Nio, the young startup that has offices in the U.K., Germany and California, has a long road ahead of it before it catches up with Elon Musk.

CGTN’s John Terret reports.

Nio is only four years old, but it has ambitions to become the world’s biggest maker of electric vehicles one day. It’s backed by rich Chinese firms that were themselves startups not so long ago like Tencent and Baidu.

The company says it’s targeting China’s growing middle class in big Chinese cities and will expand overseas eventually.

Nio has yet to turn a profit. In the first six months of this year it posted $7 million in sales and a loss of just over $500 million. Nio also faces stiff competition from similar companies within China and the established car companies outside like Ford which are also eyeing the electric market.

Like others before it, Nio was forced to scale back its ambitions for raising cash with its IPO-revised to $1 billion rather than almost $2 billion.

In the end, the stock priced at $6.26 a share valuing the company at $6.4 billion.

At the closing bell of Wednesday’s trading, Nio shares closed at 6.60 up 5.4 percent.