BEIJING, May 13 (TMTPOST)— As of this week, Tesla’s Chinese rival NIO Inc has almost bumped up prices of its entire range of electric vehicle (EV) models, highlighting auto makers’ mounting pressure from the persistent increases in raw material cost.

Source: Visual China

NIO announced to raise by RMB10, 000 (US$15,000) for its electric sedan model ET7 from May 23, citing the recent increasing prices of raw materials across the world.  Customers can still buy the sedan at the existing price, if they pay deposit for ordering by May 22 and will take the delivery by the end of the year, according to an announcement on Friday.

The recent move suggests NIO has hiked a total of four models this month as the starting prices of ES8, ES6 and EC6 have been raised by RMB10,000 on May 10. ET5 became the EV maker’s only model on sale that hasn’t seen price hike yet.

NIO’s competitors in China have already made the same response. In March alone, BYD, backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, hiked prices by RMB3,000 to RMB6,000, and Xpeng confirmed the increase range between RMB10,000 and RMB20,000. Tesla China had third price-raising in a week, affecting all the versions sold in the country but the Model 3 Rear-Wheel Drive (RWD) that month, when CEO Elon Musk expressed his serious concern over “significant” inflation pressure.

Earlier this week, two Japanese auto giants made the warning of rising cost. Toyota Motor warned its full year profit could suffer an up to 20% decline due to “unprecedented” increases in materials and logistics costs. Honda expected the chip shortage and rising raw material costs could cut its annual earnings by 7%, rather than a forecasted rise.

It is notable that the rising-price trend of auto makers’ suppliers is far from over.  SNE Research last month said South Korean battery makers were highly likely to rise prices by 30% to 40% in the coming two or three years. Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL), the world’s largest EV battery maker revealed in the late April that it was set to raise price in the second quarter as the spike in material prices was "too huge" to bear. The executives thought the price would have risen about 20% to 30% but it turned out that it shockingly shot up to as high as RMB500,000 in Q1, twenty times more than a year earlier, according to CATL’s earnings call.

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