Nio cuts delivery times after solving supply issues
Chinese electric-car start-up Nio has slashed the waiting time for deliveries, the latest sign it has overcome supply chain problems and is back on track to pursue high growth.
According to its official app, buyers of the ET5 saloon will receive their cars in 13 to 15 weeks after placing orders. In September, they faced a wait of up to 23 weeks.
The wait for the ET7 has also been drastically cut from five weeks to two weeks.
Shanghai-based Nio said this week it had resolved a supply chain issue, enabling production to return to normal.
“Nio and its Chinese counterparts cannot maintain their leading positions in the premium [electric-vehicle] segment unless they resolve the production problem,” said Eric Han, a senior manager at Suolei, an advisory firm in Shanghai.
“Competition will become fiercer because new models developed by other tech firms will hit the market next year.”
Nio, along with Guangzhoubased Xpeng and Beijingheadquartered
Li Auto, develop and assemble battery-powered vehicles that target middle-class consumers. They are viewed as China’s best response to US electric-car maker Tesla on the mainland, the world’s largest market for such vehicles.
Long eclipsed by Tesla’s Gigafactory in Shanghai, the three have been ahead of other Chinese electric-vehicle makers in the past two years with monthly deliveries of around 10,000 units each.
Nio’s production at the JACNio Advanced Manufacturing Centre in Hefei, Anhui province, has been disrupted by Covid-19 curbs five times this year. In October, the factory ran short of components for the ET5 as pandemic measures forced some suppliers to down tools.
On Thursday, it said it delivered 14,178 units in November, up by 41 per cent from a month ago as it had secured parts to quicken the manufacturing process.
Buyers of the ES7 sport utility vehicle will have to wait for four to six weeks for their cars to be delivered, down from seven to nine weeks in September, according to Nio’s app.
The ET5, priced at 328,000 yuan (HK$363,500), features a digital cockpit package complete with augmented-reality and virtual-reality systems. It now costs 23 per cent more than Tesla’s Shanghai-made Model 3.
On Wednesday, Xpeng president Brian Gu told the Post about 10,000 vehicles could be deliveredthis month, bringing the carmaker back to production levels seen before the recent Covid19 outbreak in Guangzhou.
Xpeng reported deliveries of just over 5,000 vehicles in each of October and November, half its normal level, because a shortage of key components stopped it from churning out enough G9s.