• CBS’s 60 Minutes interviewed NIO founder and CEO William Li in a new segment that aired Sunday night.
• Li didn’t deny calling his car a “Tesla killer” and compared Elon Musk’s competitor to high fashion clothing.
• “They may be beautiful, but you can’t wear them every day,” he told correspondent Holly Williams.

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As Tesla builds its second “gigafactory” in Shanghai, its biggest domestic competitor in the country is ready to play hardball.

Nio, an $US8 billion electric car maker that began trading on the New York Stock Exchange last year, is rapidly scaling up throughout China – and thinks it can keep Tesla at bay.

In a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday, founder and CEO William Li – who didn’t deny calling his company a “Tesla killer” – compared Tesla’s vehicles to high-fashion clothing.

“It’s like the clothes fashion models wear on the catwalk,” he said in Chinese of Tesla’s cars. “It’s not the same “They may be beautiful, but you can’t wear them every day.”

The comparison continued to include supermodels.

“So Tesla is the supermodel and you’re the girl next door?” asked correspondent Holly Williams. “Yeah,” Li replied.

To be sure, Nio produced just 10,000 cars last year. While Tesla does not disclose unit sales in China, it brought in $US1.75 billion worth of revenue from the country in 2019, or about 8% of its global total. Eight per cent of Tesla’s global deliveries works out to nearly 20,000, assuming the same proportion of revenue and deliveries.

Michael Dunne, an auto analyst in China interviewed as part of the segment, says there could be room for both companies to exist.

“There’s plenty of market here to allow Tesla to play and Nio to play,” he said, adding that time could be running out for the US to catch up to China’s increasing lead on producing electric vehicles.

“It’s not too late,” Dunne said when asked about the US’ relatively slow rate of adoption. But, he warned, “if we wait to 2025, China will be making 5 million a year, and if we’re still making a half a million. Now all of the technology and design engineering is concentrated in China. How do you catch up with that?”

Watch the full 60 Minutes segment here.

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