In 2012, with the launch of Tesla's first mass-produced car, Model S, CEO Elon Musk not only brought about a revolution in car's power source but also overturned the sales model of car companies.
In November 2017, William Li, founder of Nio, built the first Nio House in Beijing with rents costing tens of millions of RMB per year, and the services it provides far exceed those of Tesla.
Li's high-end positioning for Nio has given Nio users a high sense of self-identification and extraordinary internal cohesion. Nio stands out from dozens of new carmakers and has created a sect of electric cars, "Nioism".
Since 2019, when Nio faced a crisis, Li has been going around the country to communicate with users. Not only user meetings, but even private dinners and drinks, birthdays, weddings, and other events were attended.
In 2019 Li went to more than 40 cities to meet with users, and even if Nio improves in 2020, he still has more than 30 weekends to spend with users across the country.
Users like to share their lives and cars in Nio APP online, and there are also criticisms and suggestions from users from time to time. Faced with users' criticism, Li is not annoyed and explains patiently in the community every day.
Li is patient in answering users' questions, but indifferent to the media's accusations. "As long as it doesn't affect users' emotions, these questions and curses are very normal", he claims.
A user on the Nio APP shared that on the way home after buying the car, he was unfamiliar with charging and couldn't connect the power because he was using it for the first time. Suddenly another ES6 stopped by and helped to charge up.
And on the road, some Nio users would show their kindness to each other even though they didn't know each other. Some users even shared that they saw two Nio cars yielding to each other at an intersection.
In December 2017, Nio held the first Nio Day. Li chartered 8 airplanes, 60 high-speed rail cars, 19 five-star hotels, and invited Imagine Dragons, spending a total of RMB 80 million ($12.3 million at the time).
The money has enabled Nio to reached a height that Xpeng and Li Auto have never been able to reach, and the highly loyal users make it difficult for peers to catch with it.
On January 8 this year, Nio held its fourth Nio Day, a grand festival for users that brought together more than 1,000 users from all over China to Chengdu. The users from Shenzhen organized and chartered a plane to Chengdu, according to the video, the plane crew and passengers were all Nio users.
One user towed his ES6 from Shenzhen to Chengdu on a trailer, covering 1,800 kilometers, just to be a volunteer for Nio.
In the four quarters of 2019, 45% of Nio's orders came by referrals from regular customers. And by the time Li was interviewed by the media in 2020, including the ES6 and the ES8 released in late 2019, that sales figure had risen to 69%.
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