By ZHOU Shuqi
After three months of weak sales, EV startup Nio bounced back in June and July, reaching a record 20,000 deliveries in July.
One of the primary challenges facing Nio is having nothing to sell. Old models sold out in February, and the ES6 did not appear till the end of May.
Nio has its fingers in too many pies and is widely seen as failing to focus on its primary task: making (and selling) EVs. Decision-making is slow. To tackle these issues, Nio has dumped several projects, including battery production.
Nio hopes to sell 240,000 cars this year. That means over 30,000 vehicles each month for the rest of the year. The Nio sales team is recruiting and a lot has been spent on price cuts, and retroactively shifting the goalposts on previous sales.
A 30,000-yuan (US$ 4,200) price cut was accompanied by a new battery swap deal, substantially less appealing than a previous arrangement that amounted to free batteries for life.
Nio's problem is that the cars sold in July were the new ES6 and ET5T models. Older models like the ET7 and ES7 received little attention.
