Sporting a fresh cropped haircut, Nio co-founder and chief executive William Li was greeted like a rock star by tens of thousands of devoted fans on Saturday night as he took to the stage at the Olympic stadium in Xi’an, China’s ancient central capital.
Li, who is often referred to as China’s Elon Musk, has sparked division among investors and analysts. Some see his bet on battery-swapping technology — which is at the heart of the electric vehicle group’s business plan and competes with the likes of Tesla that only charges vehicles individually — as unworkable outside China’s big cities.
Others question the financial sustainability of his premium electric vehicles business, which, nearly a decade after being founded in 2014, remains in a fight for survival as it struggles with heavy losses and the high costs of rolling out its battery-swapping infrastructure.