The Chinese manufacturer wants to dominate the premium electric car market and the not-so-premium market through a new brand.
A few days ago, NIO announced its strategic plan for Europe, a plan that includes the arrival of the Chinese brand in several European countries with a major offensive of three electric cars (NIO ET7, NIO ET5 and NIO EL7).
But NIO wants to go all out in Europe and wants to cover all types of electric car segments, from low-cost vehicles to premium electric cars.
For premium electric cars the brand already has the name NIO, while for low-cost electric cars the carmaker will create a new brand, which has no name announced but is codenamed ALPS.
In fact, this new brand has already been discussed by NIO’s own CEO last year, where he indicated that his goal was to create a generalist electric car brand, and even made the simile of Volkswagen and Audi or Toyota and Lexus where NIO is Audi or Lexus and the new brand will be his Volkswagen or Toyota.
This new brand, currently known as ALPS, is expected to become a reality in China in 2024. For Europe its arrival will be earlier in countries where the car fleet is more generalist addressing first countries like France, Italy and Spain, leaving for a future countries like Germany.
Although it is still too early to talk about prices, the new ALPS brand expects to be able to offer a range of electric cars priced between $14,000 and $28,000.
If NIO is finally able to offer these prices while maintaining a good quality/performance ratio, it could be a manufacturer that gains a large volume of sales in Europe, because as you already know, there are many manufacturers that are focused on covering a market for electric cars that is in high demand but with very few offers: the low-priced electric car.
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