NIO (car company)

NIO Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	NYSE: NIO ADR
ISIN	US62914V1061
Industry	Automotive
Founded	November 2014; 6 years ago (2014-11)
Founder	William Li (Li Bin)
Headquarters	Shanghai , China
Number of locations	5
Area served	China (including Hong Kong and Macau) Germany United Kingdom United States Norway [1]
Key people	William Li (Chairman and CEO) Lihong Qin (President) Wei Feng (CFO)
Revenue	US$2,491,637,000 (2020)[2]
Operating income	−US$706,153,000. (2020)[2]
Net income	−US$791,800,000. (2020)[2]
Total assets	US$7,081,505,000 (2020)[2]
Total equity	US$4,164,132,000 (2020)[2]
Number of employees	7,000+ (2020)[3]
Divisions	NIO Formula E Team
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese	上海蔚来汽车有限公司
Traditional Chinese	上海蔚來汽車有限公司
showTranscriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Shànghǎi Wèilái Qìchē Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī
Business name
Simplified Chinese	蔚来汽车
Traditional Chinese	蔚來汽車
Literal meaning	Sky-Blue Coming Motor Vehicles
showTranscriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Wèilái Qìchē IPA [wêilǎi tɕʰîʈʂʰɤ́]
Website	nio.com

NIO (Chinese: 蔚来; pinyin: Wèilái) is a Chinese multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Shanghai, specializing in designing and developing electric vehicles. The company is also involved in the FIA Formula E Championship, although NIO has ended funding the team after selling to Lisheng Racing.^[4]

Overview[]

NIO was founded in November 2014 by William Li (Chinese: 李斌; pinyin: Lǐ Bīn), the Chairman of Bitauto and NextEV. After launch, several companies invested in NIO, including Tencent, Temasek, Sequoia, Lenovo and TPG. Its first model, the NIO EP9 sports car, debuted the same day the brand was established.^{[citation needed]}

In October 2016, NIO announced that it had been given an "Autonomous Vehicle Testing Permit" by the California DMV and it would begin testing on public roads under the "Autonomous Vehicle Tester Program" guidelines as part of its autonomous vehicle program. According to the company, it planned to launch vehicles with level-three and level-four autonomy.^[5]

In May 2018, NIO opened its first battery swap station in the Nanshan District of Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, dubbed the "Power Swap Station".^[6] Only batteries for ES8 cars would be available from this station.^[7]

In September 2018, the company filed for a US$1.8 billion initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange.^[8]

In late April 2020, Nio announced ~$1B in new funding from a group of Chinese investors,^[9] which was needed due to the company's struggles to sell its vehicles.^[10] As part of the deal, Nio would transfer assets to a new subsidiary called Nio China, which will be headquartered in Hefei.^[11]

In August 2020, Nio launched Battery as a Service (BaaS) and formed a battery asset management company in collaboration with Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (“CATL”), Hubei Science Technology Investment Group Co., Ltd. and a subsidiary of Guotai Junan International Holdings Limited. Each contributing RMB200 million into the venture for 25% equity. BaaS helps lower the purchase price of Nio electric vehicles by about 25%.^[12]

In May 2021, Nio announced a Norway expansion plan, saying it would begin delivering cars to Norway by September 2021.^[13]

Technology[]

NIO Pilot[]

NIO Pilot is the company's SAE level 2 semi autonomous system that offers ADAS features. It launched with the introduction of NIO's ES8 model. Several over the air updates throughout 2018 and 2019 has enhanced NIO Pilot with features such as lane keeping, adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, automatic emergency braking, highway pilot, traffic Jam pilot, auto lane change and more.^[14]

NIO Pilot sensor suite consists of a trifocal forward camera, 5 radars, 12 ultrasonic sensors and a driver monitor camera.^[15] NIO was the first automaker to launch a car model utilizing Mobileye's EyeQ4 vision chip.^[16]

In November 2019, NIO announced a partnership with Mobileye to develop a consumer car equipped with Mobileye's complete Level 4 self driving system that could be sold to consumers by 2022.^[17]

Divisions[]

NIO Life[]

NIO Life is the company's clothing collection, made in collaboration with Hussein Chalayan.^[18]

NIO Service[]

NIO Service is the company's network of service centers.^[19]

NIO Power[]

NIO Power is the company's network of battery swap stations, power mobile, power home and super chargers. NIO has 122 Swap Stations around China, including 18 battery swap stations along the G4 Expressway in China.^[20]

Vehicles[]

Current models[]

Model name	Photo	Specifications
EP9		Body style: Coupe Class: Sports car (S) Doors: 2 Seats: 2 Motor: Indirectly water-cooled electric motors Production: 2016–present
EC6		Body style: SUV Class: Mid-size (J) Doors: 5 Seats: 5 Battery: Lithium-ion battery Production: 2020–present
ES6		Body style: SUV Class: Mid-size (J) Doors: 5 Seats: 5 Battery: Lithium-ion battery Production: 2019–present
ES8		Body style: SUV Class: Full-size (J) Doors: 5 Seats: 6 Battery: Lithium-ion battery Production: 2018–present

