The Nio booth at the 19th International Automobile Industry Exhibition (Auto Shanghai 2021) on Tuesday Photo: Xie Jun/GT

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker Nio has suspended vehicle production due to the halted supply chain in different cities brought by the epidemic, the company said on Saturday. 

"Since March, due to the epidemic, the company's supplier partners in several cities including Jilin, Shanghai and Jiangsu suspended production one after the other and have yet to recover," the notice read.

The company will postpone deliveries of the EVs to customers and will work together with the suppliers to strive for resumption and delivery as soon as possible, it said.

The major reason is that Nio's factories, test sites, and interactive centers are all in Shanghai,  an independent car analyst Feng Shiming told the Global Times on Saturday.

As the city is taking swift actions to contain the virus spread in the shortest possible time, almost every link of Nio's supply chain has been impacted, Feng said.

Shanghai inaugurated its largest makeshift hospital with 50,000 beds on Saturday amid heightened efforts in battling Omicron. The city reported 1,015 confirmed and 22,609 asymptomatic domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases on the day, a new record. 

Nio delivered 25,768 vehicles in the first three months of this year, up 29 percent year-on-year, according to industry data. 

Industry data show that Shanghai is home to the country's greatest number of EV-related companies, totaling 18,200, according to industry outlet autohome.com.cn

Global Times