MEWG Company Visit at NIO Factory, 14 May 2024

Dear CICC members and friends,

On May 14th the Company Visit to the NEO Park - NIO factory and NIO House in Hefei - organized by the China-Italy Chamber of Commerce in collaboration with its Mechanical and Engineering Working Group (MEWG) saw an attendance of around 40 company representatives from the manufacturing industry.

This has been a special occasion for the Sino-Italian community to get to know an important Chinese company in the EV sector.

NIO is a global smart electric vehicle company. Founded in 2014, NIO has been committed to shaping a joyful lifestyle by offering high-performance smart electric vehicles and ultimate experience. Nine years into its establishment, NIO is one of the leading companies in the global premium smart electricvehicle market, and also the first car company listed on the NYSE, HKSE and SGX.

On June 28, 2018, NIO delivered the ES8, its first production model, to users. As of April 30, 2024, NIO had delivered a cumulative total of 495,267 vehicles and on May 9, 2024, NIO's 500,000 mass production vehicle rolled off the production line.
Currently, NIO has R&D centers and manufacturing facilities in Shanghai, Hefei, Beijing, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, San Jose, Munich, Oxford, Berlin, Budapest, and Singapore. Its sales and service networks also have an expansive reach in over 300 cities in China, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark.
At present, NIO has eight smart electric models in its lineup, including the flagship SUV ES8, flagship coupe SUV EC7, mid-large SUV ES7, flagship sedan ET7, all-round SUV ES6, coupe SUV EC6, mid-size sedan ET5 and mid-size tourer ET5 Touring. In December 2023, NIO's executive flagship ET9 made its global debut, and the delivery is expected to start in 2025.

In addition to the state-of-the-art smart electric vehicle technologies and experience, NIO has introduced various innovative service models, featuring NIO Power, NIO Service, Battery as a Service (BaaS), flexible battery upgrade plan and NIO Certified which is NIO's used vehicle program, to offer an ultimate service experience throughout the product lifecycle.

Adopting the direct-sales model, NIO offers a series of comprehensive services seamlessly via the NIO app. Combining online and offline touchpoints, such as NIO House and NIO Space, as well as NIO users' exclusive radio program NIO Radio and the lifestyle brand NIO Life, NIO has created a community that starts from and goes beyond the car, where users share joy and grow together.

The company visit evolved mainly around two areas in the Neo Park, NIO’s biggest industrial park, the NIO House – world’s biggest NIO house of over 4000sqm, and the factory. The NIO House acts as a lifestyle space for NIO’s users and showcases some of the NIO vehicles and NIO Life brands of the company. This space hosted the presentations for the event.

On the CICC’s side, Emilio Cassanelli, CICC Board Member & VP China Operations, GM Italgroup Hydraulic Motors (Shanghai) Trading Co., Ltd and Ke Da, Vice Coordinator of the Mechanical Engineering Working Group (MEWG) & General Manager, Thermowatt China, presented the CICC and the MEWG, respectively.

On NIO’s side, four representatives gave an overview of the company: Yang Yi form Manufacturing team, Beatrice Cecchi from Product Marketing & Communication, and from Vehicle Engineering Danilo Teobaldi and Gary Hughes.

The NIO house is directly connected to the factory through a sky bridge on the second floor. From there, visitors can enter the factory and learn about the different production lines and steps involved in the highly automated production of NIO cars. The visit left the attendees with many questions and curiosities about the company and its products. This led to an interesting Q&A session that covered topics such as their battery technology, sustainability, and manufacturing process.

“What is your strategy regarding ESG?”
 

“Blue Sky Coming is our guiding philosophy since our inception and our vision for a brighter future.

We adhere to the values of honesty, care, vision, and action, which drive us to continuously head towards our vision and mission.

Focusing on low-carbon development, ecological protection, and environmental management, we make efforts to put the concept of sustainability into practice through the whole lifecycle of the green industry chain and build a green eco-system with upstream and downstream partners. Since 2021, NIO has integrated dicarbon requirements into the whole vehicle life cycle starting from design stage, supply chain, manufacturing, and use phase. In March 2023, NIO has pledged to join SBTi which defines and promotes best practices in emissions reductions and net-zero targets in line with the Paris Agreement's ambition.”

“Around NIO there are satellite brands that bring the company to develop so many other products, furniture, wine, clothes etc. What is the final goal? Can you explain the reasons behind such a large offer?”

NIO Life is NIO's original lifestyle brand established in 2018. Bringing together global design resources and collaborating with 630+ independent designers as well as students from top design academies worldwide, NIO Life aims to shape a joyful lifestyle by introducing good designs and products to our NIO users. So far, NIO Life has brought more than 16 million "surprises"/pcs products for all users.

NIO Life's vision is to create a joyful lifestyle for car owners in all scenarios beyond just cars. It doesn't particularly aim to reach future car buyers with small "fan base purchases”.

On one hand, design-driven is NIO's DNA, and one of the ways we create a happy lifestyle is to provide good products that meet NIO's design. On the other hand, NIO already has 500,000 car owners, and considering that the overall number of car owners exceeds 700,000 after co-driving, we design and develop nearly 1,000 new products every year to cover the different needs of the vast number of cars owners.

Afterwards, our attendees also had the chance to enjoy the performance of some of NIO’s car models in an exciting test drive.

A special thanks to NIO for hosting us and for all your participation!

About Mechanical Engineering Working Group (MEWG)

The MEWG represents the interest of all Italian companies in China working directly or indirectly in the sector on a national base.

MEWG Objectives:

• Coordinate and promote all Italian members’ needs which are active in many different industries of the Chinese mechanical engineering sector (machinery, automotive, component manufacturers, mechanical engineering...);
• Promote and raise awareness of the size and the importance of Italian technology in the sector to all counterparts in China and Italy, in order to develop business opportunities.
• Coordinate and promote activities and events that boost the visibility and the image of “Technology Made in Italy”.
• Become a reference for all mechanical engineering companies within the China-Italy Chamber of Commerce.

Coordinator

• Riccardo Budriesi, CEO at Marposs (Shanghai) Technologies Co., Ltd.

Vice-Coordinators

• Mirko Turrina, General Manager of Goglio (Tianjin) Packaging Co., Ltd.
• Tiziano Sandonini, Board Member at Santoni (Shanghai) Knitting Machinery Co., Ltd.
• Ke Da, General Manager of Thermowatt China