China’s NIO has some Tesla-like features but is no real competition

Hate to break it you, NIO is no Tesla; the Chinese electric-car company may have the trappings of the car maker of the future but ornaments won’t be enough to turn it into a genuine contender.

A self-declared rival of Elon Musk’s Tesla, NIO has been on the road rallying global investors for an imminent listing in New York – just as Mr Musk’s troubles have escalated. The public offering would value the electric-car maker at somewhere between $8 billion and $9bn, an eye-popping sum for a company that doesn’t actually manufacture its own vehicles.

Just as Mr Musk’s vision catapulted the appeal of electric cars, entrepreneur William Li wants to do the same in China. Mr Li aims to “reignite enthusiasm and passion towards automobiles”, he wrote in the prospectus, seeking to create an all-encompassing “joyful lifestyle”. (Unlike Mr Musk, Mr Li doesn’t share his vision via Twitter or China’s equivalent, Weibo.)

He’s found partners in tech behemoth Tencent; assisted driving leader Mobileye; the world’s biggest battery maker, Contemporary Amperex Technology; car-parts suppliers Robert Bosch and Continental; and aluminium producer Novelis.

NIO’s sole model, the ES8, is decked out in Nappa leather, sports Hepa air filters and has an aerospace-grade aluminium alloy body. The first vehicle the company produced, an electric sports car that wasn’t for commercial deployment, broke records last year at Germany’s “Green Hell”, one of the most daunting racetracks in the world.

Hillhouse Capital and Sequoia Capital are among private backers that have funded Mr Li’s vision. But with cash burn of more than $500 million in the first half, that’s no longer enough.

Under the fancy accessories, NIO doesn’t make even make the dress. Its cars are manufactured by state-backed Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group, or JAC, at a new plant in Hefei, per the prospectus, under a five-year agreement signed in 2016. For the first three years, NIO pays per-car and foots the bill for the plant’s operating losses.

NIO shelled out 100 million yuan (Dh53.7m) for the second quarter and prepaid future losses for the third. That’s probably why the company puts a car into production only after signing an agreement with a buyer. JAC, meanwhile, has its own ambitions, producing its first electric 4x4 with Volkswagen in May. NIO maintains it has “significant control” over manufacturing but added “there can be no assurance that we will successfully maintain quality standards”.

But here’s the thing: NIO can’t get its own electric-car manufacturing licence until it has its own factory. The Shanghai government is building the company a plant, but even once that’s up and running, a licence isn’t guaranteed. The National Development and Reform Commission hasn’t handed out one in three years. The bar is high. A company has to be able to make 100,000 cars a year, among other requirements. For context, China’s biggest car makers produced just over that number of electric cars last year.

With only a few other hopefuls having set up manufacturing partnerships, this is a licensing grey area. On the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s website, JAC is listed as the manufacturer of the ES8, under NIO’s brand. NIO does make some parts such as inverters and motors at plants in Changsha and Kunshan but it isn’t clear how much the company has invested in these. On its balance sheet, production facilities were about 9 per cent of its construction in process.

Having raised about 20 billion yuan through

NIO’s ES8 is decked out in Nappa leather, sports Hepa air filters and has an aerospace-grade aluminium body

multiple financing rounds and borrowings in the past couple of years, the company continues to sink most of its money into research and development: half goes into employee compensation, more than the amount spent on design and development.

Without an IPO, cash will be tight. NIO says it has about $600 million of capital expenditure needs over the next year (starting in July), about equal to its cash on hand as of June. Over the next three years, it plans to spend $1.7bn.

Around a quarter of NIO’s targeted $1.3bn of IPO funds are earmarked for manufacturing facilities, including the Shanghai plant. NIO will lease the factory from the city government and spend about $650m on improvements. Most of the proceeds will go toward R&D

Given Tesla’s well-documented production troubles, NIO’s transition from promise to manufacturing powerhouse may be far from smooth.

For now, it remains a dressed-up auto-tech company and parts assembler with bold ambitions.