NIOtime #3 | Quality Brand Recognition, High Recommendation Rate, EC6 Mass Production & Delivery
Technical, media, and community news from the NIO app. This week highlights the stock chart update, award recognition, production capability, and exciting development news spotted on the NIO APP.
Greetings,
First of all, thank you for subscribing to this newsletter, and hope you all are having a great time this week. This is our third issue of NIOtime weekly highlights. This week we are here again to summarize NIO highlights all over the media stream, social media, and NIO app. Let’s first get started with a technical chart.
Technical Chart
This week NIO swung between US$20.25 and US$ 17.90 throughout the week and closed the week at US$ 19.42. In overall, NIO stock is doing great this week despite today’s market weakness. It seems around US$20.00 is a strong resistance zone for the short term and if we manage to break this level, we would see NIO stock flying towards its previous high level, $21.05. At the moment, the stock sentiment is anticipating for NIO’s September vehicle delivery number. We shall expect the stock to move up slowly for the next two weeks until the release of September vehicle delivery news.
This Week’s Top Eight Highlights
Designed in Germany, Made in China - 5 Years Anniversary
NIO won China Best Quality Brand for Electric Vehicle and top China's Passenger Vehicle Recommendation Rate Ranking
97.5% Automated Manufacturing at JAC-NIO Plant Boost Production to Next Level
Huawei Interested in Taking a Stake in NIO (Unconfirmed)
EC6 Mass Production Starts and Expected First Batch Delivery This Month
155th NIO Space Expansion in Xianyang
148th NIO Battery Swap Station & 55rd, 56th Supercharger Station
NIO Upcoming Catalyst by NIOtime
News
Designed in Germany, Made in China - 5 Years Anniversary
This week NIO Munich celebrated its 5 years anniversary. A list of accomplishments have been achieved over the past years including, 1) China's first car company established a design center in Germany, 2) NIO's first overseas office, 3) NIO’s most diversified team from nearly 30 countries, 4) Expand from the design center to European headquarters with full-function management functions, 5) The design of all NIO series production models includes EP9, 6) Won Global Product and Brand Design, and 7) Awarded Red Dot Design awards and multiple other design awards. (Source: NIO App)
Without a doubt, NIO is clear about its global vision at the beginning. To put an extend, NIO gathered the top design talents from all over the world in Germany. Now what the NIO community anticipate the most from NIO Munich is the initiative of car sales in Europe. There have been few car driving reviews by local media done in Germany. We estimate NIO would announce it as soon as this month or next month and there is high likly NIO enter Europe market next year. Let’s wait good news from NIO regarding their expansion timeline.
NIO won China Best Quality Brand for Electric Vehicle and top China's Passenger Vehicle Recommendation Rate Ranking
NIO won the best quality electric vehicle sold in China, ahead of the Tesla, according to a report released today by market research firm J.D. Power. In terms of the number of problems per 100 vehicles, NIO ranked first with 109, and Tesla ranked second with 113, according to J.D. Power's 2020 China New Energy Vehicle Experience Study SM, which is based on real feedback from 3,267 owners who purchased their cars between May 2019 and May 2020, covers 40 models from 20 brands, and measures vehicle quality in terms of the number of problems per 100 units (PP100). According to the measurement rules, the fewer problems per 100 cars, the better the quality. However, the study also shows that the average number of quality problems that new energy vehicle owners complained about this year was 143 PP100. (Source: cnTechPost)
The China Best Quality Brand gave NIO a positive affirmation regarding its joint manufacturing partner with JAC. There are arguments over the media that NIO is not highly vertical integrated as compared to Tesla. One concern rising over this argument is that NIO has no capable to control the quality of its vehicles. However, this is not the case where JAC-NIO is clearly outperform among the other car manufacturers.
What we anticipate most from JAC-NIO joint venture is whether they can keep up the vehicle demand and scale up the production capability. We will get some hints from upcoming vehicle deliveries numbers.
Another good news we see in the NIO App is NIO leads China's passenger car recommendation rate rankings with 53.64%, for the first eight months of 2020.
Given the industry average recommendation rate at 14.89% (highlighted in red color above), NIO outperforms the industry average by about 40% and this is not a surprising fact given their strong community driven brand. By browsing through the NIO app these days, we are impressed by the high level of community engagement among car owners and NIO staffs. The car owners are proud to share their good experience, some even organized events out of their pocket to promote NIO, while NIO is clearly customer first brand which recently offered free mooncake to car owners with a personalized wishes from NIO’s employees.
