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Dec. 20 (NBD) -- The delivery race among Chinese electric vehicle (EV) start-ups in 2018 is close to an end.

This year, a batch of automakers including WM Motor Technology Co Ltd (WM Motor), Nio and Xiaopeng Motor made promises to deliver their mass-produced EV models.

EV firm Nio, which announced it is able to deliver 10,000 models within this year, could become the winner of the competition.

The company launched the all-electric Nio ES8 SUV on December 16, 2017 and promised to start the first delivery in the first half of 2018. But the delivery date was later postponed to June 28.

The latest data shows that first 10,000 ES8 models have rolled off the production line and 9,726 vehicles have been delivered as of December 15, which almost reaches its goal.

WM Motor, one of Nio's counterparts, is set to lose the game, after Freeman Shen, founder, chairman and CEO at WM Motor, mentioned Tuesday that the delivery time for 10,000 units has been postponed to January of next year due to complicated delivery process.

The company went through a rough patch since its first electric model Weltmeister EX5 was released.

In June, an EV car of Yema Auto that put into use for less than three months caught fire while charging.

As the car battery supplier Godsend Power offered products both for Yema Auto and VM Motors, the news reportedly caused the cancellation of up to 30 percent of Weltmeister EX5 orders.

Weltmeister later refuted the rumor, saying that only 0.3 percent orders were cancelled, and it has received the deposits of over 10,000 orders as of June 11.

In late August, a fire outbreak of a Weltmeister EX5 at the research institute of VM Motors in Southwest China's Chengdu, further triggered the industry and consumers' concerns over safety risk of the model.

VM Motors then terminated collaboration with Godsend Power, and declared that vehicles to be delivered will not carry Godsend Power's batteries.

On September 28, the company finally started delivery of Weltmeister EX5. But a series of problems such as the delay of delivery raised complaints from customers only one month later.

Delivery schedules for other EV firms have been either changed or just revealed.

Singulato Motors said in October the new model iS6 is expected to be delivered around the Spring Festival of 2019, and Aiways' first EV model U5 Ion is planned to hit the market in April 2019.

With a reduction in government subsidies in China for both EV manufacturers and consumers, electric car makers could face intensified competition in Chinese market.

While Tesla is accelerating its localization in the country by building a new factory in Shanghai, foreign auto giants with stronger capital chains and more complete industrial chains are also making deployment in the EV field.

Chinese electric start-ups still have plenty of room for improvement.

Currently, most enterprises are new players and haven't obtained the production qualification. The contract manufacturing mode could be a solution for them.

In addition, their integration ability of the industrial chain needs to be upgraded and more investments in infrastructure and R&D are required.

Email: zhanglingxiao@nbd.com.cn