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 hyb...