One of the biggest Chinese EV brands is NIO, which just released its delivery results for December and in turn, the full year of 2021.
In December 2021, NIO delivered 10,489 vehicles, up 49.7% year-on-year, but strangely slightly down on the 10,878 delivered in November. For the fourth quarter, NIO delivered 25,034 vehicles, an impressive 44.3% year-on-year, representing a positive growth for seven quarters in a row.
For the whole year of 2021, NIO delivered 91,429 vehicles, a 109.1% year-on-year growth, albeit starting from a pretty small base. As of December 31, 2021, NIO’s total vehicle deliveries amounted to 167,070 units.
This year, NIO unveiled the smart electric flagship sedan ET7 and the mid-size smart electric sedan ET5. Six FOTA (firmware-over-the-air) updates were released to the ES8, ES6 and EC6 users.
NIO took a very different approach to battery costs with a growing number (currently 778) Power Swap stations worldwide. NIO also installed 4,582 superchargers and destination chargers (would have liked to see these numbers broken out), and opened 15 NIO Houses and 72 service centers in 2021.
With the world’s transition to electric vehicles, a dramatic change in consumer expectations also came with it. NIO provided a number of software updates, specifically 16 updates were made to the NIO app.
After expanding to Norway, NIO took the first major step to expand globally and in 2022 we should expect more from that story, with NIO set to bring its products to Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. Given Australia’s limited EV options, it would be great to see them offer vehicles in Australia at some point too.
NIO will begin delivering three vehicle models developed on the NT2.0 (NIO Technology Platform 2.0) and their second factory will be in operation from Q3 2022.
While the deliveries are around 1/10th of what Tesla is expected to do this year, more electric vehicles replacing ICE vehicles is a great thing.