Electric cars: Nio starts trial production of smart EV that could challenge Tesla's Model 3 as it races to gain edge over rivals in China
Chinese electric car maker Nio has kicked off 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 on Monday evening that the 50 billion yuan (US$7.6 billion) NeoPark, based in Hefei, the capital of East China's Anhui province, had started sample production of the ET5, its latest model, which is expected to hit the mainland market in September.
The mid-size sedan 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 (EV) segment.
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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 Northeast China's 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 a 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 square kilometres 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 EVs.
The ET5, priced from 328,000 yuan, comes with PanoCinema, a panoramic and immersive digital cockpit boasting 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 a smart EV with the 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 556 kilometres, is priced at 279,900 yuan after subsidy.
Nio, along with Guangzhou-headquartered Xpeng and Beijing-based Li Auto, are the three Chinese smart EV start-ups that have the potential to break the dominance of Tesla in the world's largest automotive and electric car market.
Nio delivered 5,074 vehicles in April, the lowest since November last year, and half the amount a month earlier.
It was forced to halt assembly at the Jac-Nio plant from April 9 to 13 as Covid-19 lockdowns in Shanghai, Jiangsu and Jilin disrupted its supply chain.
Tesla's Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai lost about 50,000 units in production between March 28 and April 18 owing to a broken supply chain.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2022 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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