Investor Says 99 Percent Of China’s Tesla Rivals Won’t Survive

Ian Zhu, managing partner of NIO Capital said that 99 percent of electric startups in China won’t survive in long run as investment for EVs is really high

China is one of the biggest EV markets in the world and the government is aggressively pushing EVs to reduce pollution. The huge potential of Chinese EV market is attracting traditional car manufacturers as most of them are working on China specific EV models, which is expected to be rolled out from next year. But Chinese market is flooded with lots of small electric vehicle startups.

NIO Capital is the name of a venture capital investment company backed by NIO, which is a startup electric company based in China. Ian Zhu, managing partner of NIO Capital said that 99 percent of electric startups in China won’t survive in long run as investment for EVs is really high, and the companies need a large group of people to be able to build a car from scratch.

Most of the startups are yet to manufacturer cars in a large scale. Zhu also said that partnership between startups and traditional companies will be successful in long run as they have money to invest in EV technology and these companies know how to mass manufacture cars.

Chinese market accounts for more than half of world’s electric vehicles and competition is going to be tougher in coming years, as the government has allowed foreign companies to fully own their local partners. It will help these big manufacturers to make more inroads into Chinese EV market.

NIO made its global debut in 2016 with EP9 supercar as it is the quickest electric vehicle to lap Nurburgring and the electric supercar is quicker than some of the fastest production cars like Nissan GT-R. The four electric motors produce combined output of 1341 hp and each electric motors has its own gearbox. The EP9 supercar can hit 0-100 kph in just 2.7 sec and top speed is 313 kph.

The second product from Nio is ES8 electric SUV, which is also powered by four electric motors on each wheels and the combined output is 643 hp and 840 Nm of torque. The claimed range of ES8 is 352 km and the power comes from 70 kWh battery pack, which can be swapped. The ES8 electric SUV competes against Tesla Model X.