Upcoming models[]

Model name	Photo	Specifications
EF9		Body style: Minivan Class: (M) Minivan Doors: 5 Seats: 7/8 Battery: Lithium-ion battery Production: 2022 (to commence)
ES3		Body style: SUV Class: (J) Subcompact Doors: 5 Seats: 5 Battery: Lithium-ion battery Production: 2022 (to commence)
ET5		Body style: Sedan Class: (C) Compact Doors: 4 Seats: 4 Battery: Lithium-ion battery Production: 2021 (to commence)
ET7		Body style: Sedan Class: (E) Mid-size Doors: 4 Seats: 4 Battery: Lithium-ion battery Production: 2021 (to commence)

Concept models[]

Model name	Photo	Specifications
ET Preview		Body style: Sedan Class: (E) Mid-size Doors: 4 Seats: 4 Battery: Lithium-ion battery Production: 2019 (previewing upcoming model)
Eve		Body style: Station wagon Class: (C) Compact autonomous vehicle Doors: 2 Seats: 4 Battery: Lithium-ion battery Production: 2017 (previewing a possible upcoming model)

Battery swapping[]

Battery swapping was first available on the NIO ES8

Unlike Tesla, which has tried battery swapping but has never deployed it on a large scale and relies instead on its Supercharger network, Nio has built a functioning network of 131 battery-swap stations that covers several thousand kilometers of Chinese expressways.^[21]

The first phase was installing 18 battery-swap stations in 14 different locations along the G4 expressway, a 2,273-kilometre-long (1,412 mi) road connecting Beijing (the national capital) with the Pearl River Delta (world's largest urban area^[22] where Hong Kong and Shenzhen are located). This was completed in November 2018.^[20]

The second phase consisted of installing battery-swap stations in 8 locations along the G2 expressway, a 1,212-kilometre-long (753 mi) road connecting Beijing with Shanghai. This phase was completed in January 2019.^[23]

As of August 2020, NIO has built 143 battery swap stations across 64 cities in China, and completed over 800,000 battery swaps for its customers.^[24]

These battery swapping stations have a reported swapping time of five minutes.^[25]

On March 24th 2021, NIO completed its 2 millionth battery swap in the city of Suzhou. It has also deployed 193 battery swapping stations, 134 supercharging stations, and 327 destination stations across China. ^[26]

Sales[]

On April 7, 2021, the company produced its 100,000th electric vehicle.^[28]

Technologies[]

NOMI AI[]

NOMI, an artificial-intelligence technology, claimed to be the first in-car AI system in production vehicles. NOMI can pull up the cars navigation, control the music, adjust the cabin temperature, open or close windows and unique to NIO cars can take a selfie of the passengers in the cabin.^[29][30]

Motorsport[]

Formula E[]

NIO have been participating in the ABB FIA Formula E since 2014, the inaugural season.

The NIO team is one of the original Formula E teams, originally competing under the name Team China Racing. Before the first season was completed, they rebranded as NEXTEV TCR. In this inaugural season, their main driver Nelson Piquet Jr became the FIA Formula E Driver's Champion, after winning two races in Long Beach and Moscow. The team was only able to achieve fourth in the constructor's championship though, in part due to a rotating line-up of second drivers that didn't achieve as consistent level of success as Piquet.

From season 2 onwards, Formula E opened up car development, with teams creating their own powertrains. Nio used their own design NEXTEV powertrain, but it saw a downturn in the team's performance for the constructor's championship, as they finished only 9th in season 2, 6th in season 3 and 8th in season 4. By this point, the team had morphed through NEXTEV, NEXTEV NIO until renamed simply NIO. Season 5 would see the team's meagre successes diminish further, as they languished 11th and last in the championship.

For season 6 (2019-2020) the team was sold on to Lisheng Racing and renamed NIO 333 Racing. For the first time since season 1, NIO did not provide their own powertrain for the car, instead using the previous year's Dragon powertrain. This was rebranded under NIO's name and they remain classified as a manufacturer.

World records[]

NIO set five records in their track-only EP9 for the fastest lap for an electric-powered car in the Nürburgring Nordschleife, Circuit Paul Ricard, Circuit of the Americas, and Shanghai International Circuit tracks.^[31]

See also[]

• New energy vehicles in China
• Byton
• Li Auto
• Polestar
• Tesla, Inc.
• XPeng

References[]

External links[]

• Official website
• Business data for NIO Inc.:
  • Google Finance
  • Yahoo! Finance
  • Bloomberg
  • Reuters
  • SEC filings