One of the hottest young electric vehicle startups, NIO, hit a notable production milestone this week. It produced its 100,000th vehicle on April 7.
Ridin’ on up the production ramp, this is less than a year after the company produced its 50,000th vehicle. Actually, it’s less than 3 quarters since that milestone.
The 100,000th NIO produced was an ES8. It was produced at the JAC-NIO manufacturing centre in Hefei, China.
NIO delivered 7,257 electric vehicles to customers in March, and 0 gas-powered vehicles. This was a new monthly delivery record for NIO. The figure also represented a huge increase over March 2020, but one has to keep in mind that this was when the Chinese market was still greatly hampered by the coronavirus pandemic. Nonetheless, it’s fun to announced that sales were up 373% year over year.
This is how the company’s March sales broke down:
- 3,152 ES6s, (5-seat high-performance long-range electric SUV)
- 2,576 EC6s (5-seat electric coupé SUV)
- 1,529 ES8s (6- and 7-seat premium electric SUV).
NIO’s 1st quarter growth was even better than its March sales growth. The quarter’s 20,060 deliveries were a 423% increase over Q1 2020.
NIO was founded in November 2014. After entering the market in the luxury SUV segment in 2018, NIO has been gradually offering smaller, lower-cost models — a new one each year — but it is still sticking to the broader luxury SUV segment. The ES6 was launched in 2019 and the EC6 in 2020. Those SUVs are just getting a tad smaller and cheaper, opening the company up to many more buyers. NIO is also unique in offering large-scale battery swapping, a concept most of us following the EV industry that was dead after the collapse of Better Place.
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