Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
On the first day of September, Nio opened 105 stores across 55 cities in China for its (first) sub-brand named Onvo. Most of the sites are located immediately next to stores from the parent brand Nio allowing the company to save operational costs.
The L60, which is pre-sale priced at 219,900 yuan ($31,000), will begin delivery in late September with the official price becoming known later today. The official launch event will take place in Hefei at 7:30 p.m. Beijing time in Hefei, where Nio operates two manufacturing plants and is constructing a third.
A few hours before the official launch of Onvo’s debut model, Nio Founder and CEO William Li met with Xia Qinghua, head of user operations and service for Onvo.
Xia revealed that Onvo’s operations team includes 180 store managers across the current 120 stores, with 40 per cent of them previously working at Tesla (72 workers) and 27 per cent (48 workers) from the Beijing-based new energy vehicle (NEV) manufacturer Li Auto.
He noted the company had successfully recruited top sales talent from key competitors.
“Among our store managers nationwide, we have 180 managers, and 40% of them have experience at Tesla, Xia Qinghua said before adding, “As I mentioned earlier, 40% of our store managers come from Tesla, and 27% come from Li Auto.”
“Tesla has trained many exceptional sales and service professionals,” Nio’s chief executive William Li said, during the conversation. Xia echoed the sentiment, calling them “very, very good.”
Here’s the full video.
Four months after opening pre-orders for the L60, Alan Ai, Nio’s Senior Vice President and President of the Onvo sub-brand, revealed that less than 5% of customers are from Nio’s existing user base. The company has yet to disclose the total number of pre-orders.
Earlier this month, during Nio’s second-quarter earnings call, Li set an ambitious target of delivering 10,000 units of the L60, a mid-size SUV, by December, with a monthly goal of 20,000 units by next year.
To achieve a monthly delivery capacity of 20,000 units — something that the Group wants to reach “sometime next year”— the executive stated that the brand has stationed procurement and quality teams at suppliers since the first half of 2022 in preparation for production.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
