A Chinese electric car maker Nio has announced its filing to go public on the New York Stock Exchange. The company through this initial public offering (IPO) is looking to raise $1.8 billion.
With this, Nio has become the first Chinese automaker to seek a listing in the U.S. This news comes at a time when Elon Musk is looking forward to taking Tesla private. The company seems to represent new competition to automaker Tesla.
“We are generally targeting to launch a new model every year in the near future as we ramp up our business,” the company stated.
The initial public offering is being led by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Deutsche Bank AG, Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse Group AG and UBS Group AG.
The company applied to list its American depositary shares under the symbol NIO, and the $1.8 billion registration amount is a placeholder to calculate filing fees. At present, the company claims to have more than 6,200 employees.
Nio believes that it is a pioneer in the market for premium electric vehicles in China. Its electric cars offer music streaming through Tencent, and delivery services are available through China’s JD.com. It also has a charging system for homes with services for mobile charging, battery swapping and 24-hour pickup and drop-off.
“In March 2018, Tesla indicated that its autopilot system was engaged at the time of a fatal accident and an Uber Technologies Inc. self-driving vehicle struck a pedestrian leading to a fatality,” Nio said in the filing. ” To the extent accidents associated with our autonomous driving systems occur, we could be subject to liability, government scrutiny and further regulation.”
Founded in 2014 and based in Shanghai, initially, the company was known as Nextev. Nio’s investors include Baidu, Lenovo and Sequoia Capital.
NIO’s founder Li stated that he plans to transfer 50 million shares that account for about one-third of shares he owns in the company, to a trust at an “appropriate time in the future”.