The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Nio: William Li relents in the trademark dispute with Audi

2022-10-07T17:39:49.302Z


Billionaire William Li's e-car company Nio is celebrating its market entry in Germany in Berlin. And renamed their models for the attack on the German top dogs.


Enlarge image

Nio founder William Li

Photo: STR/AFP

The Chinese electric car manufacturer Nio announced this Friday in Berlin that it would be entering the German market with three models in the coming months.

The ET7 sedan will be sold immediately, and sales of the EL7 luxury SUV are scheduled to start at the beginning of 2023, and the ET5 at the end of the first quarter.

Other models are to follow soon.

The announcement of the EL7 comes as a real surprise.

Nio's flagship has been on the market in China since August - albeit under the name ES7.

And that's what the vehicle should actually be called in Germany.

However, the German premium manufacturer Audi had sued Nio months ago before the Munich Regional Court.

Nio infringes Audi's trademark rights with the model names ES6 and ES8.

Because the names of the two electric SUVs could be confused with the S6 and the S8 of the German premium manufacturer just by hearing them, Nio

do not use the designations.

In August, Audi finally complained to the EU Intellectual Property Office that the ES7 had violated trademark rights, and another lawsuit was on the horizon.

"We don't want to wait for the outcome of a possibly protracted legal dispute with an uncertain outcome and have therefore renamed our models," co-founder Lihong Qin told SPIEGEL.

L stands for lifestyle and is therefore a strong brand that goes well with Nio.

Protecting intellectual property is of high value to Nio.

"We planned a holistic brand presence from the start and applied for the rights for the ES series in Europe as early as 2016." It was not considered that ES in German sounds like S and that this could become a problem.

"We cannot and do not want to anticipate the result of the procedure, that is the job of the judge." But Nio now wants to concentrate entirely on "all the more important things associated with the start of sales in Europe".

Lihong Qin founded Nio with billionaire William Li in 2014.

Li is often compared to Tesla founder Elon Musk because of his ambitions in the industry.

He himself rejects such comparisons.

"Tesla wasn't my inspiration," he told SPIEGEL last year.

In 2018, the company faced financial collapse, was supported by the province of Anhui and the city of Hefei with around one billion dollars and managed to go public.

There, Nio was at times worth $60 billion, more than BMW.

It is currently valued at around $30 billion.

They do not name specific sales targets

In the meantime, Nio is also commercially successful in China, the sales figures are going up, the company has sold a total of 239,000 cars to date.

Six months ago, Nio was the first European country to start selling cars in Norway, but has so far sold fewer than 1,000 vehicles there.

The founders do not want to name specific sales targets for Germany when they appear in the Berlin showroom that has just opened.

Right next to the Memorial Church, William Li and Lihong Qin have opened their Nio-House, as they call the elaborately designed branches through which they want to build a luxury-loving community.

You will need and have patience.

"We want to become one of the leading suppliers in the premium segment over the next few years," says Lihong Qin.

Together with his founding partner, he drove 2,500 kilometers in an ET7 through the five European countries in which the company wanted to launch NOO cars on the market in the near future.

In addition to Germany and Norway, these are Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands.

He praised the charging infrastructure, especially the fast charging stations on the motorways are technically good, but the network is not dense enough.

»There is a lack of charging facilities, especially in the cities.«

Nio therefore believes that a network of battery-changing stations can be successful.

While there are already 1,000 such stations in China, where batteries can be changed within a few minutes, there is only one in Germany so far, on the A8 between Stuttgart and Munich, and two more in Norway.

"By the end of next year, we want to have 120 swap stations in Europe, mainly in and between the big cities," said Lihong Qin.

Lihong Qin said the battery replacement system should help to allay potential customers' fears of insufficient range for their electric cars.

»Batteries must be rechargeable and replaceable and offer the possibility of upgrading.«

Nio puts the cost of a station in China at 400,000 euros, so 400 million euros have been invested in the network there so far.

In Europe, co-founder William Li expects higher costs, but compared to the overall costs for the charging infrastructure, this is negligible.

Nio is "open to partnerships" for building a network for changing stations.

For sales in Germany, Nio primarily relies on a subscription model.

Although the cars should also be available for direct sale via the Internet, the founders hope to be able to lower the barrier to entry with subscriptions that can be canceled on a monthly basis.

With a view to the growing geopolitical tensions between Europe and the USA on the one hand and China on the other, William Li said: "An increasing division is a challenge for the entire auto industry." For German manufacturers, China is the largest market, but vice versa also Nio in Europe more than a hundred partners and suppliers.

»No one wants these tensions.

We're just a small company, we don't want to get involved in political discussions and we want to take care of our customers," said Li. "But politicians should also keep an eye on consumers, they're the ones who suffer in the end."

Li is asked whether he thinks he can compete with the German premium suppliers BMW, Mercedes and Audi.

"If I don't try, I'll never know the answer."

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2022-10-07

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.