Electric vehicle (EV) company NIO revealed its first electric sedan last month in its market of China, and it’s already outperforming some of its competitors with sales of its first few EVs.
On Thursday, Chinese EV startup Li Auto said it expected to deliver between 10,500 and 11,500 cars in the first quarter of 2021, averaging roughly 4,000 EVs per month – which is less than NIO’s 7,000 unit deliveries in both December 2020 and January 2021, according to CNBC.
Thus far, Li Auto just has one vehicle available – the Li One. It’s a hybrid electric, so it includes a fuel tank that is used for charging the battery. While the company’s forecasted deliveries were underwhelming, to say the least, some say the largely-hybrid vehicle company is still working off of peoples’ range anxiety associated with EVs.
Li Auto Q4 revenue beats expectations, net profit turns positive for first time.
One down…NIO to go! 🤞😉😇 $NIO @NIOGlobal https://t.co/02u9exdiRv
— ilTartufo (@iltartufo) February 25, 2021
Still, the Li One ranked among last year’s top 10 high-end SUVs sold in China as reported by the passenger car association, despite the fact that its deliveries fell by almost 1,000 units in January, as companies like NIO and Xpeng Motors began ramping up production of new fully-electric automobiles.
Regardless, Li Auto only recently saw its first quarter of net profit, and the company expects total revenue in 2021’s first quarter to fall within the range of 2.94 billion yuan to 3.22 billion yuan ($453,888,960-$497,116,480 USD).
For EV sales in China for the month of January, Tesla sold 13,843 units, according to EV Sales, ranking second in the country, below the cheaper Wuling Mini EV, which saw a whopping 36,762 units moved.
In third place was the BYD Han. The Li One was in the 7th spot, while NIO was in 12th, 14th and 20th spots respectively for its P7, EC6 and ES8 models, respectively.
