At the 2026 China Automotive Chongqing Forum, Li Bin, Chairman and CEO of NIO, stated that despite the company’s challenging period over the past few years, its sales have still grown by more than 30% annually. Since the second half of 2023, NIO has entered a new growth cycle, with sales expected to increase by 40% to 50% in 2024. He noted that this growth largely stems from NIO’s accurate assessment of the “inflection point for battery electric vehicles (BEVs),” which aligns closely with market realities—since the second half of last year, BEV penetration and market share have significantly risen across all vehicle segments. Li Bin also observed that China’s passenger vehicle fleet has now reached 370 million units, marking the end of the era of rapid market expansion and ushering in a phase dominated by competition within an existing market base. Based on current trends, he forecasts that domestic automotive retail sales in 2024 will decline by 15% to 20% year-over-year, pushing the industry into its most intensely competitive stage yet. He emphasized that automakers today are being tested across multiple dimensions—including product definition, core technologies, supply chain management, manufacturing, sales and service, and brand building—highlighting the need for comprehensive operational capabilities. As homogenization intensifies among new energy vehicles, competing solely on specifications is no longer sufficient; establishing a complete, mature, and highly efficient development system has become critical for automakers to build core competitive advantages, differentiate themselves, and accelerate the industry’s transformation and upgrading.