Nio CEO William Li rejected a vehicle design that had existed for six months for lower energy consumption.

(Image credit: CnEVPost)

Nio (NYSE: NIO) will officially launch its mass-market sub-brand Onvo (Ledao in China) in 2 days, and ahead of that, the head of the sub-brand revealed a number of interesting things in an interview.

"We've prioritized low power consumption since Day 1," Onvo president Ai Tiecheng said in an interview with local media outlet 36kr, according to the text of the interview released today.

For lower vehicle energy consumption, Nio founder, chairman, and CEO William Li vetoed a vehicle styling that had been around for six months, Ai said.

At the time, the Onvo team had a model styling design that everyone thought was stunning, but Li said he needed to use the Chinese New Year holiday to think about it, Ai said, adding that Li later rejected the design because of the sacrifice of vehicle range.

"Batteries cost a lot of money, and if we reduce the power consumption, then the range is longer and it saves the user money," Ai said.

In addition, the 900-volt high voltage platform also facilitates more efficient power consumption management, he said.

"We communicate with the smart hardware, the operating system, the chip and even the fuse team to try to reduce the energy consumption by every kWh that can be reduced," Ai said.

Nio will officially launch the Onvo brand on International Family Day, May 15, at 7:30 pm Beijing time, when the event will be livestreamed, according to information the company announced on May 11.

Onvo's first model, the Onvo L60, will take on the Tesla Model Y, aiming primarily at the family-centric smart all-electric vehicle market in the RMB 250,000 yuan ($34,600) class, Nio said at a ceremony to roll out its 500,000th mass-produced vehicle.

The BOM (bill of materials) cost of Onvo's first model will be about 10 percent cheaper than that of Tesla's (NASDAQ: TSLA) Model Y, Li said previously.

"We've taken apart a lot of Tesla vehicles, and they've done a really good job in a lot of places," Ai said in the interview.

But if Onvo's cost controls don't compare to Tesla's in the Chinese market, that means the job has been done poorly, Ai said.

"We use all Chinese workers, Chinese supply chain, and we have full-stack in-house R&D. NT 3.0 is the new technology platform, and we've traded R&D for low cost," Ai said, adding, "We're very confident about competing with the Model Y."

Previously leaked spy shots showed that the Onvo L60 will not come with LiDAR. All current Nio models are built on the NT 2.0 platform, where roof-mounted LiDAR is standard.

Ai, when asked about LiDAR in the interview, said that if customers want a vehicle with LiDAR, they can choose Nio.

On a question about entering overseas markets, Ai said Onvo's vehicles are suitable for overseas markets, but did not give a timeline for going overseas.

"In the top-level design of the product, Onvo takes into account the global market, and the earliest architecture has a comprehensive consideration of safety," he said, adding, "We will keep having global thinking, but it needs to be done step by step."

The Nio brand is focused on the high-end market, so the Onvo brand won't need to worry about the market with a price tag of more than RMB 300,000 yuan, he said.

"Since we have chosen the mainstream family market, we should focus on the core, high-frequency needs of users," he said.

Ai said that he and his team visited a large number of Chinese cities from Tier 1 to Tier 5 over the past four years and found that the average car life of a family is seven years, and that they need the vehicle to be all-rounded and not have any shortcomings.

"Safety is fundamental for the family user, which is also Disney's philosophy," he said, adding, "Onvo's safety philosophy is to provide what it can, use good materials when need to, and make no compromises on safety."

Ai used to work at Disney, where a regular weekly meeting had a set agenda about safety matters in everyday life, according to 36kr.

He also mentioned that Onvo has separate systems in place for places close to the user, such as product, design, sales, and brand communication.

In infrastructure, such as service networks, Onvo can share with Nio, he said.

Onvo inherited autonomous driving capabilities from Nio, and the F2 factory has flexible production capabilities, Ai said.

Tesla's pure vision route has very unique capabilities globally, and Nio's R&D capabilities in autonomous driving could support Onvo's choice of this route, according to Ai.

Nio has accumulated nearly 2 billion kilometers of smart driving miles and has a very large amount of data, he said, adding that Onvo will be off to a great start when its products hit the market.

($1 = RMB 7.2348)

Nio Onvo's mobile app goes live, 1st promo video reveals glimpse of L60