Nio to take affordable EVs to US market. Will they come to Australia?

Chinese electric vehicle brand Nio has been making some bold moves in the last 12 months, including launching in multiple new European markets.

Now co-founder and CEO of Nio, William Li, has laid out the company’s future expansion plans to employees which include affordable EVs and expansion into the massive US market, according to reports by local media outlet LAuto & CNC.

Earlier in November, Li made a speech to Nio employees at the company’s 8th anniversary where he spoke about what the EV maker has been able to achieve in its quite recent history. 

Part of the speech touched on the challenges faced by the company including the pandemic, economic uncertainty in China and Europe, rising material costs and competition.

From there he outlined how Nio can overcome many of these challenges and presented a path to profitability which included Nio’s expansion into Europe and the US market with the next-generation platform it’s been working on. 

With 30,000 employees, Nio is one of the largest EV makers in China and a significant amount of the resources are dedicated to research and development (R&D). In 2022 alone, Nio has spent nearly $600 million AUD on R&D. 

On top of the expansion plans, Nio is working on four new businesses including one with a focus on a new sub-brand that will have ground-up EVs that start will start at $40,000 AUD and go all the way up to $60,000.

This is a big deal as currently many of Nio’s cars compete with luxury brands like Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz in China.

The European expansion has been one of the biggest achievements for Nio as it looks to enter other markets in 2023. This may include right-hand drive markets like the UK and Australia.

UK has become a good market for many EV companies as shown by MG and their popularity with EVs in that market. Now GWM is launching there with the ORA and Maxus brands. 

These are also on the cards for here with the Maxus commercial brand now in Australia under LDV as we have seen with the launch of the new LDV eT60 ute.

Nio has a good shot at the UK market if it succeeds in other European markets like Norway, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark.

Nio has another uniqueness with its very clever battery swap technology that allows its EVs to also be able to swap empty batteries with full ones. Earlier this month, the brand continued its expansion of the battery swap stations to Europe by launching in Sweden.

The European and US expansion by Nio is starting to form a path into other markets like ours in Australia. The more variety of EVs we can get to the Australian market, the better it would be to help decarbonise our transport system sooner.