I’ve been talking about this for a while now but it’s finally official; NIO is coming to the United States. You will have to wait a little while, sorry my American friends it won’t be happening this year.
I personally owned NIO shares. Not that many only about 5% of my portfolio is invested into NIO, Xpeng around 10%, Tesla around 50% I know you’re probably thinking the guy’s crazy! Yeah, maybe I am. We’ll see, let’s wait and see what happens. Anyhow, I reported a few months ago that NIO was planning on coming to the United States and that I believe this is happening because of several real estate purchases made by NIO. In fact, NIO has a headquarters already in the United States where they have a big office essentially and they started actually moving or building up a new office as well. At that time NIO also announced they were coming to a range of markets around the world within the next few years. However, the US is a big problem. Why? The Trump tariff. Yes, it’s true, the Chinese do have tariffs on American cars. Basically, trump was returning the favor to China. That’s a fact. Some of you pointed that out before. I agree, I was never denying that, by the way. That’s true. Anyway, that’s beside the point. The point is NIO to sell their electric cars in the United States they’ve got to pay the government 25% per car. That’s a lot of money unless they were to do something else and I think that’s what they plan on doing. To get around the 25% tax there’s something else that they can do. According to electric vehicles.com NIO will enter the US market in 2025. So I mean we’re looking at 2.5 years away, 2.5 years it’s not really that far. They’re also going to enter a number of other western markets including Canada by then as well. Now they are already in Europe. They are probably going to be all over Europe. Of course, the United States is not low-hanging fruit. I mean you think about it, they don’t have to pay the price taxes like 25% trump tariff in most countries in Europe. So they are going for that market first they can get the low-hanging fruit and then they go for harder markets next. Now NIO are also coming to Australia and I believe it’s going probably to happen in 2023 or maybe 2024 but NIO has talked about their desire to enter the Australian market. For some of the Australians holding out for NIO electric car, you’d be able to buy one pretty soon I think. So NIO already has established a US headquarters in San Jose in California, where they started hiring last month. They started hiring people in actual sales roles which seems bizarre to me and even opened showing rooms of its lineup in California. They are getting very ready for this. This is not some sort of clickbait video, this is very much true. I mean obviously, why on earth would you actually have a showroom if you don’t plan on selling the vehicles? It’s just a total waste of money and time. Why would you hire sale staff if you don’t plan on selling the vehicles right? NIO plans to build one of its signature battery swap stations at its U.S. headquarters for testing purposes getting ready for selling them. For those who don’t know what battery swapping is; NIO have battery swapping stations all over China. They have about 1000 of them now. In fact they have some of them in Europe as well. You can drive into it. You basically drive in and within 3 minutes or less the battery is removed from your car by a robotic machine and a new battery is put into your car with a full charge. You drive away and you’re basically good to go. It’s quicker than filling up at a petrol station or gas station. So it’s a really good concept but it does cost NIO money. However, the trick here is NIO actually uses these batteries as energy storage and they actually make money by selling that energy storage to the market when energy is expensive and bringing it back in when energy is cheap. So it’s kind of a bit like Tesla’s consolidated battery project in California where they’re doing the same thing with people who own Tesla power walls. For example, basically, the same concept which is very very smart in my view. In an announcement from December last year NIO said it will be expanding to 25 new countries and regions by 2025 including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and United States. At the same time, the company made significant strides in expanding to European countries such as France and the U.K. In other words, they’re not quite there yet but they will be where it is within the next 6 months. So those of you who are in the U.K. watching this video or if you’re in France you will also be able to buy NIO vehicle as well.
So what do they sell then? Well, they actually have a much bigger range than Tesla surprisingly which includes the NIO EP9 but actually, you can’t buy them unless you’re in China. They only made 16 of those. That’s a supercar with 1000 kilowatt or 1 megawatt but then they also have the EC6 which is an SUV a midsize fully electric SUV. They’ve got the ES6 which is basically the same vehicle but it’s a coupe shape at the back then they have the ES8 which is a full-size SUV which is a bit bigger probably size just a bit smaller than a Tesla Model X. They also have the brand new NIO ET7 which is apparently by all reports an amazing vehicle, very similar to the Tesla Model S and upcoming models include the EP9 which is an electric minivan, then you’ve got the ES3 which is a compact electric crossover similar to the B.Y.D. atto3, then you’ve also got the upcoming ES7 which is a midsize electric SUV and the ET5 which is a competitor to the Tesla model 3. So you can see, NIO have quite a few different models right so it’s quite a few different cars for you to pick from. If you’re interested in the brand, right now on The U.S. website NIO listed 6 different models mainly consisting of crossovers and SUVs. So clearly those of the 6 models that they plan on selling in the United States and the company has many specifications for the model shown, it’s a little bit confusing to tell you the truth. However the site remains relatively simple, there’s not a whole lot of information there. So the NIO United States lineup includes 2 sedans the ET5 a 5 door sedan resembling a Tesla Model 3 and ET7 a full size sedan. NIO also lists four different electric crossovers or SUVs for U.S. buyers. The EC6 which is the crossover SUV coupe, that’s a little bit like a BMW X 4 according to Teslarati then there’s the ES8; a full size ES8 a full size 3 row SUV like I said, similar to the Tesla model X. Then there’s the ES6; that’s similar to the ES8 but it’s a coupe-like vehicle and the ES7 that’s also 2 row SUV. So there are quite a few different vehicles go to the website have a look, and check them out. The performance of those are pretty good. I would definitely consider one but of course, you got to wait a couple of years to get one unless NIO speeds things up, which they might. So NIO have not confirmed whether or not they’re going to put battery swapping stations in the United States but we’ve already seen them put a battery swapping station in California to show US customs how the technology works. It sounds pretty likely they plan on doing it; rolling them out in the US. How are they going to do it? How are they going to sell car in America and be competitive? Well, if NIO ships parts from China to the U.S. and then assembles them as vehicles in the United States then they can get around paying the 25 percent tariff on those vehicles because then they technically become U.S. made vehicles. This is exactly what Nikola does
with their electric trucks. They don’t make them, another company does in Europe. They ship the parts over to Phoenix in the US. Then Nikola assembles them in America and this makes them technically American trucks. Well NIO will do the same thing, I believe BYD as well.
Personally, I think NIO make some really impressive electric cars and that’s why I’ve intvested in the company. However if I were to choose between NIO and Xpeng, well I think Xpeng has better value electric cars because they are probably just as good as NIO but that’s just my two cents on it.
