Founded on Nov. 25, 2014, NIO has been developing rapidly in Anting Town in Jiading District, and committed to building the R&D, sales, and after-sales service system for high-performance intelligent electric automobiles. NIO has established R&D, design, production and business organizations as well as user centers in 19 cities including San Jose, Munich, London, and Shanghai. The company now has more than 3,000 employees from over 40 different countries. Qin said, "NIO is a rare company in the history of commerce in that it is a global company created by the Chinese since its inception."From 2015 to 2017, NIO received investment from lead investors like Hillhouse Capital, Tencent Industry Win-Win Fund, JD.com, Shunwei Capital, Sequoia Capital China and Temasek, and financing from TPG, Lenovo, Baidu and so on. Currently, NIO has been valued by industry estimates at more than US$5 billion. 

With its endeavor and the policy support, NIO is now getting close to success in terms of automobile manufacturing in Anting. 

In November 2015, NIO launched its English brand in London. In March this year, NIO released its strategy in North America and its first concept car EVE in Texas in the U.S. The company also announced it will launch driverless electric automobiles in the U.S. market by 2020. In April this year, NIO unveiled its latest mass-production automobile ES8 for the first time, which will come into the Beijing market in December. It is the first large-scale, high-end, mass-production purely-electric SUV targeting mass consumers in urban areas, and its replaceable battery addresses the common issue in the range of electric automobiles. “Pre-orders for the ES8 has started," Qin said that the company has already received nearly 10,000 pre-orders for the new model. 

The report of the 19th CPC National Congress has pointed to the direction for the electric vehicle industry by emphasizing “to build China into a manufacturer of quality and develop advanced manufacturing, promote further integration of the internet, big data, and artificial intelligence with the real economy, and foster new growth areas and drivers of growth in medium-high end consumption, innovation-driven development, the green and low-carbon economy, the sharing economy, modern supply chain, and human capital services.”

The report of the 19th CPC National Congress has shown that the Party and the country have put "green development" in a more prominent position, which will surely benefit the promotion and application of new energy automobiles. 

Domestic electric automobiles are currently in the lead worldwide in both technology and market acceptance. Qin said that during the incubation period, "the development of the electric automobile industry relied on the guidance of the government, but the development of an industry is ultimately driven by the marketization. Consumers will only pay for the good products and services. Only then will the electric automobile industry enter the stage of independent development. Now the 'parent' is leading the industry by the hands, and only when the government lets the hands go and lets the industry to walk on its own can it embrace a golden age with core momentum of development."

So which "child" will take the first step when the "parent" lets the hands go? Qin stated that NIO would like to be the one. To be able to establish a foothold 10 years from now requires the preparations to start today. As Qin introduced, the total R&D investment of NIO’s first automobile ES8 has reached as high as US$1 billion. 

Qin said he predicted that the next decade will be a golden period. The whole automobile industry chain has a market with a value in the tens of trillions. What leads the next-generation automobile industry must be in China. "The technical elements may be in other places, but [commercialization] will definitely rely on the Chinese market. China's electric automobile market accounts for 60 percent of the world’s total last year, and the proportion is still increasing. We are facing such a good opportunity."

"The future is in smart, electric and autonomous vehicles, and we aim to lead the way." This is a sentence from the official website of NIO. Qin said he believes that the internet has just started to bring changes to the automobile industry, and the automobile industry is about to enter the “3.0 era.”

"Electric cars with smart technologies and interconnected services are the trend of the future, and with this opportunity that the time has given us, we know very well that we need to make more radical changes,” he said.

Related

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)