As the only Chinese car company currently holding a firm foothold in the high-end market, how does Nio compare with foreign luxury brands in the electric vehicle market? The latest data gives the answer.

Nio has 49,155 insurance registrations from January to July this year, more than the combined insurance registrations of Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi pure electric models in China in the same period, gasgoo.com said Tuesday, citing data from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission.

From January to July this year, insurance registrations for Nio models rose about 179 percent compared with 17,628 units in the same period last year. In the RMB 350,000 ($54,000) - RMB 550,000 range, Nio's market share in the first seven months was about 43 percent.

If it were not affected by the chip shortage in June and July, Nio's cumulative insurance registrations could have been even higher, the report said.

Nio's three models all had more than 10,000 insurance registrations in the first seven months, with the ES6 having the highest insurance registrations with 21,186 cumulative insurance registrations, the data showed.

The cumulative insurance registrations of Nio EC6 and ES8 in the first seven months were 17,395 and 10,574 units respectively.

In comparison, the BMW iX3 had 9,171 insurance registrations in China from January to July, the Mercedes-Benz EQC had 3,472 and the Audi e-tron had 790. Their combined number of 13,433 is 27 percent of Nio's.

(Source: gasgoo.com)

In the first seven months of this year, Nio's individual user insurance registration was 40,343 units, accounting for 82.07 percent. While the percentage of individual users of BMW iX3 and Mercedes-Benz EQC are both 77 percent, the data showed.

Nio ES6 and EC6 both have 84 percent personal user share, and ES8 has 74 percent personal user share.

Nio's market share can outpace these German luxury brands' pure electric models not only because of the small number of available high-end models and its price advantage, but also because of the user experience, the report said.

Nio's services, including one-touch charging and battery swap system, have established a good reputation in the user community.

While traditional luxury brands are experienced in building cars, they currently have fewer products and high pricing in the electric vehicle segment, the report noted.

In fact, there are not many products in the high-end pure electric market yet, and the overall market is not yet competitive.

Although Nio got nearly half of the high-end pure electric SUV market, it can only tentatively show that it has a head start in this market segment. In the long run, Nio's high-end route will take a long time, the report said.

On April 7, William Li, founder and chairman of Nio, said he was confident that the company would become the smart electric car brand with sales exceeding 1 million in a single market in China.

(The city with the highest number of Nio insurance registrations from January to July. Source: gasgoo.com)