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NIO has become a 'religion' for its car owners

TaiShang

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In 2012, with the launch of Tesla's first mass-produced car, Model S, CEO Elon Musk not only brought about a revolution in car's power source but also overturned the sales model of car companies.

In November 2017, William Li, founder of NIO, built the first NIO House in Beijing with rents costing tens of millions of RMB per year, and the services it provides far exceed those of Tesla.

Li's high-end positioning for NIO has given NIO users a high sense of self-identification and extraordinary internal cohesion. NIO stands out from dozens of new carmakers and has created a sect of electric cars, "NIOism".

Since 2019, when NIO faced a crisis, Li has been going around the country to communicate with users. Not only user meetings, but even private dinners and drinks, birthdays, weddings, and other events were attended.

In 2019 Li went to more than 40 cities to meet with users, and even if NIO improves in 2020, he still has more than 30 weekends to spend with users across the country.

Users like to share their lives and cars in NIO APP online, and there are also criticisms and suggestions from users from time to time. Faced with users' criticism, Li is not annoyed and explains patiently in the community every day.

Li is patient in answering users' questions, but indifferent to the media's accusations. "As long as it doesn't affect users' emotions, these questions and curses are very normal", he claims.

A user on the NIO APP shared that on the way home after buying the car, he was unfamiliar with charging and couldn't connect the power because he was using it for the first time. Suddenly another ES6 stopped by and helped to charge up.

And on the road, some NIO users would show their kindness to each other even though they didn't know each other. Some users even shared that they saw two NIO cars yielding to each other at an intersection.

In December 2017, NIO held the first NIO Day. Li chartered 8 airplanes, 60 high-speed rail cars, 19 five-star hotels, and invited Imagine Dragons, spending a total of RMB 80 million ($12.3 million at the time).

The money has enabled NIO to reached a height that XPeng and Li Auto have never been able to reach, and the highly loyal users make it difficult for peers to catch with it.

On January 8 this year, NIO held its fourth NIO Day, a grand festival for users that brought together more than 1,000 users from all over China to Chengdu. The users from Shenzhen organized and chartered a plane to Chengdu, according to the video, the plane crew and passengers were all NIO users.

One user towed his ES6 from Shenzhen to Chengdu on a trailer, covering 1,800 kilometers, just to be a volunteer for NIO.

In the four quarters of 2019, 45% of NIO's orders came by referrals from regular customers. And by the time Li was interviewed by the media in 2020, including the ES6 and the ES8 released in late 2019, that sales figure had risen to 69%.


NIO has become a 'religion' for its car owners-cnEVpost



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Love this religion.
 
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Chinese EV maker NIO's new flagship electric vehicle, the ET7, features a 12.8-inch flexible AMOLED center display and 10.2-inch HDR Mini LED-backlit digital instrument cluster from Chinese OLED display giant BOE, according to display and semiconductor industry research firm CINNO Research.

The NOMI AI assistant features a 2.18-inch round flexible AMOLED display from BOE, according to CINNO Research.

At NIO Day 2020 in Chengdu on January 9, NIO unveiled the ET7, the first model to feature a 150kWh solid-state battery pack with a maximum range of more than 1,000 kilometers.

The interior design features a 12.8-inch flexible AMOLED center display for an innovative and unique look, and high resolution for brilliant picture quality, NIO said at the time.

Its 10.2-inch HDR Mini LED-backlit digital instrument cluster enables fine-grained light control in thousands of zones through zone dimming technology. This gives the screen a higher color contrast and a clearer picture of the vehicle's driving conditions, ensuring driving comfort and safety.


BOE has been cooperating with NIO. At the "BOE Innovation Day" on December 14, BOE showcased Mini LED, BD Cell, flexible display, total reflection technology, and Smart Window IoT solutions in NIO's Smart Cockpit.

BOE said at the time that these innovative display technologies bring infinite possibilities for smart cockpits and a new experience of smart travel for people.

BOE said that the in-vehicle display products equipped with its Mini LED technology can realize thousand-level zoning fine light control, and have a million-level ultra-high contrast ratio to bring a more pure and natural display effect.

