Nio will close its sales and service hub in Cologne at the end of September, according to a notice the company sent to users and seen by EV, the second of the company’s three German hubs to shut this month and the latest cut to its network in Europe’s largest automotive market.
In August, and according to official vehicle registration data from KBA, the premium brand registered a single vehicle in Germany.
The hub in Weiterstadt, near Frankfurt, closes at the same time.
Nio informed users of both closures on July 23, in near-identical messages that EV has reviewed. Once both shut, Munich will be Nio’s only remaining hub in Germany.
The closures take effect a week after founder and Chief Executive Officer William Li toured Europe and Nio said in a media briefing that changes to its operating model in the region “do not represent an exit from Europe.”
What Nio Told Customers
“Due to the current conditions in the automotive market, NIO is optimising its business in the European market,” the Cologne notice said. “As part of this change, NIO has decided to close the hub in Cologne by the end of September 2026.”
“To continue offering you the service you are used to, our existing network of carefully selected and trained service workshops in the region is available to you,” it said, directing owners to book through the One-Click-Service function in the Nio app.
Both messages ran under the line “NIO remains committed to the German market and its users.” The Weiterstadt notice used the same wording, naming that hub.
EV first reported the Weiterstadt closure on July 23. Nio’s notice that day set the closure date at the end of September.
Replying to owners in the Nio app’s community section, a Nio representative said the company had chosen to send the notices only to users directly affected.
She described the closures as “a planned optimisation in response to a European market that is changing for all manufacturers, through tariffs, more competition and slower market development.”
“It is not a retreat,” she wrote. “NIO is leaving neither Europe nor Germany.”
In the Cologne thread, she told an owner awaiting delivery that the hub would remain open until the end of September and that his handover should not be affected.
Owners’ Response
The Cologne notice drew more than 70 comments. Owners questioned how maintenance and warranty work would be handled without Nio’s own workshops.
One owner in Mainz, with about three and a half years of warranty left, asked whether he would now have to drive to Munich for repairs. Another noted that at least this closure had come with an email, unlike the Hamburg Nio House.
In the Weiterstadt thread, owners described the hub’s staff as a reason they had bought the car. One wrote that a Nio sales adviser had assured him before his purchase of the Weiterstadt hub and of an expanding swap-station network. Another said his car was still in the hub’s workshop when the notice arrived.
The Cologne Hub
Nio opened the Cologne hub on June 27, 2024, as its second hub worldwide after Munich.
It occupies about 2,600 square metres on Württembergische Allee in the Marsdorf district, with a showroom, workshop and storage, according to property reports at the time of the lease.
The hub’s service area opened after the showroom. Nio said in October 2024 that the workshop would open “shortly.”
Hubs are the working tier of Nio’s retail network, combining a compact showroom with an in-house workshop, vehicle handover and day-to-day service. Nio Houses are city-centre flagship showrooms without workshops.
Closing Cologne and Weiterstadt removes two of Nio’s three German workshops in a single month. North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, will be left with the Düsseldorf Nio House, which has no workshop.
A Shrinking Network
The closures extend a year of retrenchment in Germany.
Nio closed its Hamburg Nio House in July, the first closure of one of its flagship showrooms anywhere. Christian Wiegand, the deputy head of Nio Germany, left the company the same month to join rival XPeng.
Manager Magazin reported in April that Nio was seeking subtenants for its four German flagship showrooms, in Berlin, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Hamburg.
In February, Nio split its European management into six departments and moved sales toward distributors in every market except Norway. In May, it told European owners it would bring no model updates before late 2027 and build no new swap stations in the region.
The Commitment
Li visited Europe last week for the first time since November 2025. He gave a keynote at the World Trade Organization in Geneva on September 14 and met owners at the Nio House in Amsterdam the next day.
A media briefing Nio sent to EV and other outlets during the trip said the European model “will continue to combine direct operations in selected markets with local distributor partnerships,” without naming the markets that stay direct.
It pushed the European launch of the Onvo brand to 2028 or 2029.
The briefing also said Nio had spent the past year reshaping its European organisation, physical footprint and operating model, calling these “not isolated adjustments.” It did not name any locations, including the two German hubs whose closure it had already announced to users.
Nio “will continue to support existing vehicles through service, warranty, parts and connected services in line with its lifecycle commitments,” the briefing said.
Li closed the trip with a LinkedIn post saying Nio would not “pursue expansion for its own sake”. “Being a user enterprise means being there not only when we sell a car,” he wrote. “We’ll continue to support them throughout the entire ownership journey.”
Worst Year on Record
Nio registered one car in Germany in August, according to Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) data, the same number as in January and April.
That took its total for the first eight months to 19, down 90.1% from 191 a year earlier.
It registered 325 cars in Germany in 2025, 398 in 2024 and 1,263 in 2023, putting this year on course to be its weakest since it began selling in the country in late 2022.
Nio fired its German country chief in March after monthly sales fell to a single unit, and has not replaced him.
Global group deliveries reached 262,893 through August, up 57.9%, and Nio has reported two consecutive quarters of adjusted net profit.
