Source: Onvo
Ai Tiecheng, Onvo’s CEO, announced that the brand will be opening a total of 200 stores across 120 cities in Mainland China by the end of the year to reach more customers.
As of the second quarter of 2024, Tesla had 407 stores in 97 cities, suggesting that Onvo may already exceed Tesla’s sales channel coverage.
On September 1st, onvo had opened 105 stores at once across 55 cities in China, which is more than the number of retail vehicle stores Xiaomi had as of the end of Q2. Xiaomi also only had stores selling the SU7 across 30 cities.
Source: NIO
Onvo’s debut, from purely a sales channels perspective, has been fairly impressive, focusing mostly on Tier 1 and 2 cities in the developed provinces in China, with 20 in Zhejiang, 19 in Jiangsu, and 11 in both Shanghai and Guangdong.
China classifies its cities using a six-tier system ranging from Tier 1, emerging Tier 1, to Tier 5 cities, based on factors such as economic development.
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Tier 1 cities have a GDP in excess of 300 billion USD and only features 4 cities, including Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenzhen.
In a press release, NIO unveiled that Onvo started delivery on September 28 and delivered 832 by the end of the month. Onvo has also opened 125 stores in 57 cities across China as of September 1st.
According to LandRoads, a Chinese research firm, Tesla operated 407 stores across 97 cities in China as of June 2024.
Source: Onvo
By comparison, Onvo’s current sales channel is nearly a third of Tesla’s current store count, and located in more than half of the cities where Tesla operates.
By end of year, Onvo plans to exceed Tesla’ city footprint with 200 stores, about half of Tesla’s, across 120 cities.
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NIO currently has 516 stores in 109 cities. Given Onvo’s strategy to target the 200,000 to 300,000 yuan market segment, we expect a gradual inroad into lower Tier cities.
XPeng, which sells vehicles priced between 100,000 - 400,000 RMB, had 612 outlets across 195 cities in China.
The largest sales channel goes to BYD of course, with 1,571 stores across 303 cities for the Ocean series and 1,816 stores across 318 cities for the Dynasty series.