Tesla’s Chinese rival NIO warns chip shortage to challenge sales after over 100 per cent jump last year
- Hong Kong and New York listed NIO more than doubles its deliveries to 91,949 vehicles in 2021
- Shanghai-based carmaker could see shortages of 100 types of chips this year, co-founder and CEO William Li said
Chinese smart electric vehicle start-up NIO said a shortage of chips could affect production in 2022, challenging its efforts to surpass last year’s more than doubling of sales.
“Chip supply is a big challenge [for us],” William Li, co-founder and CEO, said on an earnings call on Friday. “The main challenge is in some common and cheap chips, which will affect our production this year.”
Li said the carmaker uses some 1,000 different chips in each car, and that it faces a shortage of 100 such chips or 10 per cent.
Still, Li said the supply of high-end semiconductors, such as Nvidia’s Orin used to support the driver assistance system, was sufficient since NIO had already formed long-term partnerships with chip makers.
The shortage of semiconductors, which affected global car production last year is likely to continue for the foreseeable future and could prove to be a stumbling block for the buoyant electric-car sector in China this year.
NIO, listed in both Hong Kong and New York, delivered 91,949 vehicles in 2021, a jump of 109.1 per cent increase from a year earlier.