While some Chinese companies are closing subsidiaries of electric vehicle brands, others are opening them — and this against the backdrop of a generally unfavorable situation for electric vehicles «conjuncture. In May, Nio will officially introduce its subsidiary brand Onvo, under which it plans to sell family electric cars.
Nio was founded in 2014 by entrepreneur William Li and was one of the first Chinese electric vehicle startups to challenge US company Tesla. Nio approached its 10th anniversary with an extensive lineup of premium electric vehicles and huge losses. On March 5, Nio published a financial report on work in 2023: net loss compared to 2022 increased by 43.5% to 2.9 billion US dollars, while total revenue grew by 12.9% to 7.8 billion dollars. The company explains the huge loss by intensive updating of the model range and investments in new developments.
Nio sales in 2023 increased by 30.7% to 160,038 cars — this is a good result, taking into account the fact that the trend towards a slowdown in demand for electric vehicles in the world emerged at the beginning of last year, and at the same time, at the instigation of Tesla, a price war between manufacturers began “ electric train.» Meanwhile, in the first two months of this year, Nio sales in the domestic market decreased markedly: according to CAAM, 18,187 cars were sold, which is 12% less than in January-February 2023.
Nio is actively participating in the price war, but any dumping has its limits: Nio does not want to greatly devalue its name, but is preparing to offer more affordable electric cars under other brands. One of these brands will be Onvo, also known as Ledao in romanized Chinese, which means “happy journey” in Russian. Previously, the new brand was known under the code name Alps, but after its debut model with Onvo nameplates was spotted on the roads recently, William Lee confirmed that the commercial name will be Onvo.
Onvo L60, also shown in camouflage in the title photo
The debut Onvo model with the L60 index is nothing more than a slightly redesigned mid-size crossover Nio EC6 of the second generation, which premiered in September last year. The point of such a mask show is that clones of Nio models under the Onvo brand will be significantly cheaper than the originals and are formally focused on the family car segment, while Nio is more about business and status.
Nio EC6 second generation
Compare: Nio EC6 now costs in China from 358,000 yuan (4.55 million rubles in current terms), while Onvo L60 will cost in the range from 200,000 to 300,000 yuan (from 2.54 million to 3.81 million rubles). The equipment, of course, will be simpler than that of Nio, but in general the Onvo L60 is the same Nio EC6, only in a different wrapper. In the future, however, it is possible that original models will appear under the Onvo brand — for example, minivans; Nio does not yet have models in this format.
In 2025, Nio is going to launch another new brand, which is currently known by the code name Firefly (a commercial name has not yet been chosen): it will be positioned as a junior in relation to Onvo and is focused mainly to the European market, where compact and subcompact electric vehicles are in demand at relatively affordable prices.
It is clear that the launch of two new brands will require significant investments, which may not pay off against the backdrop of a global slowdown in demand for electric vehicles, therefore It's no surprise that Nio's share price is slowly but surely declining.