Nio starts trial run of latest smart car at new Hefei plant
Sample production of the ET5 is under way, carmaker says, as it races to get ahead of rivals
Mainland electric car maker Nio has started operations at its second factory as it races to get ahead of rivals that are struggling with a worsening supply chain bottleneck.
The Shanghai-based carmaker said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange that the 50 billion yuan (HK$59.3 billion) NeoPark, based in Hefei, the capital of Anhui province, had started sample production of the ET5, its latest model, which was expected to hit the mainland market in September.
The mid-size car, fitted with a 75 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery that can go as far as 550km on a single charge, is viewed as a rival to Tesla’s Model 3 and carries Nio’s hopes for gaining a considerable market share in the mainland’s premium electric vehicle segment.
Trial operations at the NeoPark, co-developed by Nio and the Hefei municipal government, come less than three weeks after the carmaker suspended work at its first factory for five days as lockdowns in Shanghai and Jilin province gummed up the automotive supply chain.
“Nio is obviously trying to race ahead of its rivals by launching the ET5 to the market,” said Chen Jinzhu, CEO of Shanghai Mingliang Auto Service, a consultancy. “Indeed, Tesla and its Chinese rivals are all stuck with supply chain constraints, and any company that is able to build adequate inventory [of car components] fast will gain an upper hand in the coming months.”
NeoPark covers an area of 11.3 sq km and is designed for a capacity of 1 million vehicles and 100 gigawatt-hours of batteries when construction is fully completed.
It took only 12 months for Nio and the Hefei government to get the first phase of the NeoPark ready for manufacturing, after construction started on April 29, 2021.
At present, Nio is assembling four models at its first plant, the JAC-Nio Advanced Manufacturing Centre, also in Hefei, which has an annual capacity of 200,000 units.
The ET5, priced from 328,000 yuan, comes with PanoCinema, a panoramic and immersive digital cockpit with augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies.
Nio unveiled the new model in December, and promised to start delivering the cars to customers in the third quarter of 2022.
Co-founder and CEO William Li said at the annual Nio Day event in Suzhou that a huge screen was not needed in smart vehicles with AR and VR technologies.
The company is not the first carmaker to meld AR and VR technologies into a car, but its move to create an immersive indoor experience with PanoCinema is likely to be a game-changer at a time when a huge screen is seen as the hallmark of a premium intelligent battery-powered vehicle.
The basic edition of Tesla’s Shanghai-made Model 3, with a driving range of 556km, is priced at 279,900 yuan after subsidy.
Nio, along with Guangzhouheadquartered Xpeng and Beijing-based Li Auto, are the three mainland smart electric vehicle start-ups that have the potential to break the dominance of Tesla on the mainland.
Nio delivered 5,074 vehicles in April, the lowest since November last year, and half the amount a month earlier.