Nio (NIO), a Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker, struggles in a way that all but one electric vehicle (EV) companies do. It's not Tesla TSLA and that means that it has a long way to go to meet expectations even if it has a high market cap (about $39 billion as of the morning of Feb. 1).
Tesla has set a high bar. It's an innovative company that has backed up its bravado (or at least CEO Elon Musk's bravado) with actual vehicle sales. The EV leader has hit roughly one million vehicles delivered per year pace and that puts Nio well behind its rival.
That's not an easy number to reach, but Nio's latest production numbers at least show progress.
Image source: Nio
How Many Vehicles DId Nio Make in January?
Nio delivered 9,652 vehicles in January, marking a 33.6% year-over-year increase led by the company's ES6 five-seater high-performance smart electric SUV.
The majority of sales in the month came from the ES6 and the company's EC6 electric coup SUV, which saw 2,874 deliveries.
To help push adoption, Nio says it has been accelerating the deployment of its power network. As of January 31, the Shanghai-based company has built 836 power swap stations, 3,766 power chargers, and 3,656 destination chargers.
Nio is gearing up to make a run at the U.S. market and is reportedly hiring a local team of experts in the country, a media report said.
The news came a few weeks after the Shanghai-based company said it plans to enter Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden in 2022, and reach 25 countries by 2025, at its annual Nio Day event.
Nio Coming for Tesla's Spot
Tesla, as noted above, delivered nearly 1 million vehicles in 2021 on the way to solidifying its spot as the global market share leader in electric vehicles.
However, the company's market share is falling as competition ramp up in the battery-powered vehicle sector. Analyst firm IHS Markit predicts Tesla's share of the U.S. EV market was 56% at the end of 2021, down from 79% a year prior, according to CarExpert. (Those numbers are relative as the overall market has grown).
Nio said that it will enter Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden in 2022, and reach 25 countries by 2025, at its annual Nio Day event.
Nio delivered 24,439 vehicles in the third quarter of 2021. That roughly doubled its total from the previous year. The company closed the year with over $7 billion on its balance sheet. It expects to deliver between "23,500 and 25,500 vehicles, representing an increase of approximately 35.4% to 46.9% from the same quarter of 2020," the company said in its Q3 earnings report.
Nio Has Ground to Cover in the U.S.
If Nio has ambitions to enter the U.S., the world's second-largest EV market, it will have to play catch up to Tesla and Ford (F).
Ford (F) became number two for electric vehicle sales in 2021, led by its Mustang Mach-E, which sold 27,140 vehicles in 2021, making it the nation's second-best-selling full-electric SUV behind Tesla's Model Y.
General Motors (GM) currently only sells two electric vehicles in the U.S., the Chevrolet Bolt and Bolt EUV.
Earlier this month, the GM introduced an electric Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck.
In addition to legacy carmakers looking to transform their gas-powered fleets into an electric model, the U.S. EV market also has startups looking to topple Tesla.
Lucid (LCID) has managed to garner a $70 billion market cap despite having only begun to deliver cars in the dozens in October.
Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson says he expects to produce about half as many vehicles as Tesla did in 2021 about eight years from now.
