China has no dearth of electric car startup, but Nio stands out as amongst the best in the business. It has plans on being in every major EV market by 2024 and is starting this journey with an expansion into Norway. To get here, it needs some massive R&D capability and production. Currently, it achieves this by a partnership with JAC Motors. But now, it is building the NeoPark which will be a massive "smart electric vehicle industry park" that will be built in Hefei, China.
This facility will be massive by any measures at 16,950 acres. This is 12 times the size of the Tesla plant in Fremont, but not as big as its gigafactory. Nio is making a massive investment for the same spending 50 billion yuan ($7.7.24 billion). The facility will be divided into three areas - one for smart manufacturing, one area will be dedicated to R&D and finally, there will be a living area with an eco-park for the employees and visitors.
The 16,950 acre facility will be 12x larger than the Tesla Fremont facility
Nio is expecting to have 10,000 R&D employees and 40,000 technical workers on the site and have a production capacity of 1 million EVs ad 100 GWh in battery packs per year. It is key to its expansion plan. Nio also expects to offset the costs of the plant in savings from every vehicle that has been manufactured at the facility. It could be looking at saving $463.60 per car which when scaled to a million vehicles per year is almost half a billion dollars in just logistics costs since the average mileage for its current logistics is 901 km. Nio will be working on putting suppliers and the ecosystem for manufacturing in and around the park.
The construction of the site began earlier this week and will be finished within a years time. Nio expects a gross yearly output of $77.24 billion.
The $7.7 billion facility will be ready in another 337 days
