NIO chairman and CEO Li Bin said the auto industry has entered the brutal final
stage of a marathon, with sales and manufacturing margins at low levels and
industry profits under sustained pressure. He said Q2 per-vehicle costs rose
about 14,000 yuan versus end of last year, creating roughly 1.5 bln yuan of
additional quarterly cost pressure. Q1 still benefited from some inventory
buffering from last year, but Q2 shows the cost hit fully. He expects
per-vehicle costs to rise a further 2,000–3,000 yuan in H2, bringing the
cumulative increase versus end of last year to about 16,000–17,000 yuan. Li
attributed roughly 10,000 yuan to higher memory prices, 3,000–4,000 yuan to
battery costs and the remainder to commodity/material inflation, and said
automakers have almost no room to negotiate these costs.
