Asian Tech Press (Mar. 2) -- The three major Chinese electric car makers, Nio Inc. (NYSE:NIO), Li Auto and XPeng Inc., released their delivery figures for February after the Hong Kong stock market closed on Tuesday afternoon.
According to the data released by the three companies, none of the manufacturers delivered more than 10,000 new vehicles in February.
Nio even continued its decline from the past four months and remained at the bottom. It delivered 6,131 new vehicles in February this year, an increase of only 9.91% year-over-year and a decline of about 36.5% sequentially.
The two rivals, XPeng and Li Auto, whose deliveries are down, but still higher than Nio's.
Among them, XPeng, which has delivered more than 10,000 units for five consecutive months, saw its electric vehicle deliveries of 6,225 units in February, up 180% year-over-year and down about 51.8% sequentially.
As disclosed by Li Auto, in February 2022, the comapny delivered 8,414 units of the Li One SUV, up 265.8% from February 2021, ranking first among the three major manufacturers in terms of monthly deliveries.
The chart above shows the monthly delivery data for the three major Chinese EV manufacturers over the past year. As can be seen, since February last year, monthly deliveries by the three makers, Nio, Li Auto and XPeng, have gradually declined after peaking in November and December 2021, respectively.
The Chinese state-owned Securities Times reported that the YoY decline in Nio's deliveries in February was mainly due to factory shutdowns during Chinese New Year holidays.
Nio told the Securities Times that, the ET7, a new electric sedan, will officially kick off deliveries on March 28 this year, and the launch of the new model will boost the company's overall sales.
Since July last year until now, excluding September 2021 when it narrowly beat XPeng to become the top monthly delivery among the three companies, Nio has been lagging behind its two strong rivals.
Some analysts say that one of the reasons Nio has been overtaken by Li Auto and XPeng is that the EV maker has not delivered any new models in the past nearly two years, and its latest car, the EC6, went on sale before 2021.
In addition, the three models Nio has delivered, the ES8, ES6, and EC6, are equipped with Mobileye's fourth-generation autonomous driving chip EyeQ4, which are slightly underperforming in scenarios such as getting on and off highway ramps, automatic lane changes, and automatic parking.
And now that most electric cars have switched or are switching from the Mobileye platform to Nvidia's autonomous vehicle solutions, it is hard for Nio, which still uses Mobileye's self-driving chip, to remain competitive in the long run.
Nio, which has underperformed in monthly deliveries, has now received approval to list in Hong Kong, making a secondary listing by way of introduction on the main board of the city-based stock exchange on March 10, as well as a planned IPO in Singapore.
Following XPeng and Li Auto, will Nio, which will be listed in Hong Kong, be favored by investors in the stock market as it has been facing the lowest delivery figures among the three companies?
After listing in the U.S. in September 2018, Nio's share price has been up and down, having fallen as low as $1, peaked at $66.99, and now down to $21.87, a retreat of more than 67% from its all-time high. Will this market performance be repeated in Hong Kong?
NIO is targeting the high-end electric car market. Data shows that in 2021, in China, the company ranks first in the market for high-end electric vehicles priced above 300,000 yuan, with a 40.8% share. However, due to the impact of car brands such as Tesla and Volvo, coupled with chip supply issues, Nio is facing increasingly fierce competition.
Previously, the death of a Nio ES8 owner and entrepreneur in an accident involving Nio's autopilot system, sparked infighting among the brand's thousands of customers, bringing an indelible stain on Nio, which serves as a premium brand.
Industry sources believe that Nio's only option now is to compete towards the low-end car segment, alongside Xiaomi and Huawei.
Faced with a single product and a lack of ecology, public information disclosed that Nio has targeted smartphones in an attempt to create an ecology for itself with them.
