Will NIO Cars Come to Australia?

Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer NIO has started to gain a lot of interest in Australia in the past 12 months.

With interest in electric vehicles booming in Australia recently, many people are wondering if NIO cars will be sold in the Australian market. We can see from Google Trends that interest in NIO Cars from Australia boomed in 2020.

People are of two minds about electric vehicles in Australia, especially considering the country’s isolated towns and stretches of road through barren landscapes. The lack of charging stations is also one factor deterring those considering purchasing an EV.

To many people, the benefits of a clean energy car don’t seem worth it. Yet, things are quickly changing within the Australian market. EVs, like those from Tesla, tripled in sales during 2019. Charging stations are also being dotted across the nation and offer charging times of only 15 minutes. So although progress is slow, the country is catching up with consumer demand.

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With electric cars owning a mere 0.6% slice of the share market, Australia is far behind the 2.5% to 5% share that other countries possess. 20 European countries already offer incentives for EV owners, such as exemptions from charges and rebates. Despite the wide gap between Australia and other countries using hybrid cars and EVs, Chinese companies such as NIO are eager to break into the western market.

Just recently Jaguar Land Rover announced their vehicles will be going all electric by 2025. And in February 2021, another Chinese EV manufacturer BYD cars announced via LinkedIn that they will be bringing their cars to Australia in 2022.

NIO is an electric vehicle manufacturer based in Shanghai. The company wants to see EVs become a natural choice for consumers and wants to help create a sustainable future for all, and it seems like they are well-positioned to do just that.

Currently confined to the Chinese market, the manufacturer sold over 43,000 vehicles in China in 2020, doubling it’s market share from the previous year. They are seen as a more affordable alternative to Tesla, with the price of their ES8 SUV being sold for 448,000 yuan ($87,565 AUD) – much lower than comparable Tesla models.

Roger Malkusson from NIO has revealed that NIO does plan to expand to Europe and the US but there hasn’t been any date confirmed for this expansion. We are yet to heard any official announcements about NIO coming to Australia.

While NIO vehicles are not yet available in the US and Australia, their newest electric cars were spotted in Mildura, Victoria. They appeared to have been camouflaged NIO ES8 SUVs driving in the scorching heat. But what were they doing here?

According to Councillor Glenn Milne, NIO was testing their air conditioning. He posted pictures of himself alongside the vehicle, writing, “Checked out the NIO electric cars that are testing air conditioning in Mildura for a couple of months. Mildura has been hosting around 30 engineers from China as well as 7 or 8 vehicles. Pity we don’t have a racetrack to do some testing on.”

Where else could they test a car but in the extreme temperatures of Australia? And with that, it appears the Chinese company is gearing up to release their EVs into a wider market. It’s uncertain when it will happen. But with other Chinese EV manufacturers bringing their cars to Australia and Tesla rising in popularity here in Australia, we would have to think that Australia would be on NIO’s radar in the coming years.

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