NIO Inc. Bin Li

Founder, Chairman & CEO, NIO Inc. (NIO)

Founded the company as NextEV in November 2014 and has been chairman since inception and chief executive since March 2018. Before NIO he co-founded Bitauto in 2000 and chaired the NYSE-listed Bitauto Holdings from 2010 to 2020. He is the architect of the battery-swap strategy that separates the battery from the car, and of the three-brand structure - NIO, ONVO and firefly - that took quarterly deliveries past 124,000 in the December 2025 quarter.

On the record with shareholders

Earnings calls

  1. Q2 2026 Sep 1, 2026 William Li argued that NIO has stopped competing on price and started competing on brand, and that this is what makes the margin repair durable rather than cyclical. His evidence was an average transaction price of RMB406,000 for the NIO brand in the June quarter - above Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi on the same registration data - three quarters of ES9 buyers arriving from outside NIO's existing user base, and an ES8 that has not faded in the eleven months since launch. Against that he set the cost side plainly: roughly RMB14,000 a car of input inflation since late last year and another RMB2,000-3,000 still coming, with the company intending to grow gross profit through it. The forward numbers were his rather than the release's: a fourth-quarter target of more than 40,000 vehicles a month, mid-term annual volume growth of 40-50%, and positive operating and free cash flow held through both remaining quarters. Read the call · 10 quotes →
In their own words

Podcasts, interviews & articles

3 recorded appearances

2026

2025

Full Q&A with William Li and Lihong Qin, Nio House Oslo, Norway.
Talk NIO House Oslo · Nov 4, 2025 · 1h 22m

Full Q&A with William Li and Lihong Qin, Nio House Oslo, Norway.

An unedited hour and a half of open questions from European owners, taken alongside co-founder Lihong Qin at the Oslo NIO House. Useful because it is the format where he answers on the European rollout, the swap network and service economics without an investor-relations frame around it.

Watch or read →