Its reflective LCD display makes full use of reflected ambient light, with low power consumption characteristics while also achieving a healthy eye protection effect.


The application of flexible OLED rear lights and transparent displays also brings more imagination to vehicle interior design, BOE said.

With the gradual application of innovative technologies in the automotive field, automotive glass is increasingly changing. BOE has introduced smart dimming windows that can be used in automotive sunroofs, and side windows.



At present, BOE has launched S-shaped curved flexible AMOLED screen with a 300mm radius of curvature, which can be divided into three screens to simultaneously display the passenger's entertainment system, the central control system, and the body indication system of the driving instrument. The transparent A-pillar with the flexible screen eliminates blind spots in the view and makes the ride safer.

The AR HUD system displays vehicle status information, positioning, and maps on the front windshield, fitting navigation instructions to the road, providing users with a more intuitive and convenient AR real-world navigation experience.

In addition, BOE also launched a series of products such as instrument display products with BD Cell technology, 3D curved car display, 49-inch concave car display with 4200R curvature, 2.8mm narrow bezel car display, and 2000nit OLED rear lights.


Data from Omdia, a global market research agency, shows that BOE's in-car display shipment area has jumped to second place in the world in the first three quarters of 2020. Currently, BOE's products have been applied to almost all mainstream automotive brands in China, the US, Germany, UK, Japan, and Korea.



NIO ET7 features flexible AMOLED center screen from BOE-cnEVpost
 
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More like a cult, coolaid, and successful Jobs Steve style gaslighting.
 
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But it's nothing comparing to the cult of Elon Musk. These people are cult members. Can't beat it.
 
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More like a cult, coolaid, and successful Jobs Steve style gaslighting.
Sounds like some MLM... Lol.

But at least Nio is selling genuine product but whether their product deserve merit is another issue. The only thing I like Nio ES car is the ability to swap batteries. Some see it as liabilities but it's definitely much faster than charging your battery.

But with ever improving techbolgy, charging time to full batt will be faster and shorter in near future. So batt swap by then will be outdated. I encourage those with stand alone garage in their house to buy EV. You just need to go home every night and remember to plug it up. No need to visit petrol kiosk anymore.
 
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Chinese technology company iFlytek said in an investor exchange platform that NIO, BYD, and XPeng Motors all use its intelligent voice technology.

iFlytek continues to be the No. 1 brand for intelligent voice interaction in China's cars, and in-car voice applications continue to expand, the company said.

Founded in 1999, iFlytek is an intelligent speech and artificial intelligence company.

In 2011, iFlytek launched a deep neural network system for Chinese speech recognition. The company then gradually expanded its business to include a speech platform and the iFlytek input method.

From 2013 to 2019, iFlytek launched solutions for education, healthcare, justice, security, and smart cities.

In 2017, NIO released its first flagship SUV, the ES8. With the launch of the car, NOMI became the world's first mass-produced in-vehicle artificial intelligence system.


NOMI's initial product was called NOMI Mate, and in 2018, NIO released NOMI's second product, NOMI Halo, which utilizes a simpler form of halo and voice to interact with the user.

iFlytek says it provides smart voice technology for NIO, BYD, XPeng-cnEVpost


XPeng's voice assistant has been dubbed Xiao P (Little P), and it is part of the company's broader Xmart OS In-Car Intelligent System.

Xiao P is built with Cerence ARK, which is a localized AI Reference Kit that was designed specifically for the Chinese market.


BYD launched its voice assistant “Xiaodi” with dilink 3.0 last year.

With the addition of new sound source positioning function and children's voice recognition function, “Xiaodi” can provide intelligent service for drivers and passengers of different positions and ages in the car.
 
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Despite being a billionaire, NIO founder still lives in a rented apartment

January 31, 2021 By: Phate Zhang

William Li (Li Bin), founder, chairman, and CEO of NIO, insists on living in a rented apartment despite having a net worth in the billions.

