For an app of this user size, it can be considered good media even compared to the automotive industry vertical, according to Nio's president.

(Image credit: Auto Business Review)

For Nio (NYSE: NIO, HKG: 9866, SGX: Nio), its mobile app is not just a vehicle management tool, but has become a user community of scale.

The auto industry is undergoing a change in communication and retail models, and car companies have been able to reach users directly without relying on any intermediary channels, said Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of Nio, in a speech at the China Auto Bluebook Forum held today in Wuhan, Hubei province, central China.

"Let me give you an example, Nio's in-house developed, self-run app now has 400,000 effective daily active users," he said.

It is worth noting that the number of Nio App daily active users should not be the exact 400,000 figure that Qin uses to illustrate the changes in the automotive industry.

Qin believes that for an app of this user size, it can be considered good media, even when compared to the automotive industry vertical.

"The way we connect with our users has been revolutionized, and vehicles change in every aspect of logistics, warehousing, distribution, and sales services," he said.

With the rise of the mobile Internet and the tremendous impact it has had on everyone's lives, the methods of information dissemination and marketing methods are changing profoundly, according to Qin.

"Technically speaking, every individual can be seen as a media outlet today, but that wasn't the case ten years ago," he said.

In the past, when users were reading the news, their thoughts won't reach others, but now other readers can see those comments, said Qin.

As for Nio's mobile app, the company has not officially announced its user numbers, but the tens of thousands of reads on many of its articles corroborate the size of the user base Qin mentioned.

A report by market research firm QuestMobile in late September last year showed that the Nio App had 367,000 monthly active users as of July 2021, the highest of any new carmaker in China.

Tesla's app in China has 304,000 monthly active users, second only to Nio, the report said.

Xpeng Motors came in third at 236,000 and Li Auto at 132,000. Together, these two companies had 368,000, almost equal to Nio.

On May 30 last year, Nio mentioned in an offline communication that the Nio App had over 1.6 million registered users and over 200,000 daily active users at that time.

Nio App has more functional innovations in addition to vehicle management, making it a thriving user community, as CnEVPost has detailed in a previous article.