Nio is a child of the digital age
With its technologically advanced smart EVs and a user-oriented business model, the Chinese electric brand Nio also wants to compete with Tesla. Hui Zhang, Vice President Europe, explains where the manufacturer takes its self-confidence for the next steps from. He will describe NIO´s business model with the image of a house: The roof describes Nio's vision of a user-oriented and user-driven company. Underneath, there are basically five pillars on which this vision is based. The first pillar is the core product, the SmartEV, which is defined by things like a high-performance computer architecture for autonomous driving, software updates over the air, or intelligent UX assistants like Nomi. The second pillar comprises a comprehensive package of charging solutions that NIO can offer our customers flexibly. These include, for example, the Supercharger, Battery-as-a-Service models and, of course, NIO´s USP, the battery swap systems. Thirdly, NIO wants to build on good reputation in aftersales. After all, every second sale of a new car from Nio in China is based on a personal recommendation.
Nio as a brand is shaped by its users and customers; in Mr. Zhang´s opinion, no other automotive company offers a user experience of this kind. Nio is a child of the digital age and this is reflected in its products and business models.
That is why, for example, NIO has set up a mobile service concept that allows customers to take advantage of a repair service while on the move. The fourth pillar comprises more direct sales concepts, independent points of sale such as Nio House or Nio Space, which offer more than the classic car dealership. Last but not least, the fifth pillar is the community, which should actively help us to develop the brand further. The foundation of this house, in turn, is our technological base, theNio app, and the cloud infrastructure behind it. The press is currently treating the sedan NIO ET7 as a serious competitor to the Mercedes EQS, for example. The model sets standards in terms of design, autonomous driving and electric range. The Nio Adam supercomputer, which is based on Nvidia's Drive Orin platform for automated driving functions, is one of the factors contributing to this.
NIO has a roadmap for autonomous driving, which is actually already clear from our model portfolio. All three current series-production models, the ES8, ES6 and EC6, are still running on the NP 1.0 technology platform, which enables autonomous driving at Level 2+. The ET7 will be the first model to be based on the second generation platform and to offer automated driving functions at level 4.