Chinese-based NIO is trying to replicate the success of US automaker Tesla and today held their annual event known as NIO Day 2020. This event gained international attention after the company teased a silhouette of a new electric sedan.
After covering hundreds of events since starting techAU over 13 years ago, I can confidently say, this was an event like no other.
NIO Day 2020 started with a studio audience with a couple of hosts interviewing in Chinese, with no subtitles. For a company looking for international expansion and investment, this felt like a strange decision.
Things only got stranger as NIO brought out their own NIO Band who performed a couple of songs, complete with some very interesting camera work.
Over an hour into the stream, the audience was then treated to a video story of NIO Owners who were dealing with the global pandemic. I would have put money on the fact that wasn’t mentioned at all today, but there was a significant number of minutes passed as people detailed their stories.
Finally around 10:30pm (Melbourne time), NIO CEO, William Li stepped on stage and thankfully subtitles were provided.
Li made a series of reflections on the company’s success to date, including that users (read: owners) have driven more than 1.4 Billion miles.
As NIO grows, so do their deliveries and Li took this opportunity to announce the company has now delivered more than 75,000 electric vehicles.
Li went on to deliver numbers.. including the new Battery Swap Station 2.0. This new battery station looks much more advanced, offering users the ability to simply drive up and get their battery changed. This station will have a daily battery swap capacity of 312.
NIO plans to have 500 of these in place by the end of 2021.
NIO then moved on to that illusive new EV sedan and boy did they have some impressive specs. We’ve got a whole dedicated post on the NIO ET7 here.
2020 or 2021?
Being a Chinese event, they title things 2020 until the Chinese New Year which occurs on February 12th this year.