NIO Inc. (NYSE:NIO) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So, for ALPS it is about finding the best resolution in the specific segment that ALPS brand target is at. For us, if we look at the market, we see some companies, they sell the product at a price of around RMB200,000, but they can still achieve over 20% vehicle gross margin. So, it shows that this is achievable. For NIO, because we have many high specs configurations in our product, for example, the over 1,000 top computing powers and all those smart features, it will be very difficult for us to lower the cost on those components and this will affect us in terms of lowering the price of our products. But for ALPS is different. When we define ALPS’ product, of course, the target for us is to achieve reasonable vehicle gross margin. And we believe it is reasonable and is possible for us to achieve 20% vehicle gross margin.

Paul Gong: Thank you so much, William, for your time to sharing. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Jing Yang from CICC. Please go ahead.

Jing Yang: [Foreign Language] My first question is about our NOP Plus. Our NOP Plus beta version has been opened for several years — several months. So, can you share the — some users’ data such as usage time or accumulated mileage or average takeover mileage during this period? And how is their feedback? And we can see the official version will be charged for subscription. So, can you share more of your understanding of subscription charge? And also in the second quarter of this year, you can see that highway navigation function to swapping stations were launched. So, what do we think of the improvement of customers’ experience with this new function? And last one is, is there any timeframe for our [indiscernible] function in the second half year?

William Li: [Foreign Language] [Interpreted] Thank you for your question. I will answer the NOP Plus related question and Steven is going to address the question about the Power Swap stations. For the NOP Plus, right now we have over 50,000 users using the NOP Plus services. And for us, the accumulated mileage of NOP Plus is over 41 million kilometers. And every week the mileage is around 2 million kilometers. We have already started the test of the NOP Plus in the city scenarios and use cases. This year, we’re going to accelerate the test of the NOP Plus in the city use cases or the urban use cases. We will also — when it gets ready, we will also release this feature to the users. Based on our internal evaluation right now, we are very confident regarding the performance of the NOP Plus in the urban scenarios.

At the same time, regarding the NAD, we’re also doing some tests. And if in the future the regulations and the laws are in the right place for the NOP Plus release, then we will release the — sorry, we will release the NAD for our users when the regulation is in the right place. And we believe this is probably — right now, all the R&D of our NOP Plus and NAD is basically on track and according to our schedule.

Jing Yang: [Foreign Language] My second question is about the battery swapping station. We can see that you have gotten nearly 1,500 stations at present, now — and yearly we can see 200 stations has been added since this year. So, have you seen that denser of our battery swapping stations network has been built and is quite good for ourselves — of our new models, especially for our penetration of lower-tier cities?