Nio Inc's (NYSE: NIO) founder, chairman and CEO William Li has once again warned about the trend of increasingly heavy Chinese cars, saying the race for battery capacity is shifting the cost onto public roads.

"Some cars are packed with 120-kWh batteries weighing 700 to 800 kilograms. The weight doesn't matter much to the car itself, but has anyone calculated the impact on the roads?" Li said at the auto industry night forum of the 2026 World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, on Thursday.

"At 1.2 times the weight, the damage to the road is 2.07 times," he said, according to a Yicai report on Friday. The conclusion derives from the "fourth-power law" in road engineering, which holds that a vehicle's damage to pavement is proportional to the fourth power of its axle load — 1.2 to the fourth power is roughly 2.07.

Li shared the stage at the forum with Eric Li, chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, in their first public dialogue since the two sides reached a comprehensive strategic partnership on charging and battery swapping on September 28. The discussion centered on power battery lifespan and energy replenishment strategies.

Li said the weight issue directly shapes Nio's technology trade-offs. Nio's battery packs generally weigh 400 to 500 kilograms, and the lighter weight means the company must accept the constraints of smaller battery capacity and shorter driving range, while continuing to seek solutions within those limits.

"Will we be rewarded for doing this? I don't know," he said.

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