NIO (car company)

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.

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] In the third quarter of 2021, NIO delivered 24,439 ES8, ES6, and EC6, a new quarterly record representing a growth of 100.2% year over year. [14]

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 700 battery-swap stations that covers several thousand kilometers of Chinese expressways.[22]

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[23] where Hong Kong and Shenzhen are located). This was completed in November 2018.[21]

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.[24]

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.[25]

These battery swapping stations have a reported swapping time of five minutes.[26]

On 24 March 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. [27]

On 10 December 2021, NIO installed its 700th battery swap station in China, hitting its annual target ahead of schedule, NIO’s second-generation battery swap station allows the vehicle to automatically park into the station, with which users can experience a three-minute battery swap while staying inside the vehicle. So far, NIO has provided over 5.3 million swaps to users in China. Battery swapping has become one of the favorite power solutions among NIO users. [28]

On April 7, 2021, the company produced its 100,000th electric vehicle.[30]

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.[33]

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

• Official website

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