Firefly will unveil a new version of its only model on Friday, the seventh design variant the Nio sub-brand has produced since August 2025.
The brand teased the car on Thursday, posting a 25-second video evoking an Italian beach. The post names the Italian word for beach, ‘spiaggia’, and says the brand will take followers into a long summer on the southern Italian coast on August 28.
Firefly‘s post does not say whether the car is a numbered limited run in the mould of the five Firefly has already sold, or a second entry in the Halo design series the brand introduced in July.
It gives no price, allocation or specification.
Seven Variants, One Body
Firefly sells a single model.
Since August 25 last year it has repackaged that car six times, and Friday makes seven in 368 days.
The Nomadic Maillard arrived on August 25, 2025, capped at 333 units and priced at 133,800 yuan ($19,900) with the battery included, 11.7% above the base car. It sold out in about 30 hours.
The Night Creature followed in October, a larger run of 666 units from 136,800 yuan ($20,400), a 14.2% premium, in Dark Night Black metallic with a handling package using red high-rigidity springs and dampers.
On January 15 the brand released the Pegasus Rhapsody, announced alongside a limited edition for the Onvo sub-brand.
Styled by Dutch artist Jordy van den Nieuwendijk around a flying-horse motif for the Chinese Year of the Horse, it was capped at just 99 units.
The variant was priced from 95,800 yuan ($14,300) under Battery as a Service against 79,800 yuan ($11,900) for the standard car — a premium of 20.1%, the steepest of the series.
A further edition arrived in March, limited to 166 units at 137,800 yuan ($20,500), a 15.0% premium, launched into the seasonal sales trough that follows the Lunar New Year.
The Pixel Player came on June 10, again 333 units, at 135,800 yuan ($20,200) against a 119,800-yuan ($17,800) base, a 13.4% premium.
Built around retro gaming aesthetics with an exclusive metal roof and racing-style alloys, it sold out in under eight hours — against the 30 hours the first edition needed to clear an identical allocation.
Then in July the brand changed the format.
The Halo series was unveiled on July 20 in Shanghai, a day after Firefly passed 70,000 cumulative deliveries, presented not as a numbered drop but as the brand’s first product line built around design as the primary driver.
The Special Editions
Two things hold across the series.
Every variant has carried a double-digit percentage premium over the equivalent base car — 11.7%, 14.2%, 20.1%, 15.0% and 13.4% for the five numbered runs — and every one has sold out.
And the scarcity mechanic is working faster each time.
An allocation of 333 cleared in about 30 hours in August and in under eight by June, a compression brand marketing chief Pu Yang noted publicly, saying the pace exceeded management expectations and that buyers who missed out had asked for more.
None of the six earlier variants has been offered outside China.
Firefly sells in seven European markets and extended price cuts into late summer across four of them this month, at 11% to 17% off the Select trim, discounting in Europe while charging premiums at home.
Brand chief Daniel Jin said in December that international availability of the limited editions would depend on local distributors raising their hands.
2026 Mode Year
A model-year update in April left pricing unchanged while raising peak motor output to 120 kilowatts through software at no cost to existing owners, and the brand began rolling out a further software release in China on August 14.
Nio opened the first of its fifth-generation battery swap stations in early August, the first generation compatible with Firefly’s shorter wheelbase, giving the brand access to a domestic network it had been excluded from since launch.
Europe’s stations remain incompatible.
The Sales Line Behind It
Firefly delivered 5,771 vehicles globally in July, 16% of Nio Inc.’s total for the month and down from 6,946 in June. Deliveries through seven months reached 34,943, more than triple the year-earlier figure, making Firefly the fastest-growing of Nio’s three brands.
Exports remain marginal.
The brand shipped 54 vehicles out of China in July, its second-strongest export month of 2026 and enough to lift group exports to a four-month high, though all three brands together accounted for 0.26% of Nio Inc.’s deliveries that month.
Jin said in December that the brand aimed to reach 100,000 cumulative deliveries by the end of 2026. It passed 70,000 on July 19.
