We exist in an era where electric cars are on their way to be the new cool in the automotive world. As such, car manufacturers all over the world are putting on the best of their efforts to enhance and develop their electric car-manufacturing sector. China, the world’s second largest company isn’t behind in this race. They have brands that stand beside with automotive giants like Tesla while giving them significant competition. Today I present three present day dominators in the Electric Car market from China.
Nio
Nio is the most familiar car company from China to foreign investors. This popular car brand founded in 2014 is also referred to as the Chinese Tesla. The company however differs from Tesla in many aspects.
Nio has a unique proposition to its way of work. Their goal is to redefine the use of the car. Nio promotes the car as a lifestyle medium and not just a car.
Nio has self-owned Nio Houses. Like other companies, they don’t use dealers. These has a much broader concept that even surpasses a showroom approach.
The NIO app possess a very high rate of utilization. It has also delivered over 100,000 vehicles. The company boasted 1.6 million registered users as on May 2021. This also included 200,000 daily users.
Nio remains as one of the best performer in the market because they have also fixed charging issues in EVs. They provided a unique solution by presenting swappable battery modules and invested heavily in swapping stations. They have 370 swapping stations in China. It takes the second-generation cars to swap a battery around 3 minutes.
At present, Nio has three models for sale. They are all SUVs.
Xpeng
Xpeng, another great performer of the car market in China, has been doing in-house manufacturing after its first model. Xpeng is a technology driven company. Xpang tries to give an intelligent and connected vehicle proposition to its models.
Xpeng claims that they possess industry-leading voice-assisted control that is capable of understanding and undertaking ten commands in 25 seconds. Xpeng cars also possess the XPilot system. Just like Tesla’s autopilot, XPilot offers a degree of self-driving ability. The second model of Xpeng, the P7, possess a system that is capable of driving in most highways in China.
The company uses a multi-sensor suite that consists cameras, radar and ultrasonic sensors to facilitate this flexibility. The new P5 model also adds Lidar (Light detection and ranging) which adds self-driving on inner-city roads.
The company’s R&D team are people from non-automotive backgrounds.
Li
Unlike Xpeng and Nio, Li Auto only has one model, the appropriately name One. Li refers to SUV as an extended range EV (EREV). Effectively it is a series PHEV (Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle) where a petrol engine acts as a generator.
In a very short duration of time i.e., little less than a year, the company has emerged from a beginner stage to the bestselling start up in the field in the month of July 2021. This year Li, presented an upgraded version of One, the New One. However other than this, the company won’t present a second model until 2023.
This can actualy be an advantage since they just have to worry about one car when it comes to thousands of issues that a car actually faces. Li has the time to fix all of this before moving on to a second model. Whereas companies like Nio and Xpeng already has models that requires concerns in the various range of issues.
By the end of the year, companies like Li and Xpeng will probably surpass the important 10,000 cras/month sales barrier. Li will be in this race with just one model. Whereas Xpeng will have three models in this race.
Nio and Xpeng are also exploring the ideas of expansion into European markets. Both of them are currently facilitating sales in Norway.
