It has been a frustrating couple of years. Had my eyes on NIO. Did great initially. From $18 to $60+. Since then it has been dropping and currently traded at $7.56. I have had my positive and negative views on NIO. 

The positive:

1. It has good products and their battery swapping technology. 

2. It is expanding into Europe and hopefully to USA soon. 

3. Potentially good business model in battery as a service or BAAS. 

On the negative side:

1. Given the history as a relatively new auto company, I am not sure if there are enough consumers willing to pay for such premium price for a new company with premium products.

2. Their NIO houses are expensive to operate and maintain. Most NIO houses are located at prime locations in China and Europe. Not sure the concept generate enough interest to attract more buyers from this aspect. In another word, not sure of the ROI from NIO houses.

3. Battery swap stations also come with additional cost to build and operate. They need to supply and maintain additional batteries at all the battery swap stations, thus an added cost.

4. Legacy auto makers, especially German's (Mercedes, BMW, VW group), are catching up FAST in their BEVs offering. They have their decades of premium branding to go with. Further, they have had their worldwide presence which are ready to export and sell their BEVs. They are able to expand their BEVs worldwide much more rapidly as what they are presently doing.

5. Battery technology are improving at a much rapid pace in terms of higher capacity with longer range and faster charging time. From consumer perspective, having battery swapping technology and BAAS may still be relevant in terms of the flexibility of changing to newer battery, and be able to swap/rent a higher capacity battery when needed. But the gap is closing in term of the time taken to charge as compare to swap a battery.

6. Management tend to paint a much rosy and overly optimistic expectation on NIO's future direction. When expectations are not met, there would be reasons given. (Not going into detail on this)

So, I hope things could turn around and soon. NIO has been in red. NIO CEO had mentioned that NIO may turn profitable by end of 2023. We will see about that. I truly hope so. But, realistically, I have my doubts and I hope I am wrong.