Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker Nio's store count is expected to increase to 400 this year, doubling the number from last year, Yicai.com reported Tuesday.

Nio did not respond to the store opening plan as of press time. The company already has more than 200 stores in China by the end of 2020.

"Confidence among electric car makers is growing, with some brands signing longer-term leases," American commercial real estate services company Jones Lang LaSalle said, as quoted in the report.

Jones Lang LaSalle also said that these electric car companies can pay twice as much as apparel companies for lease bids per square meter of store space, due to the large budgets of auto companies, which is driving high demand for prime store space on the ground floor.

Bain & Company partner Zeng Weimin also mentioned that brick-and-mortar auto stores are still attractive because people still eventually want to see the cars in person and be able to touch them to make buying decisions.

He believes, however, that electric vehicles could change the service model for traditional cars. "People may not need a full-blown 4S dealership now because EVs have relatively little need for services."

Previously, Nio has attracted attention for its offline stores in Beijing's Chang'an Avenue and Shanghai's Lujiazui, where rents can easily exceed 100 million yuan.

In 2020, however, it started opening more stores in third- and fourth-tier cities like Deyang, and most of them are Nio Houses that are only a tenth or smaller of the size of Nio Space.

Nio is not the only one accelerating its offline store layout. Xpeng, Li Auto, and WM Motor have also been stepping up their offline channels and likewise expanding from their original tier 1 and 2 cities to tier 3 and 4 cities.

Nio delivered a total of 7,007 new vehicles in December, the fifth consecutive month with a record number of deliveries in a single month.

December's deliveries were up 32.4 percent from November and 121.0 percent from the same month last year. This is also the ninth consecutive month since April that Nio has achieved a year-over-year growth rate of more than 100%.

Nio's full-year 2020 deliveries reached 43,728 units, up 112.6% year-on-year.

William Li Bin, Nio's founder, chairman and CEO, previously expected to resume international expansion plans in Europe starting in the second half of 2021.

Nio plans to launch a new sedan this Saturday.

(Photo source: cnEVpost)