NIO Launches Flexible Battery Upgrading Service

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker NIO on Sunday launched its 100 kilowatt-hour battery, as well as a battery upgrading plan. Users of the 70-kWh battery can now choose to either purchase the new battery for a perpetual upgrade or flexibly upgrade for either 880 yuan ($133) per month or 7,980 yuan per year.

At a media communications meeting held on Sunday, Shen Fei, vice president of NIO, and Qin Lihong, co-founder of NIO, shared their opinions on “flexible power exchange” and “system competitiveness,” respectively.

Shen Fei believes that the value of power exchange lies in four aspects: speed, battery upgrade, battery health and quick recovery of defective batteries.

Qin Lihong attributed the system competition to four aspects: car, service, digital experience and lifestyle.

For automobile development, Qin Lihong shared three stages of automobile industry development. The first one is a one-way mode of communication, and the role of consumers is only that of an audience. The second one is the email communication with users, which affects the brand’s reputation to a certain extent. The focus at this stage is upgraded from car to car intelligent technology. The communication mode of the third stage is based on the mobile internet. Consumer experience determines the brand’s reputation.

SEE ALSO: NIO Provides Subsidy of Up to $2824.2 for Delayed Orders

Regard NIO‘s profit, the company hopes to judge its ability from a long-term perspective. At present, NIO‘s gross profit margin’s calculation base covers expenses of marketing and management, while its financing funds are basically used for R&D. It is expected that in the first half of next year, the platform intelligent hardware of the sold models will be upgraded from NT1.0 to NT2.0.