NIO’s New Firefly Brand Has Some Special Sauce, Could Help NIO Reach Profitability – CleanTechnica

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NIO launched a new brand last week, the low-cost Firefly brand. The new compact car from Firefly will cost as little as 148,800 yuan ($20,400) at launch. It also launched its most expensive model, the ET9, which starts at 788,000 yuan ($108,000), more than 5 times more! Clearly, NIO is trying to spread its wings into the high end of the market and the low end of the market in order to bring in more buyers, grow sales, and reach profitability. The company has a firm target to become profitable in 2026.

For NIO Day 2024, on December 21, the focus had to be something big. Launching a mass-market brand is a pretty good option. “Together & Further” was the theme, and NIO allowed in 22,000 NIO users to celebrate the 10-year anniversary as well as whatever’s to come. They convened at Haixinsha Asian Games Park, a major landmark in Guangzhou, to make this the biggest NIO Day in history. I’ll come back to more interesting aspects of NIO Day at the end, but let’s get to the big part of the story now — Firefly.

Firefly — The Important Things First

Of course, because that’s the fashion, “firefly” is not capitalized. But I’ll just say that I find that a bit irritating and am going to proceed with “Firefly.” The important stuff first.

I guess they didn’t find games with capitalization interesting enough, though. They decided the first model would just be called the Firefly. I can’t understand that, making such confusing decisions regarding the simple matter of naming a model, but, again, I’m focusing on less important matters.

Why Firefly Could Be A Hit

The most important element is the low price, as already mentioned. With a starting price just above $20,000, NIO can compete in a big new pool. Also, having a prestigious parent brand, one would think that it would immediately become one of the most desired vehicles in its class. Imagine Porsche or Tesla suddenly offering a $20,000 model, under a different sub-brand of course. Sales would be through the roof. That’s presumably happening with the Firefly EV right now.

Also, branding aside, the Firefly EV can benefit from the superbly convenient battery swapping ecosystem NIO has developed. Can any other $20,000 EV benefit from that? No!

And note that apartment dwellers without their own dedicated parking spaces and charge points are more likely to be the people in the market for a cheap EV. Battery swapping is going to be a big boost for such people, growing demand for the Firefly that much more.

On top of all that, the company writes, “firefly leverages NIO’s decade-long expertise in premium and aims to exceed expectations in design, safety, space, intelligence, and energy efficiency.” As part of that, NIO says that it designed Firefly to be the safest little car out there. “firefly raises small cars safety to new standards. It has been designed and engineered to meet both the latest C-NCAP and Euro-NCAP five-star ratings safety requirements, with a strong focus on structural design, material strength and passenger protection. The use of high strength steel and aluminium alloys accounts for 83.4% of the body structure – a proportion usually found in higher segments cars, whilst the body’s torsional stiffness of 35,700 Nm per degree remains unmatched in its class. The front doors also feature double anti-collision beams for better side impact protection.”

The EV is set to launch in April 2025.

Pre-Orders

You can place pre-orders for the Firefly EV via the company’s app. Reportedly, the pre-orders got to 6 figures (100,000+) in just the first 72 hours. Even in China, that’s an exceptional  start.

Fluffy Language

If you’re not quite sure about the Firefly yet, perhaps some fluffy marketing language from NIO will push you over the edge. “‘Freedom to glow’ is the spirit that underpins the firefly brand to provide urban lifestyle users with smart, intuitive and spacious cars. The brand logo is inspired by the character of the firefly itself, buzzing with energy, and represents freedom of movement. It became the foundation of the brand DNA : ‘vivid, thoughtful and solid’. firefly creates an aesthetic expression with a captivating design and an instantly recognisable street presence.” Nice.

NIO Day 2024

NIO also launched the extremely high-class, high-performance ET9 at NIO Day 2024.

And it had musician Chang Shilei join the stage, “conveying the power of journeying together through music.” There was more fun with a custom short film then being played. “Cheng Gong collaborated with NIO again, directing the story of nearly a hundred NIO users growing together with NIO for ten years through the documentary short film also called ‘Together & Further’.” Lastly, world-famous illustrator Sua Balac “unveiled the full-length “Journey Together” illustration scroll, artistically depicting the brand’s decade-long journey with employees, users, partners, and industry innovators.”

It looked like an exciting day, which is fitting for the launch of what could be a huge new small EV brand.