In a program aired on CCTV Saturday, Li showed the apartment he rents in Shanghai, where NIO is headquartered.

The apartment is small and rents for about 10,000 yuan ($1,556) a month, which Li says is "small but expensive".

You can watch the video here.

In November 2020 Forbes estimated Li's net worth to be $8.1 billion.

Talking about his life in Shanghai, Li said the winters made him uncomfortable, so he bought an electric heater from Xiaomi.


This is not the first time Li has talked about his life as a renter, as he explained in a Tencent program in 2018 that renting is a way to remind himself not to be satisfied with the status quo and to pursue higher goals.

Li claimed at the time that it would be satisfying to live in a big house where you have to hire someone to clean and have lots of empty rooms.

However, Li also confirmed at the time that he bought a house of 50 square meters near a school for the convenience of his child's schooling.


Despite being a billionaire, NIO founder still lives in a rented apartment-cnEVpost


Despite being a billionaire, NIO founder still lives in a rented apartment-cnEVpost


 
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Despite being a billionaire, NIO founder still lives in a rented apartment

January 31, 2021 By: Phate Zhang

William Li (Li Bin), founder, chairman, and CEO of NIO, insists on living in a rented apartment despite having a net worth in the billions.

In a program aired on CCTV Saturday, Li showed the apartment he rents in Shanghai, where NIO is headquartered.

The apartment is small and rents for about 10,000 yuan ($1,556) a month, which Li says is "small but expensive".

You can watch the video here.

In November 2020 Forbes estimated Li's net worth to be $8.1 billion.

Talking about his life in Shanghai, Li said the winters made him uncomfortable, so he bought an electric heater from Xiaomi.


This is not the first time Li has talked about his life as a renter, as he explained in a Tencent program in 2018 that renting is a way to remind himself not to be satisfied with the status quo and to pursue higher goals.

Li claimed at the time that it would be satisfying to live in a big house where you have to hire someone to clean and have lots of empty rooms.

However, Li also confirmed at the time that he bought a house of 50 square meters near a school for the convenience of his child's schooling.


Despite being a billionaire, NIO founder still lives in a rented apartment-cnEVpost


Despite being a billionaire, NIO founder still lives in a rented apartment-cnEVpost


It makes no sense to buy an apartment in any 1st tier cities in China now, when you can rent a $1m apartment for just $500 a month.

Lujiazui apartments are of course a really bad value for rent too. Those $3000k-$5000k per month properties on Pudong waterfront are really old by Chinese standards, and they were constructed with complete disregard to construction practices becoming universal just few years later.
 
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Looks like NIO owners cannot become members of CCP now.
 
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Despite being a billionaire, NIO founder still lives in a rented apartment

January 31, 2021 By: Phate Zhang

William Li (Li Bin), founder, chairman, and CEO of NIO, insists on living in a rented apartment despite having a net worth in the billions.

In a program aired on CCTV Saturday, Li showed the apartment he rents in Shanghai, where NIO is headquartered.

The apartment is small and rents for about 10,000 yuan ($1,556) a month, which Li says is "small but expensive".

You can watch the video here.

In November 2020 Forbes estimated Li's net worth to be $8.1 billion.

Talking about his life in Shanghai, Li said the winters made him uncomfortable, so he bought an electric heater from Xiaomi.


This is not the first time Li has talked about his life as a renter, as he explained in a Tencent program in 2018 that renting is a way to remind himself not to be satisfied with the status quo and to pursue higher goals.

Li claimed at the time that it would be satisfying to live in a big house where you have to hire someone to clean and have lots of empty rooms.

However, Li also confirmed at the time that he bought a house of 50 square meters near a school for the convenience of his child's schooling.


Despite being a billionaire, NIO founder still lives in a rented apartment-cnEVpost


Despite being a billionaire, NIO founder still lives in a rented apartment-cnEVpost


Being such rich, living in rented apartment may make him a target of kidnapper.
 
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It makes no sense to buy an apartment in any 1st tier cities in China now, when you can rent a $1m apartment for just $500 a month.

