As they say, actions speak louder than words.
So the 100,000-unit production milestone (and soon the 100,000-unit delivery milestone) is a huge deal for @NIO, especially considering that the company was in “ICU” toward the end of 2019 as CEO William Li describes it.
But it proves that its positioning as a user-centric high-end premium smart EV brand is working: all their cars delivered so far have ASPs of over RMB400K and it accounts for more than half of the premium EV segment priced above RMB350K. Li is confident even that NIO could sell 1M vehicles annually and account for a third of the premium segment (about 3.5M a year). That’s a bold statement.
The next hurdle for NIO is to achieve monthly deliveries of 10,000 vehicles (it could happen this year) and consistently achieve it for the foreseeable future.
That’s a real test. Can NIO do it? It’s a big question mark.
By no means is NIO out of the woods.
Interesting that Mercedes just announced today it sold a record 220,000 vehicles in China in Q1 with January sales topping 100,000 units. So in comparison it took NIO 35 months to produce the same amount of vehicles that Mercedes sells in a month. From that standpoint NIO has a long way to go.
On the other hand, though, it ain’t easy for other premium brands like Mercedes, Audi & BMW to replicate what NIO has achieved in the premium smart EV space.
