Written by Cláudio Afonso | [email protected] | LinkedIn | X
On Saturday, Nio‘s founder and CEO William Li was invited to deliver a speech at the 27th Harvard China Forum at Harvard University.
In his speech, William Li highlighted the intense competition in the world’s largest automotive market and praised Tesla’s progress in the country, which has accelerated the adoption of electric vehicles.
In the past three years, Tesla’s sales in the Chinese market have totalled 1.364 million vehicles. Last year, the sales of a Model Y car in the Chinese market reached 456,000 units, becoming the annual sales champion of all models in the Chinese market. Tesla’s Shanghai Giga Factory is undoubtedly of great significance to their commercial success.
William Li, Nio’s Founder and CEO at Harvard China Forum
Nio’s founder praised the development of Tesla in China over the last three years and the relevance of its GigaFactory in Shanghai for its recent results.
Furthermore, William hinted that “more automotive companies are considering joining” Nio‘s battery swapping technology after Geely, Chery and JAC have joined. Below is the complete transcript of the speech initally reported by local media Sina.
Speech Complete Transcript
Dear guests, dear students: hello everyone. I am Li Bin from Nio.
Thank you very much for your invitation. The Harvard China Forum is an important platform for US-China exchanges. I am glad to be able to communicate with you here today. Harvard is a university I admire very much. I visited the Harvard campus 18 years ago.
Lihong Qin, the co-founder of Nio, received a master’s degree from Harvard in 2001. He often told me about the interesting experience of studying at Harvard. Professor William Kirby of Harvard Business School has written a case about the internationalization of Nio. For these reasons, I agreed without hesitation when I received the invitation.
Recently, I watched a documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop”.This film tells the story behind the co-creation and singing of “We are the World” by 45 top American singers.
“We are the World” was created in 1985. That year, when I was 11 years old, I went to elementary school in a mountain village in central China. After school, I had to help my family do all kinds of farm work. My homework would be done at night. Kerosene lamps were used for lighting.As a happy and naughty teenager, I have various visions for the future.However, considering that there was just a dirt road in my hometown, and there were electric lights only a few years later, the ideal of a teenager at that time definitely did not include the establishment of a smart electric vehicle company.
As a reward for my hard work on the farm, my father gave me a radio as a New Year gift. This little radio has greatly aroused my curiosity and imagination.Every evening, I will look at the layers of mountains in a daze, hoping to see the wider world beyond the mountains.When I was in junior high school, I started learning ABC, and my English teacher only received one or two years of English training, so please forgive my English accent. I am very lucky to be admitted to Peking University, the best university in China.
When I was in college, I heard “We are the World” for the first time. The belief that this song conveys to work together for the common good of all mankind has influenced and inspired many of us.
In 1996, while I was in university, I founded my first company Nanji Technology, which is one of the earliest Internet Web hosting companies in China. Later, I founded several Internet companies.
In 2012, facing the severe air pollution at that time, I urged myself to take action. At the end of 2014, I founded Nio. Weilai (as Nio is pronounced in Chinese) is pronounced the same as Future in Chinese, and it means “Blue Sky Coming”.
We hope that through the innovation of technology and services, more and more users will choose smart electric vehicle products and contribute to solving global climate change. Realizing such a vision requires a collection of global resources. Nio chose to become a global start-up company at the beginning of its establishment.
In 2015, when we first started in Shanghai, we set up R&D centers in Silicon Valley, Munich, and Oxford. At present, we are listed in New York, Singapore and Hong Kong. Investors come from all over the world and employees come from more than 40 countries. We have already served users in 6 countries and are about to enter more markets.
From the delivery of the first car in June 2018 to the present, Nio has delivered nearly 500,000 high-end smart electric vehicles. Last year, we delivered more than 160,000 vehicles, and the market share of high-end smart electric vehicles with more than 300,000 yuan in China exceeded 40%. In the next twelve months, we will release and deliver mass-market and entry-market brands and models.
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In the Chinese market, we have faced fierce competition from the first day of our establishment. China is the world’s largest automobile market and the world’s most open automobile market.As a young automobile company, we have to compete with more than a dozen of the world’s largest multinational groups, we have to compete with more than a dozen mature automobile companies in China, and we have to compete with more than a dozen outstanding start-up companies.
