Nio CEO Calls for Standardization

Nio chief executive William Li said China’s electric-vehicle industry is burning cash on custom parts and should standardize battery cells and chips. (cnevpost.com) Li made the case on April 11 at the China EV100 forum in Beijing, saying the industry could cut more than 100 billion yuan, about $14.6 billion, through common specifications. He said “hundreds of millions of yuan” can be wasted on a single vehicle model. (carnewschina.com) His argument was simple: carmakers now refresh smart electric models so quickly that suppliers add capacity for a sales spike that often fades before factories catch up. Li said that leaves automakers, parts makers, and buyers stuck with mismatched supply and demand. (cnevpost.com) Batteries and semiconductors are the main target because Li said they account for more than half of a vehicle’s cost. He called for China’s market to converge on four or five standard battery-cell formats and for chip categories to become interchangeable across models. (cnevpost.com) The problem is partly about variety. Li said Nio’s ES9 uses more than 1,000 semiconductor part numbers and over 4,000 individual chips, and Nio is trying to cut its internal chip varieties to about 400. (carnewschina.com) Li tied the push to a brutal market backdrop in China, where he said the industry is dealing with “increasing volume without increasing revenue” and “increasing revenue without increasing profit.” Nio itself has been growing fast, with first-quarter deliveries up 98.3 percent year over year to 83,465 vehicles, according to remarks reported from the forum. (carnewschina.com) Nio’s own recent numbers show the pace of that expansion. The company said it delivered 35,486 vehicles in March 2026 and reported unaudited fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results on March 11. (nio.com) This is not a new line from Nio. On March 17, 2025, Nio and Contemporary Amperex Technology, known as CATL, said their battery-swapping partnership would promote standardization and help drive national standards for battery-swapping technology in China. (catl.com) Li’s message now is that the industry needs the same logic beyond swapping stations: fewer battery formats, fewer chip variants, and less money stranded in parts nobody needs. (cnevpost.com)