According to the news on September 20th, NIO's sub-brand Leedar's first model L60 was officially launched and will be delivered nationwide starting from September 28th.

Leedar L60 is positioned as a family smart electric SUV, with a standard range of 60 kWh and a price of 0.2069 million yuan; a long range of 85 kWh, with a price of 0.2359 million yuan. Leedar L60 can choose the BaaS battery rental service, with a price as low as 0.1499 million and a minimum monthly battery rental fee of only 599 yuan.

When asked about whether the Leedar brand will "develop upwards", NIO Chairman and CEO Li Bin explained that NIO focuses on executive-level vehicles and covers high-end business use vehicles. Leedar, on the other hand, focuses on the family car segment and will maintain the rhythm of releasing one model per year. Next year, a medium to large-sized SUV with 6-7 seats will be released.

"For every Leedar model, we hope to achieve high sales, like the Model Y, and become the gravity model that drives the brand's sales." According to Li Bin, Leedar L60 has already received a large number of orders after its launch. The goal for deliveries is 5,000 units in October, 0.01 million units in November, 0.016 million units in January next year, and 0.02 million units in March next year." Li Bin added.

The goal is to achieve 0.02 million deliveries in March next year, benchmarking against the Model Y.

Family is the most mentioned keyword in the Leedar L60 launch event. Leedar President Ai Tiecheng analyzed Leedar L60 from six aspects: safety, space, cabin, battery swapping/charging, driving experience, and intelligent driving. "Leedar L60 provides a higher-level experience in terms of intelligence, space design, energy consumption, and energy replenishment compared to models in the same class and price range."

Ai Tiecheng said that the LeDao L60 adopts a steel-aluminum hybrid dual-compartment body, adopts a universal 900V high-voltage architecture, and is equipped with a self-developed 900V silicon carbide motor, with a CLTC comprehensive efficiency of 92.3% and an electric consumption of 12.1kWh per 100 kilometers. The acceleration from zero to 100 km/h for the four-wheel drive version is 4.6 seconds.

In addition, LeDao also has 45 active safety and intelligent assistance functions, and has designed model-specific storage accessories for the interior space and a 52L onboard intelligent freezer for the trunk.

In terms of intelligent driving, LeDao first introduced the NT.Coconut LeDao Intelligent System and the OSD LeDao Intelligent Driving System as standard. Ai Tiecheng said that by placing a pre-order before October 8, customers can become LeDao L60 Founders Edition users and receive 5 years of free use of the full-scenario navigation assistance system NOA.

Li Bin, in an interview with a reporter from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily after the press conference, said, 'The LeDao L60 is fully evaluated and designed according to the mainstream family's driving scenarios, which is in line with the brand concept of 'managing the home responsibly'. Currently, more than 60% of the customers who have placed orders for the car have considered LeDao because of the battery swapping option. Despite the car's price of 2.069 million yuan, which is 0.043 million yuan cheaper than the Model Y, it still has a gross margin.'

Li Bin also added that if the monthly sales volume of the LeDao L60 can reach 0.02 million units, it will achieve a good profit. 'We must admit that LeDao's brand competitiveness is two levels lower than Tesla's. But we are not only targeting pure electric vehicles, as long as it is a mid-size SUV priced between 0.15 and 0.25 million, whether it is a gasoline vehicle, an extended range vehicle, or a hybrid vehicle, the L60 will be a strong competitor.'

Li Bin revealed that after the launch of the LeDao L60, there was a surge in orders, with the order volume increasing by 5 times. Currently, the Hefei factory can produce 0.01 million NIO vehicles and 20,000 LeDao vehicles per month, but the new car launch will face a capacity ramp-up. The delivery of the LeDao L60 will strive to achieve the target of 5,000 units in October, 0.01 million units in November, 0.016 million units in January next year, and 0.02 million units in March next year.

With an independent channel from NIO, NIO will share after-sales service.

Before the official launch, LeDow has already started setting up offline stores and displaying L60 exhibition vehicles in major stores.

It is understood that as an independent sub-brand, LeDow will not share sales channels and stores with NIO, and will build its own store and channel system separately.

At a previous earnings conference, Li Bin said that the criteria for opening a LeDow store are speed and efficiency, and the investment per store will be low, with average decoration costs not exceeding 1 million. The choice of store location will also differ from that of NIO. Personnel will also be allocated according to the number of orders and deliveries, with the most compact rhythm.

A reporter from "Kechuangban Daily" visited the first LeDow L60 experience store in Shenzhen. The store is located in the same commercial area as the NIO store, but it is more compact and displays most of the vehicle colors of the L60 model.

According to the observation of the reporter, the users who come to the LeDow store for static experience are mostly young people, and there are also many families with three or four members. Among these consumers, the main intention vehicle models are Model Y, Xiaopeng G6, BYD Song, and Zero Run C16, which are medium to large SUVs with large space as their selling point.

The salesperson at the LeDow offline store told the reporter: "LeDow uses a 900V high-voltage platform, which has lower charging efficiency and power consumption. In addition, the car's entertainment chip uses the high-performance version of Snapdragon 8295, and with a 17.2-inch 3K high-definition display, the entertainment experience is also excellent. Currently, we have about 100 orders per salesperson in the store, with a total of nearly a thousand orders."

The salesperson added that the front-end sales and service of the LeDao brand are separate from Nio, but the after-sales service center is shared. For example, the delivery center in Shenzhen is located in Bantian, where both Nio and LeDao need to go to pick up the car. After the official launch of the L60, you can go directly to pick up the car because there are some cars available at the delivery center.

It is reported that most of the charging stations in Shenzhen are still being upgraded. After the official launch of LeDao L60, you can use the map to plan the charging route.

Regarding the pricing of LeDao L60's BaaS, LeDao President Ai Tiecheng gave an example: 'According to our research, the monthly fuel cost for home users is approximately 810-850 yuan. Our BaaS pricing for renting the battery starts at 599 yuan, which is basically equivalent to the cost of filling 60 liters of gasoline with 92 octane, plus the cost of charging and switching lines, it's even more economical than a gasoline car.'

Ai Tiecheng revealed at the conference that there are already 304 available charging stations for LeDao, and by the end of this year, there will be over 1000 available charging stations. In addition, there are plans to build over 200 stores and connect 350 service centers in 120 cities nationwide.

Nio previously announced the 'County by County Charging' plan. By the end of 2025, Nio plans to complete the construction of a charging service network in 27 provincial-level administrative regions, covering over 2300 county-level administrative regions.

In an interview with the 'Star Market Daily' reporter after the press conference, Li Bin admitted that Nio's charging stations are distributed resources, and the investment in a single station is equivalent to Nvidia's training station. Without the brand of LeDao, the expansion of the charging network would be delayed by at least 2 years.