Nio (NIO) is a leading manufacturer of premium, smart, electric vehicles. Nio designs, develops, manufactures, and sells their vehicles to their main customer base in China. Furthermore, Nio is constantly looking to improve upon their autonomous driving, digital technology, battery technology and their powertrains, in order to differentiate themselves from their competition.
Nio has industry-leading battery swapping technology, which drives their battery as a service (BaaS) business. Additionally, Nio also has proprietary autonomous driving technology, which enables their Autonomous Driving as a Service (ADaaS) business.
Nio currently sells their vehicles in China, however they are planning on expanding their business into international markets, to capitalize on the growing demand for EV’s. Nio has 4 vehicle models, their ES8, ES6, EC6, and their ET7.
Nio’s battery swapping technology is supported by over 1,200 patents and this technology is supported on all of Nio’s vehicles. This technology provides Nio customers with the convenience of quickly swapping their battery for another one to continue their journey quicker through a seamless recharge.
Nio is releasing their Power Swap Station 2.0 in 2023, which will decrease their swap time to roughly 3 minutes and have the capacity for 13 rotational battery packs. In 2020, Nio had 172 Swapping Stations in 74 cities that swapped 1.4 million batteries.
Nio’s Battery as a Service business generates revenue through “battery subscriptions”, in which users have flexible subscription options that they can choose to fit their battery swapping needs. Currently, Nio has several subscriptions for both their 70 kWh, and their 100 kWh batteries.
If a customer were to select the 70-kWh subscription, they would enjoy approximately $11,000 (USD) off of the purchase price of their vehicle and pay a monthly subscription of approximately $150 (USD).
If a customer selects the 100-kWh subscription plan, they will enjoy approximately $20,000 (USD) off of the purchase price of their vehicle and pay a monthly subscription of $231 (USD).
Nio has worked on their autonomous technology since day one and now delivers their products that come with “Nio Pilot”, their Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS). Furthermore, Nio is about to roll out their Nio Autonomous driving (NAD).
Consisting of 23 sensors, a front-facing tri-focal camera, 4 exterior cameras, 5 radars, 12 ultrasonic sensors and an interior driver-monitoring camera, Nio Pilot is China’s only ADAS that is on the market. Nio Pilot has fleet learning and AI analysis capabilities that will be able to update their cars over the clous and improve their algorithms using their extensive backlog of driving data.
In January 2023, Nio announced their Autonomous Driving capabilities (NAD). The NAD system was developed in-house and features perception algorithms, localization, control strategy software, and platform software. The NAD technology uses their super computing platform “Adam”, and their super sensing system “Aquila”.
Nio is planning to roll out their NAD to their customers, through a subscription model similar to their battery sapping service. This subscription is estimated to cost users $106 (USD) per month.
