The company said it received more than 25,000 orders within 72 hours of the presale period starting.
Shanghai-headquartered Nio will launch its ET5 Touring, a compact executive sedan, this Thursday and begin distributing the cars, which start at 298,000 yuan, to buyers the next day.
“New models normally appeal to Chinese EV fans,” said Phate Zhang, founder of CnEVPost, a Shanghai-based electric-vehicle data provider.
“The two new cars are hitting the market at a time when most consumers are tightening their purse strings. But the two carmakers need the new models to boost their overall sales.”
Xpeng and Nio have reported lacklustre deliveries since late 2022 as more Chinese car buyers drifted down-market towards cheaper models assembled by companies like BYD.
Xpeng followed suit, slashing prices of some of its models by up to 13 per cent in mid-January. Nio kept its prices unchanged.
From January until last month, Nio handed 43,854 vehicles to mainland Chinese customers, up by 15.8 per cent year on year. The company has a full-year sales goal of 240,000 units.
In the same period, Xpeng handed over the keys to 32,815 units, down 38.9 per cent from the same period of 2022.
Tesla’s sales in the mainland jumped 83.8 per cent year on year to 219,893 vehicles between January and May.
On Monday, Nio slashed the prices of all its models by 30,000 yuan in a bid to promote sales but announced it will stop offering its free battery-swapping services, to cut costs.
“Nio’s premium cars fitted with sophisticated in-car entertainment systems are now proving too expensive for middle-class consumers because they want to save money for a rainy day,” said Eric Han, a senior manager at Suolei, an advisory firm in Shanghai. “A price cut of 30,000 yuan is likely to fire up sales, but [Nio] needs to assemble more low-priced cars to attract mainland motorists.”
He Xiaopeng, chief executive of Xpeng, said in March he expected sales to jump in the second half of this year when a large volume of G6 SUVs are delivered to customers. The vehicle had already drawn rave reviews at that time.
