When nio in usa?
Chinese electric vehicle (EV) start-up Nio plans to enter the US market in late 2025 and launch more affordable models to compete against the likes of Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | Twitter
NIO Inc. plans to enter the U.S. market in 2025 and deploy the first Battery Swap Station in the country as soon as November 2022, two people familiar with the matter told EV.
In addition, NIO is obtaining a new area behind its current headquarters in San Jose (California), where it will install in November the first Battery Swap Station for testing purposes.
The company has currently 4 NIO ES8 models used for road testings in San Jose although NIO NAD (NIO Autonomous Driving) is still not working in the country.
Last month, the EV maker posted the first job vacancies concerning NIO Houses in the U.S. including a Head of Construction / User Infrastructure, and a Project Manager / Architecture and Interiors.
During the last NIO Day, held in December 2021, the company said it plans to be in over 25 countries and regions by 2025. The map displayed during the presentation includes countries such as the United States, Australia, France, and Japan, leaving out countries such as Canada and Brazil.
On Saturday, NIO CEO William Li visited the US headquarters in the heart of Silicon Valley where the company has its R&D center for autonomous driving. Later in the day, a NIO employee shared a picture with the CEO confirming the visit of William Li to the San Jose office.
On July 19, EV reported that NIO had posted the first job vacancies amid the expansion of its showrooms — known as NIO Houses — to the United States.
By then, the company started hiring a Senior Real Estate manager to be responsible for the “site selection and negotiation of lease terms for new locations” and a Head of Construction to “drive the construction and development strategy of NIO Houses”.
The EV maker has currently 60 job vacancies for the United States, mostly for engineers but also the first concerning NIO Houses posted in mid-July on LinkedIn.
Earlier this year, Colliers reported that NIO leased a new building with 201,500 square-foot until January 2032 to support research and digital development, testing, assembly, warehousing and also operations. In the deal, the EV maker was represented by Toomey, Jere Hench, John McMahon, and Sean McMahon.
“NIO USA’s new Research and Innovation Center signifies an exciting chapter for the company as it continues to develop state-of-the-art technology for its electric vehicles. In addition, on behalf of the collective team at Colliers, we are honored to have guided NIO USA through its successful search for a new headquarters facility in support of NIO, Inc.’s international market expansion,” said Senior Vice President Sean Toomey.
After entering Europe through Norway in September 2021, the company is very close to arrive in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and The Netherlands. For 2023, as EV reported on July 13, NIO is planning to enter 9 European markets including Austria, Belgium, France, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, and the Czech Republic.
On Thursday, a video leaked on the internet showed over one hundred units of NIO ET7 units at the Shanghai Port waiting to be batched to Europe, amid the company’s expansion in the upcoming months.
The model was unveiled on NIO Day 2020, held in January 2021, and will arrive in Norway, Germany, Sweden, The Netherlands, and Denmark before the end of the year.
Recently, NIO CFO Steven Feng confirmed that the EV manufacturer will also enter Sweden, The Netherlands, and Denmark with the sedan NIO ET7 — something that had only been confirmed for the German market, the second European country for the EV maker.
On the same day, NIO also announced that the upcoming ET5 Model, that features 1,000 kms range, will be available in Norway (and “several other global markets”) during the Spring of 2023.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | Twitter
The theme of the anniversary event was “Don’t forget the original intention and forge ahead”. The company’s top management was presented on-site, and most of the other employees watched the live stream online. The event happened on November 15, and today Chinese media outlet LAuto published the content of the internal speech.
During the speech, Mr. Li shared the five main challenges which Nio faces nowadays: epidemic, international situation (without further explanation), economic situation, rising material prices (lithium, etc.), and competition. He also presented his solutions – improving efficiency, patience, and confidence. He also mentioned that 2024 should be a break-even year for Nio, meaning Nio will become profitable by then.
Mr. Li also announced that Nio now has about 30,000 employees worldwide, twice as many as in 2021. “Nio is not qualified to wait and see and will not shrink,” Li adds. For comparison, as of June 2022, Li Auto has about 15,000 employees (end of 2021), and Xpeng has more than 13,000 employees.
He also confirmed that the Nio phone will be launched in 2023 and joked that if you broke your smartphone’s screen, you shouldn’t fix it just for the new Nio product.
About the profit, Li commented that “others think that Weilai invests a lot and spends a lot, but our money is spent where it should be spent.” According to the financial report for 2022, Nio’s Q3 loss was 4.1 billion yuan (570 million USD), and its R&D investment also broke the record-it spent 2.9 billion yuan (400 million USD), a year-on-year increase of 146%.
Probably the most exciting part was about how Nio plans to achieve profitability. Li believes that to make a profit in 2024 and reach a car margin of 20%, Nio must make batteries and chips, “otherwise there is no chance at all.” According to Li, batteries currently account for nearly 40% of the vehicle cost; if the battery manufacturer has a 20% profit margin (editors note: CATL’s profit margin was 15% in 1H 2022). So if Nio manufactures the battery, it generates 8% more profit. Furthermore, self-developed chips will increase gross profit by another 10%.
According to Li, 2025 should be the final stage of intelligent EV development and Nio’s current goals. “We can’t let people who learn from us run faster than us,” concludes Li.
LAuto also found that Nio has four new businesses (NB) code-named NB 1-4.
Nio officially entered the EU in October and, in November, announced prices for ET7, ET5, and EL7 (ES7) in four new markets – Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark – making them the first EU countries where you can buy a car from the Shanghai-based EV startup. It is also a direct entrance to the home market of Nio’s main competitors – BBA (Benz, BMW, Audi). The deliveries of Nio ET5 will start next year in January for the ET7 sedan and in March for ET5.
The first Nio House in Germany will open on December 17 in Berlin, and we will closely watch Nio’s performance in their first EU market.
The US branch of Chinese automaker NIO continues to make interesting moves in North America, as the company signed a ten year lease on a building in San Jose, CA. The new 200,000+ sq. ft. US headquarters is more than double the size of NIO’s current footprint, signaling that a long speculated entry into the North America could be one stop closer to becoming reality.
If you’re not already familiar, NIO is a Chinese EV automaker founded in 2014 that has quickly become a company to watch. As one of the leaders in EV sales in China, NIO has already expanded to European markets beginning with Norway and Germany, but that’s not all.
At the company’s annual NIO Day celebration this past December, NIO shared ambitions to provide services in 25 countries and regions by 2025, displaying a map on screen with several markets highlighted including Western Europe, Australia, and the United States.
Following NIO Day, we reported new job postings on LinkedIn by NIO USA in San Jose, CA, including the position of Head of User Infrastructure Construction & Readiness. Here’s the job description:
With the latest NIO news to emerge, it appears this new employee and the rest of US crew will be working to “scale in the Americas” from a new headquarters.
Mercury News out of the Bay Area shared word of NIO’s recent agreement, which consists of a ten year lease for a 201,500 sq. ft. property located at 3151 Zanker Road in San Jose, CA.
According to real estate company Colliers who brokered the lease, the new US headquarters will support NIO’s research and digital development, testing, assembly, warehousing, and operations.
NIO’s current US headquarters is an 85,000 sq. ft. building located at 3200 N. First St., a two-minute drive away on the same block as its new location.
The article points out that NIO had at one point also leased an adjacent building on First Street adding an additional 100,000 square feet of space, but it’s uncertain if the company ever actually moved in.
It’s also unclear at this point when NIO staff will move to its new US headquarters on Zanker Road. When it does, it’s planning to operate from there for the next decade, perhaps as the hub to NIO’s expansion into the US market.
