China’s US-listed electric carmakers NIO and Xpeng rev up to catch up with Tesla on their home turf as NEV battle heats up

Tesla’s challengers in China are revving up their output of electric cars, as manufacturing mostly returns to normal in the first major economy to emerge from coronavirus lockdown, helping the country extend its lead in the worldwide market for new-energy vehicles (NEVs).

At NIO’s joint-venture factory in the Anhui provincial capital of Hefei, production has stepped up by 50 per cent, where 30 of the all-electric ES6 five-seat sports utility vehicle (SUV) and the bigger ES8 premium SUV roll off the production line every hour, putting the carmaker on path to make 120,000 electric cars a year. Further south in the Guangdong provincial city of Zhaoqing, Xpeng is revving up to finish 150,000 NEVS a year at its own brand new factory.

NIO and Xpeng are two of the three US-listed Chinese NEV makers hot on the heels of the industry leader Tesla in a market where sales could more than double to 3 million units a year by 2025. NIO’s November sales more than doubled to 5,291 cars from last year, while Xpeng’s more than quadrupled to 4,224 cars. Tesla, which delivered 12,785 Model 3 cars in October made at its Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai, is yet to unveil its November sales data.

“As the volume of orders becomes bigger and bigger, we will able to increase our production,” said Victor Gu, general manager of NIO’s Advanced Manufacturing Centre, during a recent visit to the factory in Hefei. “Our plant has become [an internet celebrity] because of the high degree of automation and best technology used, which attracted a lot of visits by government officials and industry executives.”