Nio, a Chinese electric car company that competes with Tesla, employs 11,000 people in research and development, but sells a mere 8,000 cars per month.
It has invested so extensively in robots that one of its factories employs just 30 technicians to make 300,000 electric car motors a year. Nio offers $350 augmented reality glasses for each seat in its cars, and has introduced a cellphone that interacts with the car’s self-driving system.
And none of it is profitable — far from it. Nio lost $835 million from April through June, or $35,000 for each car it sold.
Nio and other companies in China’s sprawling electric car sector have formidable government backing that allows them to withstand such losses and keep growing. When Nio nearly ran out of cash in 2020, a local government immediately injected $1 billion for a 24 percent stake, and a state-controlled bank led a group of other lenders to pump in another $1.6 billion.
Today Nio embodies China’s dominance of electric vehicle innovation and manufacturing, underlining its threat to traditional auto powers in Europe and the United States.
The strike by the United Automobile Workers union against three Detroit carmakers, now in its third week, is at its heart a conflict over electric vehicles: The companies say they must invest billions of dollars to retool their operations, while workers say they must defend their jobs from automation and technology while increasing their pay.
On Wednesday, European politicians worried by a…
