Nio is still in the planning stages for entering North America, but will enter the UAE in 2024, William Li said.

(Image credit: CnEVPost)

Nio (NYSE: NIO) held a year-end media briefing in Shanghai today, and this article is intended to record the key takeaways from the event.

What follows are responses from Nio's management -- primarily its founder, chairman and CEO William Li -- to the media, from local media reports and from Weibo automotive bloggers.

The following content will continue to be updated.

Battery swap services are similar to cloud services, though even building 100,000 battery swap stations wouldn't cost as much as Amazon and Google building cloud service networks.

All car companies can plug into Nio's battery swap system, and they can do so by retrofitting their existing models for as little as RMB 10 million to RMB 20 million.

Nio just signed a new battery swap alliance agreement this morning.

The annual amortization and depreciation cost for a battery swap station is about RMB 300,000 to RMB 400,000, and a station can last about 8 years.

The battery swap business is not a burden for Nio, but a moat. The battery swap business is profitable if the average number of orders per station is 60 per day, and the number is already at about 80 in Shanghai.

Battery swap stations are distributed, with a large network that allows for flexible operations.

Nio will have dedicated stations and public stations, similar to private and public clouds.

Nio has taken back full ownership of Nio Power in 2021, and the business is now its wholly owned subsidiary, but is open to investment from outside investors.

Other car companies looking to launch models that support battery swap will be assisted by Nio to see which of their existing models are suitable for retrofitting.

Nio will have three battery packs to share with partners, entry, mid-end and high-end.

Some companies that specialize in battery assets partner with us, they build battery swap stations and access our network, and we operate the stations. This is similar to Tencent Cloud and Ali Cloud, who access third-party server rooms.

Nio has positioned itself as a premium brand, not a luxury brand. You can only be called a premium brand if you are leading in technology.

Nio has already made a project for an MPV model, but the launch won't be that fast.

Overall, Nio brand vehicles will move up in price and it will not launch a cheaper car than ET5 under this main brand.

At a time of massive price cuts in the automobile industry, Nio has kept the prices of its vehicles stable, but has still managed to keep the volume of order lock-ins rising by month, which is a result of increased sales capacity.

Nio acted too late in improving its sales capacity and should have started doing so in February so that it could have sold 10,000 to 20,000 more vehicles this year.

In 2022, Nio lost RMB 10 billion in gross profit due to higher raw material prices.

The work that was mentioned in the all-hands letter in November has basically been done. There was a rumor a few days ago that Nio would further lay off employees, and that's false.

In lower-tier cities, Nio will set up smaller Nio Stops. Nio has about the same number of stores as BMW in Shanghai, which will naturally lead to better sales.

Nio's second brand is codenamed Alps, but that's not the official brand name, and the final name is pretty down to earth.

It's been over a month since Alps' first model saw the VB (Validation Build) process, and based on past timelines it could go on sale soon, but this time Nio is in no hurry.

With Alps targeting the family market, product definition will be easier and clearer, with only three models in the full life cycle. In contrast, Nio as a premium brand is going to offer something emotional.

Wait until the Nio Phone comes into its third generation to see if Nio's strategy of launching a phone is the right one. As Huawei and Xiaomi are selling more and more cars, you can see whether Nio's counterparts will start making phones as well.

For a long time to come, Nio will be in a learning phase when it comes to expanding into overseas markets, and these efforts won't help sales much in the short term.

For entering the North American market, Nio is still in the planning process and there are many factors involved.

Nio will enter the UAE in 2024, and Li drove the ET7 between Abu Dhabi and Dubai a few months ago without any problem.

Chinese entrepreneurs are actually very lucky, because they have been living in an environment that has been consistently upward, without experiencing major cyclical fluctuations. But this is actually not the case in terms of the past and global development, so the sense of urgency should be enhanced.

Nio battery swap alliance has signed up 1 new automaker, says William Li