 30% by integrating production regulations and technical planning departments.
"In the past, we invested like sprinkling pepper, but now every penny has to be solved with a mathematical solution." A middle-level manager of NIO revealed that Li Bin even directly participated in battery price negotiations to reduce the cost of the seat frame sharing plan by 10%.
After conducting in-depth research on Luxshare Precision, the leader in the industry chain, NIO discovered this "million-fold cost thinking" - that is, if 100 yuan is saved per vehicle, 100 million yuan in costs can be saved on a scale of one million vehicles.
User service, once regarded as the "soul", has been re-evaluated. The self-operated spray painting center was closed due to an annual loss of 2 million yuan per store, and switched to cooperation with a third party. After outsourcing the designated driver business, the cost dropped by 40%, and the user complaint rate dropped by 15%. There is no need to give users haircuts or help them take care of their children - after all, "running the company well is the greatest responsibility to users."
The “impossible mission” of 440,000 vehicles and the countdown to profitability
In 2025, NIO's sales target is set at 440,000 vehicles, doubling that of 2024, but the reality is grim. In January, NIO delivered a total of 13,863 vehicles; in February, NIO delivered a total of 13,192 vehicles, with 9,143 vehicles delivered under the main brand NIO and 4,049 vehicles under the Ledao brand.
At the internal meeting in 2025, Li Bin rarely emphasized repeatedly: "Sales volume is the only core indicator to measure work results." He even directly linked "building systemic capabilities" in the VAU (objectives and key results) management mechanism with sales, and required all employees to think about "whether what they are doing is related to selling cars."
Judging from the performance in the first two months of this year alone, 440,000 vehicles seems to be an "impossible mission" for NIO.
As the countdown to profitability is pressing, NIO's battery swap system, which is regarded as a "moat", is currently working hard to move from a "heavy asset" to a "profit cow".
When NIO moved hundreds of battery swap stations into the courtyards of Sinopec gas stations, and when the daily orders for battery swap stations in Shanghai exceeded 9,000 and approached break-even, the 14-province "county-to-county" plan in 2025 was a much-anticipated turning point.
In terms of overseas markets, NIO plans to enter 25 countries and regions by 2025, but the challenges are obvious. Although ET9 has passed the EU cybersecurity certification, the perception of "high-end Chinese cars" among European money still needs to be cultivated. Li Bin hopes to create new profit points through technology exports (such as the sales of Shenji chips), but analysts point out that the contribution of overseas markets requires at least three years of cultivation.
The chilly March will eventually pass, but can NIO's various "revolutions" bring about a surge in sales and allow this star company to say goodbye to the crisis? The answer should be apparent in 2025.
