Recently, Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of NIO, revealed some key information in an interview with Automotive News Europe.
Qin Lihong said that NIO needs to double its current sales volume in order to achieve profitability, but he believes that NIO can achieve profitability within the next one to two years (NIO delivered a total of 3,436 vehicles in May).
Furthermore, Qin Lihong made it clear that NIO needs to globalize, and markets outside of China will be of strategic importance. It will take two more years to achieve this goal.
NIO had planned to start selling in places outside China this year, but due to the outbreak of the pandemic, NIO had to postpone the plan.
Qin Lihong said, “Europe is one of the potential markets that we have been seriously considering, but the barriers to entry into Europe are much more difficult than most other places. We can launch in some European countries within one to two years.”
As for which country in Europe NIO will launch in first, Qin Lihong said that it has not been decided yet, but they have been studying it for some time.
During the interview, Qin Lihong also talked about the problem of barriers to entry into Europe, which means that compared with China, Europe is a more mature market, so European consumers are very loyal to brands. NIO needs time to make these customers aware of the NIO brand, and the growth of the pure electric vehicle sector also takes time.
In other words, although NIO has established a certain brand strength in China, compared to Europe, NIO’s brand strength basically needs to start from scratch, and brand strength takes time to build.Qin Lihong also mentioned new information about cars. He said that the proportion of sedans and SUVs in the Chinese passenger vehicle market is basically 50:50, but the growth of SUVs is much faster. NIO plans to launch a new product every year. Next year, NIO will begin delivering new products, “I won’t say what it is, but it won’t be an SUV.”
Finally, when asked how to survive in Europe with battery swapping technology, Qin Lihong answered that the bankruptcy of Better Place did not prove that battery swapping technology was wrong. They are very different from us because they don’t sell cars.
We have cars with replaceable batteries. We believe that battery swapping technology can provide a fair competitive environment for pure electric vehicles and solve the problem of range anxiety.
This is the after-sales service provided for car consumers, in both Europe and China. As we enter the global market, we will bring battery swapping technology into more markets.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.