Lujiazui apartments are of course a really bad value for rent too. Those $3000k-$5000k per month properties on Pudong waterfront are really old by Chinese standards, and they were constructed with complete disregard to construction practices becoming universal just few years later.
That's a good thing about a real estate frenzy. Bad thing to marriage you need usually an apartment. Maybe some Chinese women will change their demands regarding it.
 
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Looks like NIO owners cannot become members of CCP now.

You can have progress, secularism and modernity as your religion. That would make you perfectly eligible as a member. They need high IQ people with pragmatic mind.
 
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A recent LinkedIn job posting by Chinese electric vehicle maker NIO suggests that it may be accelerating its plans to enter the US market.

The company has created an open position for a mid-to-senior-level executive who is expected to lead a team to expand its business in the US market.

The Job responsibility reads:

Work with American companies and teams to develop American business strategies;
Combine the NIO model and in-depth market insights to promote the innovation and implementation of business models;
Formulate an action plan to enter the US market, and pull through the cluster resources in the headquarters based on key deliverables;
Coordinate cross-departmental resources and deliver them on time according to the project management approach.
The job requirements read:

Agree with NIO's corporate values and culture, and implement them in work;
Work across Time Differences;
Good at written and oral English;
Excellent data analysis ability and logical analysis ability, business model thinking and innovation;
Recognize NIO's entrepreneurial company culture and possess the psychological qualities required by a startup company;
A background with global company's overseas market management experience is preferred.
NIO's local counterpart XPeng has shipped 100 XPeng G3i SUVs by sea to Norway on September 25, 2020, after which they will be sold by Norwegian electric car dealer Zero Emission Mobility.

NIO founder, chairman and CEO William Li said in an interview with several English-language media, including cnEVpost, on January 10 that the center screen navigation map shown at the launch of its first sedan, the ET7, revealed information about its entry into overseas markets.


And when cnEVpost checked the picture of the center screen on the ET7 introduction page, it found that the address shown in the picture seems to be Karl Johans gate in Oslo, Norway, although it is very blurry.

Another evidence that NIO may enter Norway first is the job advertisement posted on LinkedIn, which shows that the company is already hiring locally for a large number of positions including delivery specialists.

It wouldn't be surprising if NIO chose to enter the Norwegian market first, with a record-breaking 54.3 percent of electric vehicle sales in 2020, despite Covid-19 causing delays in the release of several new models. This is up from 42.4% in 2019 and up from 1% a decade ago, making Norway the first country in the world to sell EVs formore than 50% of its annual vehicle sales.

In China, NIO has attracted a large number of customers with its large ecosystem of support services. In particular, the BaaS (Battery as a Service) purchase program allows owners to pull down the purchase barrier for new vehicles and pay monthly for battery lease usage.


NIO is committed to continue to expand battery swap stations in China, with the expectation of fully automated battery replacement/recharge within 3 minutes.

NIO's production capacity is still on the rise. By the end of 2021 or early 2022, NIO expects to reach its goal of 300,000 units per year.

NIO's newly announced ET7 all-electric sedan is expected to be introduced to the market in 2022 with a new semi-solid-state battery.

During the NIO Day event in January, NIO unveiled NIO Autonomous Driving, which includes 33 different sensor components, including five millimeter-wave radars, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and two high-precision positioning devices.

The sensor data stream will be processed by an on-board ADAM computer with 1016 TOPS of computing power per second, about seven times the power of a Tesla FSD.




LinkedIn job posting suggests NIO accelerating its entry into US market-cnEVpost
 
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Born in a poor village, how NIO's William Li built China's first local premium car brand


Three years younger than Tesla CEO Elon Musk, William Li was born in a mountain village in central China’s Anhui Province in 1974.

During his childhood, the young man who lived with his grandparents until the second grade could never have imagined that he would one day be able to build China's first local high-end car brand, NIO, in the future.

In Li's hometown, cattle are an important tool of production, and his grandfather used to buy cattle in poor conditions at low prices, raise them at home and sell them to earn a living.

