China's Nio takes on Tesla with a car half the price of Model X | Hacker News Reader

China's Nio takes on Tesla with a car half the price of Model X

cnbc.com

52 pointsSirLJ57 comments

Articles like this is when you doubt whether journalism even deserves to survive (it does, inspite of the abundance of these poorly written, never researhed pieces). CNBC is a larger network, not the weekly paper in a small town. Why don’t they have someone with a bit of knowledge in cars or tech edit an article like this? Can they really not afford that?

There is barely any info on the car and the little info they give is obviously wrong. Why do they compare it to model X and not model 3; is it because its specs are simular to model X? Doesn’t look like a van or SUV at all.

Edit: here is a better article on the car with relevant info: https://electrek.co/2017/12/16/nio-es8-all-electric-suv-batt...

To my eye, it looks more like an SUV than the X does.

In an ideal world poor quality publications regardless of audience size would end up being penalized for poor quality reporting. Sadly, the world is not ideal and markets at best an approximation of efficient markets.

CNBC is prime example of this for me. Nowhere is it more apparent that in Jim Cramer. The hyped-up advice he gives people on investing is terrible. It's worth while watching his interview with John Stewart when they talked about the housing bubble. The whole sorry, not sorry squirm. But this is just the tip of the iceberg for CNBC.

To me the important question is: can we engineer (not just software) a solution that does rewards good journalism and punishes bad journalism?

Modern media is about for click bait and virality to drive ad impressions. That's it. Quality doesn't matter because nobody pays for it.

Why do they compare it to model X and not model 3; is it because its specs are simular to model X? Doesn’t look like a van or SUV at all.

ES8[0]

Model X[1]

Comparing these two, the ES8 is bit blockier like the current set of crossovers. Whereas the Model X has the body shaping of a really big sedan. Neither have the 100% of the classic SUV look, but both have 5 seats and hatchback with a dedicated cargo area. Neither is like the Model 3, which is a sedan with a normal trunk.

[0] - https://www.nio.io/prod/s3fs-public/styles/scale_width_3840/...

[1] - https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/images/model-x/sec...

The funding article:

https://electrek.co/2017/03/27/electric-vehicle-startup-nio-...

I really like how ‘up to $600 million’ is in quotes.

What a horrible article. It doesn't have something as basic as the car's range and it gets the monthly battery subscription cost wrong. But the worst part is it just repeats "Tesla" as many times as possible. Tesla is a tiny part of the Chinese EV market, see [1] for recent monthly sales breakdown.

There is plenty of interesting stuff happening in the market and this company's battery swapping could be interesting. This article managed to miss all that.

[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/30/china-electric-car-sale...

Yep they even placed a Tesla commercial in the article, was it really necessary?

"($19,366) a month"

Remember when journalism had features such as copy editing?

"At its launch on Saturday, Nio introduced a battery charging plan with a rental subscription set at 128,000 yuan ($19,366) a month."

Oops! It looks like the press release with the decimal in the correct place is here: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/3598606 at a more reasonable $194.

That makes a lot more sense. It still seems rather pricey (I have a pickup and it doesn't eat $200/mo worth of gas, as at that price what's the point of an EV?). But a copy editor would have looked at that and thought "you could purchase fractional ownership of a jet for less than the cost to charge that car, so this must be wrong."

Excuse me while I go yell at kids to get off my lawn.

"which provides a RMB 100,000 discount on the purchase price of the ES8" => about $15k, or just over 6 years of ownership.

It looks like the original cnbc article is even more wrong about this, describing it as a charging plan when it's just a lease on the battery.

You know how it goes with China and you know how it goes with Chines cars...

http://www.cartoq.com/50-copy-cat-cars-from-china/

Landwind X7 have 90% look of Land Rover Evoque though. It would probably have crapy engine, interior ..,, but my point is that chinese cars are definitely improving.

Even Chinese prefer foreign brands to domestic ones (if they can afford it) even though almost all of those are made in china under 51-49 JVs. I’ve personally never been impressed by a chinese car that wasn’t an outright clone, well maybe those new BYD electric taxis running Beijing.

A friend of mine worked a contract with JAC once to help them...design the info-tainment system for their upbrand Audi A5 compete, which involved copying Audi’s system as much as possible then parring it back because they weren’t willing to use high end hardware in it.

Does American prefer Germany/Japanese cars or USA cars?

Oddly enough, I feel American brands are more popular in china than in America. Buik for example. Some of my coworkers at Ms china even drove Fords, something that wouldn’t happen easily in Redmond.

and recent video from someone(Serpentza) on the ground in Shenzhen: Are Chinese CARS Getting GOOD? Or still CRAP!? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIYMmW0_qnE

Hacker News crowd might be interested to hear that Saab lives on as "NEVS" under Chinese ownership and management and will launch as electrical vehicle.

http://www.thedrive.com/sheetmetal/16729/swedens-nevs-has-re...

In what regard is that car a "Saab"? Same factory? Same IP? Certainly doesn't look like same designer.

Sold by the same corporate entity that produced the vehicles branded as SAAB, albeit under a new owner.

I don't want to get into the "grandfather's axe"-level semiotics argument, but if most of the people who worked at Saab in 2010 no longer work there, and the car is made in a different factory in China, it doesn't make much difference to me that there's a piece of paper that says it's the "same company". I just don't know if either of those things is true.

I don't know about the people, but they are still using the same factory.

