Up-and-coming EV maker NIO aims to sell cars in the US by 2025. The company plans to import premium Chinese-made EVs to the US as it looks to expand its market.
The CEO of NIO in the US, Ganesh Iyer, revealed the EV maker’s vision at the NextChina Conference on Thursday, according to Nikkei.
“My goal, and my commitment to this company, is I want all of us to buy a Nio car from our personal paycheck one day,” Iyer said.
The company’s US leader explained, “I hope that ‘one day’ will be sooner, which means we need help from everyone — government, policymakers, supply ecosystem [and] infrastructure readiness.”
NIO wants to enter the US EV market by mid-decade as part of a 25-country/region expansion. The news comes days after NIO delivered its first EL6 model in Europe.
Despite selling a record 55,432 EVs in the third quarter, NIO has struggled with widening losses all year.
NIO looks to sell EVs in the US despite struggles
In an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg Friday, NIO CEO William Li announced the company will cut about 10% of its workforce. Li apologized to those affected, saying, “This is a tough but necessary decision against fierce competition.”
NIO, like many automakers, has struggled with the ongoing EV price war, especially in China. The EV maker slashed prices in June by $4,200 (30,000 yuan) to keep pace.
Top comment by FC
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Nio is honestly one of the only Chinese EV brands I can see doing well in the US. There’s a lot less of the weird Chinese market styling than many of their competitors and if they execute their fast battery change system here they’d have a huge leg up on the competition. Americans seem to be so dead set on avoiding even a 5 minute extra time delay on the 1 road trip per decade they take that all I see online is complaints about how they’d never own an EV because road trips would take so much more time. As an American I find this amusing because most people never venture more than maybe 150 miles away from home in any given year.
If they can gain a foothold it would only make sense for them to build an assembly plant here in N. America and take advantage of the IRA credits. Even without them, if they can manage to shuffle their lineup in at a price lower than established automakers, they could do fine without the credits. The key is executing on a rapid expansion of service, sales, and charging as well as ensuring quality, refinement and performance are top notch. I would bet $100 that Nio had a 10,000,000% higher chance of succeeding than VinFast if they launched here.
NIO’s higher prices could be an issue in the US market, too. Aggressive price cuts led by market leader Tesla have forced other automakers, including Ford and Hyundai, to follow.
NIO will face another disadvantage in the US with the $7,500 tax credit provided to EVs made in North America with domestic batteries. However, as Iyer explained, NIO’s models are too expensive to qualify anyway.
“You don’t want to drop the price just for the sake of dropping the price,” Iyer said. “So as the IRA is written today, from a strict price standpoint, our vehicles will not qualify for IRA. Period.”
Other foreign automakers, like Hyundai, are already building EV capacity in the US. Hyundai is building a $7.6 billion EV plant in Georgia, drawing in a flock of suppliers. Georgia has attracted over $25 billion in EV investments, creating 29,000 jobs.
