$NIO Inc(NIO.US)

"No Trace of Iron Shoes: NIO's Decade-Long March and Its Resonance with Mao Zedong Thought"

On the first day of December 2025, Li Bin held "The Long March" tightly in his hands, gazing at the lights of NIO ES8 and battery swap stations outside the window. The scene was like a convergence of history and reality—a company's ten-year journey resonating deeply with an expedition that changed China's destiny.

When the new energy wave surged, NIO chose the pure electric route against the trend, missing out on the extended-range benefits. During sales slumps, weekly rankings became popular domestically, with new forces rising rapidly; just as technology turned around, the weekly rankings abruptly stopped; when pushing for profitability, subsidies accelerated their phase-out. Fortune never seemed to favor NIO, but Li Bin found the answer in "The Long March": victory never goes to opportunists, but to those who steadfastly adhere to strategy and advance step by step.

NIO made battery swap stations its "base areas," adopting a "rural areas encircling the cities" approach. Now, over 3,000 swap stations cover the nation, solving the energy replenishment challenge. Technologically, it "concentrated forces to fight battles of annihilation," investing 60 billion in R&D to conquer solid-state batteries and autonomous driving chips, with the L60 model disrupting the market through innovation. Just like Mao's wisdom of protracted war and annihilation: avoid short-term noise and dig deep in key areas.

The deeper strength lies in NIO's "mass line." From NIO Houses to user co-creation systems, users are not just consumers but participants. In 2019, when NIO was on the brink of bankruptcy, it was the trust and support of users that secured critical investments. This mirrors how the Red Army relied on the masses to build the strongest moat in the coldest winter.

The resonance between Li Bin and "The Long March" reflects the entrepreneurial spirit of the new era: strategy as firm as rock, tactics as flexible as water, and the people's hearts as the foundation. NIO's decade is like the Red Army's journey from Ruijin to Yan'an—persisting amid doubts, breaking through after setbacks, and ultimately igniting "sparks" with technology, infrastructure, and public support.

History never favors the lucky, but rewards those who proceed steadily. As swap stations light up highways and L60 enters households, NIO proves with action: the real Long March has no savior, only the footprints of perseverance that will eventually pave the road to the future.@Future Trader Pi Kanchuan