William Li (Ceo Nio): “Only two companies focus exclusively on EV. Nio is one of them”

Nio‘s founder and Chief Executive Officer William Li declared that only two automakers globally remain exclusively focused on pure electric vehicle and Nio is one of them. “I estimate that globally, only two companies focus exclusively on pure electric vehicles, and Nio is one of them,” William Li said during a speech at the 2025 China Automotive Entrepreneur Annual Conference in Beijing on December 6-7. 

Li did not name the other company, but the description aligns with Tesla, whose Ceo Elon Musk has repeatedly rejected hybrids. Nio‘s first mass-produced vehicle — the ES8 SUV — rolled off the production line in Hefei, China, in 2018. Seven years later, the company is expected to produce its 1 millionth unit in early 2026, having reached 949,457 cumulative deliveries by November 30. 

Despite launching two additional brands in the past 18 months — Onvo for the mass market in May 2024 and Firefly for premium small EVs in December 2024 — Nio has never released any hybrid vehicles across any of its brands. Li has previously joked that Nio would “only discuss extended-range vehicles when Tesla adopts that approach.” “We will only discuss extended-range vehicles when Tesla adopts that approach,” Li said in September 2024 following the Onvo L60 launch. “Nio‘s battery swapping and upgradable batteries are, in a way, a more efficient form of extended range.” 

In December 2017, William Li told CNBC that Nio was a direct competitor to Tesla, not the "Chinese Tesla”. “For sure I think Tesla is our rival in that consumers will choose between our products. But I wouldn’t say we are the Chinese Tesla, or they are the American Nio,” Li said.

On April 7, 2021 Nio, saw its 100,000th mass-produced vehicle roll off the production line at its manufacturing site in Hefei, Anhui province. It was a major milestone for Nio, 35 months after its first production vehicle, the Nio ES8, rolled off the production line on May 27, 2018, and earned Musk's blessing. Musk commented on a story covering the development on Twitter saying, "Congrats to Nio. that is a tough milestone."