How do you compete against this?

[freeradical]

Nio, a Chinese electric car company that competes with Tesla, employs 11,000 people in research and development, but sold a mere 8,000 cars per month from April through June.

It has invested so extensively in robots that one of its factories employs just 30 technicians to make 300,000 electric car motors a year. Nio offers $350 augmented reality glasses for each seat in its cars, and has introduced a cellphone that interacts with the car’s self-driving system.

And none of it is profitable — far from it. Nio lost $835 million in the second quarter, or $35,000 for each car it sold.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/busin...icles.html

[ztirffritz]

Even in communist China, you have to turn a profit at some point. NEO isn't a threat to Tesla. BYD is their closest threat, but even BYD's profit is about 1/5 of Tesla's per vehicle sold, and they still aren't making as many EVs as Tesla though they are closing the gap. China refers to hybrids and EVs as NEVs ('new energy vehicles'). Technically, hydrogen vehicles are EVs too, but they're not even a blip on the radar of battery EVs.

[mattkime]

Kind of looks like the same mistakes they made with real estate - overbuild and then hope people show up.

[kj]

I got to go into a Nio showroom in Oslo, and the supercar was really impressive. The passenger cars were very similar to teslas interior wise, and seemed to sell for about the same, which makes me wonder what would distinguish them from the competition. Nio has their engineering crap together though, for sure. And the shop was pretty high end, sitting amongst other fairly high end stores.

I wonder why the Chinese EV makers have hit Europe so hard, and barely touched the market here? I'm sure there is a good reason.

[ztirffritz]

kj wrote:
I got to go into a Nio showroom in Oslo, and the supercar was really impressive. The passenger cars were very similar to teslas interior wise, and seemed to sell for about the same, which makes me wonder what would distinguish them from the competition. Nio has their engineering crap together though, for sure. And the shop was pretty high end, sitting amongst other fairly high end stores.

I wonder why the Chinese EV makers have hit Europe so hard, and barely touched the market here? I'm sure there is a good reason.

Massive tariffs are a big part of it.

[ztirffritz]

NIO are losing a small fortune on every vehicle they sell. They lost $835million last quarter. BYD is at least making a tiny profit, about $1400/car. I think Tesla are around $7000/car.

[vision63]

Didn't Amazon lose money every year for what seemed like decades?

[PeterW]

Amazing what you can do when your time horizon is longer than next quarter.

[August West]

NEO isn't a threat to Tesla.

A business observation I wouldn't have the temerity to make, but perhaps you are extraordinarily expert in these markets, I'm not.

Amazing what you can do when your time horizon is longer than next quarter.

It is, quite so.

[C(-)ris]

R&D doesn't have to be that expensive forever. Once you figure everything out then you can reduce R&D to improvements instead of core processes. That could be 90% less people. If they can get there, they are going to turn a massive profit. They seem to have mastered having robots replace the factory workers. If they can harness AI to replace the R&D they will be printing money.