During the season when he didn't need to sell cattle, his grandfather would buy liquor and tobacco from Jiangsu and distribute them to the village farmers when he returned.

Li helped collect the money and keep the books. Looking back on that experience, Li once said, "Grandpa taught me the simplest philosophy of business."

Nearing graduation from junior high school, Li was faced with the first critical choice in his life: whether to attend a professional technical school or a regular high school.

In the early 1990s, a professional-technical school degree was more practical than a high school. Graduates of professional technical schools could go straight to work and thus support their families. But it also meant that there would be no chance of going to college.

32f8a6ff9d9bfc3efd2a95f631b93a16.jpg


(Li during high school years. Source: Sohu)

Eventually, Li chose the latter, and after high school successfully entered Peking University, which is known in China as the best university in China along with Tsinghua University.

Li majored in sociology and minored in law. He also studied computer programming in his spare time and worked extensively on a part-time basis, "holding more than 50 jobs during his college years."

8a1e47d92dfeec487c901e55a297eb12.jpg


(Li during his college years. Source: Sohu)


In 1996, fresh out of college, Li set up a company called Nanji Technology.

The following year, he co-founded what was then known as Kewen Shuye Information Technology, the predecessor to Dangdang.com.

However, he left Dangdang.com after only a year because he wanted to do something big - start a company like eBay, but Li chose the direction of automobiles.

In 2000, he launched BitAuto, a car website that provides users with car-related information and services, and received $9.5 million in investment.

79479af4d741f594f9b287bb6423c48f.jpg


(Li in 2000. Source: Sohu)

In 2001, the Chinese government first encouraged cars to enter residential households and advocated the development of economical cars.

Subsequently, the market for family cars of around RMB 100,000 ($12,100) swelled rapidly, and the increasing number of car products made many Chinese people unsure how to choose. This also became an opportunity for BitAuto to grow rapidly.

But in that year, the US Internet bubble burst, and BitAuto could not escape the doom.

By the bottom of BitAuto's fate, the company was left with seven people. For the next few years, Li earned money by writing code and making websites for others.

In 2003, Chinese web portals started to come back from the dead.

To avoid competing with the portals, Li did not make BitAuto an informational website.

The portals were not willing to serve car dealers, so Li collected information about these dealers, organized them into an information database, and provided it to the portals for use.

With more and more resources, many companies and websites came to him to discuss cooperation. Car dealers began to pay membership fees to BitAuto, and BitAuto began to have cash flow again.

By 2004, BitAuto's profit reached millions of RMB.

In 2010, BitAuto was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming the first Chinese auto-related Internet company to be listed overseas.

In 2010, an electric car company called Tesla became the second car company to go public in the US after Ford in 1956, in Silicon Valley, where manufacturing was not well developed.

In 2013, Tesla's market capitalization had exceeded $10 billion. At the time, Li was also thinking about what to do next that made more sense.

In April 2014, Musk came to China to deliver the keys to Tesla to the first owners in China.

Many people began to realize at this time that an era of new energy vehicles, full of unlimited imagination, was coming.

In November 2014, Li, who had been "teaching people how to buy cars", decided to start building cars himself, and NIO was born.

When NIO was founded in 2014, it had a team of luxury investors, including Pony Ma from Tencent, Liu Qiangdong from JD.com, Lei Jun from Xiaomi, and Zhang Lei from Hillhouse Capital.

With a large amount of capital, NIO has tapped industry veterans who have worked at Mazda, Maserati, Motorola, Cisco, etc.

In order to acquire the technical team, NIO wholly acquired IAT Automobile Technology and recruited more than 200 automotive engineers to its team.

At that time, China's new energy vehicle market was still a blue ocean, and whoever could be one step ahead could seize the first opportunity.

Without production qualification and car factory, NIO thought of OEM production.

In April 2016, NIO signed an OEM contract with JAC Motors. Not long after, NIO's first electric supercar EP9 was unveiled.

On October 12, 2016, NIO EP9 set the electric car lap time record of 7 minutes and 05 seconds at the Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany.

