A Nio Inc. ES6 electric sports utility vehicle at a battery exchange station inside a parking lot in Shanghai on March 1, 2021.
Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images
BEIJING – Nio, the new Chinese electric car, said on Tuesday that a global shortage of chips would force it to produce fewer cars in the second quarter.
The huge demand for electronics amid the coronavirus pandemic and the pressure of trade tensions between the US and China in the highly specialized semiconductor supply chain, has contributed to a backlog in chip manufacturing.
Major carmakers consequently had to reduce production, with the China-based Nio last announcing such reductions.
Founder William Li said in a quarterly call on Tuesday that the company had increased production capacity in February to 10,000 vehicles per month, an increase of 7,500 previously. But a shortage of chips and batteries means Nio will have to drop to the 7,500 level again in the second quarter.
Nine predicts strong deliveries
Despite Tesla’s competition, Nio has outperformed its start-up competitors in terms of vehicle sales.
The company delivered 7,225 vehicles in January and 5,578 in February amid the week-long lunar New Year holiday. With a forecast of 20,000 to 25,000 deliveries in the first quarter, Nio expects deliveries to rise to at least 7197 cars in March.
In contrast, Xpeng said on Tuesday it delivered 2,223 electric cars last month, while Li Auto expects to deliver less than 4,000 cars a month in the first quarter.
Li, founder of Nio, said pre-orders for the et7 sedan announced in January surpassed those of the company’s other models, but declined to share specific figures. The et7 is Nio’s first non-SUV consumer car and will start deliveries next year.
Li added that the company remains on track with plans to enter Europe later this year.
Shares in the Nio-listed Nio fell 4% in trading hours after reporting a fourth-quarter earnings loss of 0.93 yuan (14 cents) per share. According to FactSet, this is greater than the loss of 0.39 yuan per share predicted by analysts.
The company attributes a quarterly increase in net losses of 33% – to 1.39 billion yuan ($ 212.8 million) in the last three months of 2020 – mainly due to the depreciation in the US dollar.
Nine shares rose more than 1,000% last year after the struggling company received a capital injection of about $ 1 billion from state-backed investors, piling traders in the stock along with a surge in Tesla’s shares.
Looking ahead, Nio expects total revenue of 7.38 billion yuan to 7.56 billion yuan in the first quarter, compared to 6.64 billion yuan in the fourth quarter.