97.5% Automated Manufacturing at JAC-NIO Plant Boost Production to Next Level
The JAC-NIO plant is automated to a 97.5% level, allowing the body shop, which is capable of rolling out 20 complete vehicles an hour and to be operated by only a dozen workers. The JAC-NIO plant is planned to have an annual production capacity of 100,000 units, and the body shop can automate 100 percent of the main body connections with 307 robots, with an overall workshop automation rate of 97.5 percent. (Source: Sina & cnTechPost)
Previously, we concern about the production capability and this news gave us a good hindsight about its production level. Provided the capability of producing 20 vehicles an hour, the current monthly production without extra time is 3,200 vehicles. Given the fact that extra working time is norm in China, the JAC-NIO plant has no problem to expand its production level to 5,000 vehicles as promised by Li Bin in last earning call. This information boost our confidence level in NIO delivering another record high vehicles in upcoming months.
Huawei Interested in Taking a Stake in NIO (Unconfirmed)
Huawei is interested in taking a stake in Chinese new energy vehicle company Changan and NIO, HD-Auto said on Friday, citing sources with knowledge of the matter, adding that if this becomes a reality, Huawei may not necessarily fund it directly, but may invest through its funds. (Source: Baidu & cnTechPost)
This is likely rumor circulating out there as Huawei recently established a electric vehicle technology related company in which media speculated Huawei next move in developing its ecosystem around electric vehicles entertainment system. This will be a big move for NIO if Huawei choose NIO as its strategic partner in this.
EC6 Mass Production Starts and Expected First Batch Delivery This Month
NIO’s third model, EC6 started mass production line at the JAC-NIO plant and expected to ship the first batch of EC6 by the end of September. (Source: Weibo User) Today this news is further confirmed by NIO official social account at Weibo and claimed that EC6 vehicles are on the road to its first batch of car owners.
155th NIO Space Expansion in Xianyang
This week there is a new opening for NIO Space launching in Xianyang. (Source: NIO App)
148th NIO Battery Swap Station & 55th, 56th Supercharger Station
On September 13, Shanghai's first "Black Armor" style battery swap station is officially established in the Wuwei Space Creative Park in Shanghai. As an integrated charging and swapping station, this station is also equipped with 2 NIO’s supercharged piles. The charging and swapping services are solved together to meet the travel and energy needs of different car owners. (Source: NIO app)
In addition, there are two supercharger stations built in Zhengzhou and Taizhou.
NIO Supercharger Station | Zhengzhou MIXC
NIO Supercharger Station | Taizhou F7 Car Plaza
NIO Upcoming Catalyst by NIOtime
A series of catalysts is what anticipated by the investor as these events would fluctuate the stock price in either direction giving the surprising component. NIOtime recognizes the significance of the catalyst and sorts a list of potential catalysts at this NIO catalyst thread. Please feel free to hover over the thread. If you want to contribute some intel that is not yet recorded in the NIO catalyst, please comment on the thread.
From last month, our catalyst list captured the estimated car delivery number as well as EC6 deliveries news in mid-late Sep. So we do our research to deliver the high likley catalyst ahead. So let’s watch for upcoming catalyst below.
October 2020 Catalyst
September Car Delivery Number (Estimated 3750-4250) (First Week)
NIO OS Major Update (First Week)
November 2020 Catalyst
October Car Delivery Number (First Week)
3Q Earning (TBD)
December 2020 Catalyst
November Car Delivery Number (First Week)
NIO Day (16th December)
New Car Model Announce (16th December)
100kWh Battery Debut (Q4 2020)
Summary
We hope you enjoy reading the essence we bring to you this week. In summary, we would end this issue with three takeaways
Quality Brand Recognition and High Recommendation Rate: This is no doubt a confidence vote for a new rising car manufacturer star in term of quality as well as the high willingness of car owners who are willing to recommend NIO to their family and relatives.
Production Capability & EC6 Mass Production and Delivery: This will place NIO to test Mr. Li Bin’s promise on its production capability, up to 5,000 per month. Let’s anticipate NIO September vehicle delivery.
Continuous Expansion on Power Charging Facilities and Marketing Houses: We observed there are rising user complaints about long waiting times at battery swapping stations. This issue indeed pushes NIO to keep continue expanding its power charging facilities.
Lastly, it’s NIO time, Blue Sky Coming. If you like our newsletter, please feel free to share it to let the world know about the great electric vehicle brand, NIO. Thank you and have a wonderful weekend!
How well know is NIO in China? Is it a brand only known in larger cities within NIO “communities” and social circles...or is it a brand with broader recognition by the everyday consumer who is car shopping?
What does the 100kwh battery debut mean? Doesn't Nio already have the 100 kwh battery available?