February 2020 was a really weak month for car sales (including New Energy Vehicles) in China, which also affected NIO.
The Chinese startup noted its lowest result since entering the market in May and June 2018. Just 707 all-electric cars were sold, although since February last year was also slow, the year-over-year drop is just 12.8%.
The most worrying is that sales of the ES8 (7- or 6-seat SUV) basically stalled, while most of the volume comes from ES6 (5-seat SUV):
- ES6: 671 (new)
- ES8: 36 (down 96% year-over-year)
More from China
NIO sales in China – February 2020
So far this year NIO sold 2,305 electric cars, (34,218 cumulatively).
There is a hope that the situation with ES8 will change, once a new ES8 begins sales in April 2020.
"The Company plans to commence deliveries of the new ES8 in April 2020."
William Bin Li, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of NIO said:
“The novel coronavirus has broken out in China since the end of January 2020. While the overall passenger vehicle sales in China took a hit and slumped over 78% year on year in February 2020, NIO’s deliveries had declined by 12.8% year on year for the same period. Deliveries have been constrained as services are being cautiously reopened and people are encouraged to avoid unnecessary close-range contact. In addition, the production has started ramping up gradually from the middle of February and supply chains have remained challenging.
“Nevertheless, with most NIO Houses and NIO Spaces staying in full or partial operation, we have aggressively explored a variety of online traffic channels to promote our products, technologies and services to potential users. Our direct sales model, enabled by well-developed purchase functions on the NIO app, has played a critical role in this sales environment. We are pleased to see positive responses from different channels, which are being translated to encouraging order numbers,”
Steven Feng, chief financial officer of NIO, added:
“We expect that it will take time for the industry and NIO to resume normal productions. We will keep monitoring and coordinating supply chain resources and accelerate productions to fulfill the growing demand.”