On February 23, 2017, the NIO EP9 set another record of 257 km/h at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, becoming the fastest electric car in the world.

The first batch of NIO EP9 is limited to only 6 units worldwide, and the owners are William Li, founder of NIO, Zhang Lei, founder, and CEO of Hillhouse Capital, Pony Ma, founder of Tencent, Liu Qiangdong, founder of JD.com, Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi, and Li Xiang, founder of Autohome and Li Auto.

At the end of 2017, NIO released the ES8, its first mass-produced electric car.

At the ES8 launch NIO Day, NIO spent RMB 80 million to charter 8 planes, 60 high-speed rail cars, 19 five-star hotels, and 160 buses to invite a large number of investors, media, and 5,000 intended users to the event. While this brought the event to widespread attention, it also drew controversy for NIO's massive money burning.

On September 12, 2018, NIO successfully landed on the New York Stock Exchange in the United States. On the first day of the opening, NIO invited 12 owners to ring the bell in front of the exchange. At that time, everyone had a big smile on their faces, but they did not know that a crisis was brewing quietly.

2018 was the first year that NIO began deliveries, but a number of vehicles were delivered in the second half of 2018 or even at the end of the year.

As we entered 2019, NIO spontaneous combustion incidents occurred one after another in Xi'an, Shanghai, Wuhan, Shijiazhuang and other places.

Although NIO reacted quickly, announcing a recall of some of the cars in question and free replacement battery packs, these incidents hit an emerging car brand hard.

In March 2019, this subsidy for the new energy industry began to be withdrawn. At the same time, NIO's sales were declining, with only 3,989 units sold in the first quarter of 2019, just half of the 7,980 units sold in the previous quarter.

And in the following months of April, May, and June, NIO's monthly deliveries were 1,123, 1,089, and 1,340 units, respectively, with nearly zero sales growth.

At the beginning of NIO, Li once said that if you don't have RMB 20 billion in your hands, don't think about making cars. But NIO still burned money faster than anyone expected.

In 2019, NIO lost RMB 11.3 billion, and the accumulated loss reached RMB 26.77 billion during the three years of its establishment.

NIO's stock once fell from $11 to $1.19 and was considered a company with no future.

People's praise for Li also quickly receded, and some media even called him "the most miserable person in 2019".

Li later said in an interview that money was tight and the company's cash flow could break at any time, a state that lasted for several months.

Although he raised money everywhere, no investors were willing to help.

Thankfully, NIO delivered more than 8,000 vehicles in 4Q 2019 in exchange for more than RMB $3 billion in cash flow, which helped the company survive the toughest period.

In this regard, Li has mentioned several times that he is grateful to the users for not giving up on NIO at that point in time.

Li's persistence finally paid off in 2020, when NIO received RMB 10 billion investment from the Hefei city government. Subsequently, NIO received another RMB 10.4 billion credit from 6 banks, and the funding problem was alleviated.



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(Li in 2021)

NIO's monthly sales also rose step by step, and NIO's stock price soared as money in the stock market chased the electric car company.

NIO's stock price has risen 10 times in 2020, with a current market capitalization of $90.1 billion, surpassing a number of established car companies such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and SAIC.

The number of NIO sales is now increasing month by month, and both financial and operational conditions are far better than they were a year ago.

In October 2020, NIO pushed the NOP feature to its users, which enables cars to automatically enter and exit ramps and overtake automatically. In the second half of the year, NIO spent all of the $1.7 billion raised from the stock issue on self-driving technology development.

Currently, NIO is accelerating the development of the second-generation technology platform for assisted driving, and the related self-driving computing chip has been on the agenda for a long time, and an industry-leading self-driving system may be available in the near future.

NIO is a microcosm of the development of new energy vehicle companies in China. With the support of policy and capital, even though its share price is considered to be in a bubble, this does not prevent a large number of institutional investors from continuing to be bullish on it.

It's too early to tell how far NIO will grow, but what is clear is that it has established a firm foothold in China's high-end car market. This is something that no local car company would have thought of before.



 
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