As a company, we certainly know that competition will lead to greater investment, longer profitability, less room for mistakes, and lower chances of success. Nevertheless, we still don’t expect China to adopt a closed policy to protect local companies, because I also understand the other side of the matter. Openness will ultimately benefit industry and society, and it will also make us better in the end.
In March this year, the penetration rate of China’s new energy (electrified) vehicles exceeded 41%, compared with only 10% three years ago. Openness is one of the important reasons for the rapid increase in the penetration rate of smart electric vehicles in China. Excellent automotive products from all over the world can be sold in China and will not be targeted because of which country they come from.In 2018, Tesla came to China to build a factory.
In the past three years, Tesla’s sales in the Chinese market have totalled 1.364 million vehicles. Last year, the sales of a Model Y car in the Chinese market reached 456,000 units, becoming the annual sales champion of all models in the Chinese market. Tesla’s Shanghai Giga Factory is undoubtedly of great significance to their commercial success.
While achieving this, it has also influenced consumers, promoting the widespread adoption of smart electric vehicles in China and enhancing the dynamism of China’s smart electric vehicle industry. This has spurred every manufacturer to strive to offer better products and services. Such openness and competition can undoubtedly benefit consumers, industries, and society.
In the process of technological change in cars, various automotive companies are competitors; in the journey to solve climate change, they are competitors. Competitive teammates, this word is not my original. Once, I called at home and talked about our competitors. My eldest son interjected and said, Dad, competing teammates.At that time, he was still in kindergarten. I’m not sure if he was because his pronunciation was not correct. His opponents and teammates pronounced a bit like each other in Chinese, or he really had insight into the essence. As a father, of course I hope it is the latter.
Nio has been opening up and cooperating with its peers in technology and infrastructure.We have established the charging network of the largest automobile manufacturer in China, and deployed more than 20,000 (21,854) charging piles. It was opened to the public on the first day, and 80% of the charging services are for users of other brands.
Nio‘s unique three-minute battery swap technology has more than 1,600 patents. We have established more than 2,400 Power swap stations in China and Europe, and provided more than 41 million battery sawps.
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In November last year, we opened up our battery swapping technology and network layout. Four automotive groups have signed agreements with us, and more automotive companies are considering joining.
The spirit of openness is not only reflected in our technology and infrastructure, but also in Nio’s community. From the beginning of our establishment, we hope to build a community with cars as the starting point, so that users around the world can share joy and grow together.
On September 30, 2022, I was in Oslo, Norway, to participate in the first anniversary of the opening of the NIO House. After the official celebration at 9:30 in the evening, 160 users who participated in the event did not disperse. Everyone sang and danced together on the streets. At that moment, I was completely infected by everyone’s emotions and danced a hip-hop dance that was even worse than my English level. Although we come from different countries and have different cultural backgrounds, we have a common language of sincerity, love, respect, and tolerance.
The theme of today’s conference is “Humming, seeking friends”. It comes from the first collection of poems in China, the Book of Poems, 2,600 years ago. It means that birds coming out of the deep valley fly to the tall trees and seek like-minded partners with the song of humming. Partners.
We need to face the reality that compared with ten years ago, today’s world has become more antagonistic and divided, and differences are becoming more and more difficult to bridge. But we can still make choices, take actions, and strive to build connections, promote exchanges and mutual understanding, just as the Chinese poems of 2,500 years ago inspired, just as the artists of 39 years ago dedicated, and as the Harvard China Forum has been working hard to promote today. After all, we should have basic wisdom and judgment：
Cooperation is always a better option.
Thank you all.”
As reported exclusively by EV earlier this week, Nio is set to introduce the 2024 facelift for its flagship sedan ET7 on April 16th. Nio‘s Group Vice President for Europe, Hui Zhang, hinted at the upcoming launch on the Chinese platform WeChat, revealing the new silhouette with the message “4.16 Brand new ET7, let’s “7” together”.
On Thursday, EV reported that Nio has started cutting jobs in China six months after scaling down its workforce by “around 10 percent”, as mentioned by the CEO in an internal letter last November.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | [email protected] | LinkedIn | X