In my opinion, Tesla is a fantastic luxury car brand and will continue to be so (assuming they can continue to get funding for their plans).

That said, I don't think they will be able to compete in the midrange and economy segments. The competition is too fierce, and their key value proposition (their brand) isn't as helpful once you're dealing with budget-conscious consumers.

In my opinion, Tesla shouldn't have gone after the mid-market with the Model 3. They should have continued to compete against BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, etc. where they have a durable competitive advantage.

Do you think the Model 3 competes with the BMW 3 Series/Audi A4?

I think the current model competes with the 5 series and loses

I do, and I think it will do very well against those over the next few years.

It depends on how you compare them. Based on driving performance (acceleration, braking, turn handling, etc.), the Model 3 arguably out-competes its in-class competition.

Based on driving experience excluding performance (i.e., interior comfort, QC, etc.) it's worst-in-class. The interior furnishings are about equal to a Kia or Scion--both of which are in a different, less-expensive, class of cars. Tesla's QC is about on par with Dodge, which is not a compliment, as Dodge has consistently been a bottom-dweller in the reliability department for years.

So it boils down to this: if you want an EV as your primary commuter vehicle, the Model 3 isn't it. If you want a Model 3 as a secondary car, it's probably worth it for the cool factor if Tesla's quality control improves but until then it's not worth it.

Who cares, it's another car for 6 figure earners. Seriously how many here on hackers news can afford to spend ~120k on a car? ...my car cost the rounding error of that number.

> At its launch on Saturday, Nio introduced a battery charging plan with a rental subscription set at 128,000 yuan ($19,366) a month.

$20k/mo to charge the car?

In three months they'll have made back the price difference with the model X.

Clearly an error. That's either a lifetime fee or that added a few extra zeroes.

Those numbers don't make any sense, not even at $2000 per month.

1,280 RMB per months for exchangeable batteries.

which is about $205 USD/month.

About what I pay for gas.

me too, total for 2 cars.

you missed the part which the car price reduced by $15000. This concept as some EV buyer worried about the battery attenuation. And with this model, you don't need to worry about that

It is 1,280 yuan per month. Someone at CNBC make an error.

It is part of the battery renting plan, where you pay 100k yuan less for the car, and then pay 1,280 yuan per month for battery renting.

http://cms-bucket.nosdn.127.net/catchpic/2/2d/2de06ee1640b6b...

Source (Chinese): http://news.163.com/17/1218/11/D5UDKMP5000187VE.html

It seem to be that two dominant models for EV battery tactics are emerging in China:

1. Sell genuinely good, high endurance battery pack that will last for a lifetime of a car - BYD and other car makers using cells with LiFePo4 cathode

2. Stuff the battery pack with a lot of cheap cells that will survive for two to three seasons, and will be replaced after that for a sane price.

I actually am pretty fascinated recently with what Nio is trying at accomplish and how they are trying to position themselves against Tesla in every way. I mean just look at their home page. Cars, Power wall competitor, etc

https://imgur.com/a/ThnAZ

PRO TIP: If you are a Chinese company trying to play "startup mumbo jumbo" card, try to convince gullible investors "we are just like that smart Western company in every way, there is no way we fail if we copy them 1-to-1"

I heard story, I don't it's think real (but imo funny) about China ordering foreign experts to build nuclear reactor. They had guys with binoculars watching those experts and building exactly same reactor over the hill.

Copycat^2

Funny, but clearly not possible. For all the real examples of Chinese copying, I think we're starting to see companies in China level up (DJI, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc.). When I was a kid, 'Made in Japan' was scorned as junk, by the time I was in college, it meant Sony and Toyota. I don't see any reason Chinese goods wouldn't be on the same trajectory.

At least they picked the mumbo jumbo master to copy.

I think you just saw the first page and got your conclusion. NIO House is not for solar roof, but for its local sales center. NIO Power is not PowerWall, but its own fast battery exchange station.

Even if they succeed in building a Tesla worthy competitor, there is still the huge issue of battery production. Tesla will lead the coming years not for its nice car implementation but rather its production capacity of cheap high quality batteries. I wonder how China will bring that production capacity.

Given what is in the construction pipeline China will dominate by 2020 according to this

http://www.visualcapitalist.com/china-leading-charge-lithium...

The US site is https://www.nio.io/?noredirect=

China site seems to be https://nio.com.

A completely useless article, but the grain of truth deep inside is that the real threat to Tesla isn't other vertically integrated car makers learning how to make electric cars, but that car making will have low barriers to entry like other horizontal markets in electronics.

Even that threat isn't that scary: Apple is ever more vertically integrated at the top of the horizontal mobile handset business.

But there is a good chance that you'll be able to buy a good, usable electric-drive car for a fraction of the price of a top of the line car, from a company that you never heard of before.

Would like to see crash testing results on both vehicles

China's NCAP is now pretty equivalent to the EU and US in terms of crash safety.

At least for new models, the days of Chinese vehicles lagging far behind western counterparts in crash safety are over.

America's NCAP is pretty decent (/sarcasm) and the Model S wiped the floor with almost all competition - so for China who only started testing in 2006, I highly doubt they'll even compete.

The ones sold in my country are atrocious. Which new models?

> China's NCAP is now pretty equivalent to the EU and US in terms of crash safety

Source?

No battery specs disclosed, keep fingers crossed - it may well be they stuffed it with substandard cells.

NiO is a shortcut in german for Nicht in Ordnung, which in factorys denotes parts that are not okay. Is this a insider gag?

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