Nio Group has officially launched its Firefly sub-brand in Thailand, bringing the Chinese EV maker’s cheapest lineup to Southeast Asia’s second-largest automotive market and marking the brand’s second right-hand-drive territory after the Singaporean debut.
Specific product pricing and configuration details will be announced later this month, the company said on Thursday.
Nio will sell the Firefly through a partnership with Thonburi Group, an established automotive and mobility solutions provider founded in 1941.
The deal was signed on October 24, 2025, in Shanghai by founder and CEO William Li.
Thonburi has more than eight decades of experience in the Thai auto industry and is the distributor and contract manufacturer for Mercedes-Benz.
Since late 2024, it has also held the distributorship for China’s giant Geely in Thailand.
The plans to launch in Thailand in March were first disclosed in January by Chris Chen, Nio’s vice president and head of global business, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on the same day the company officially entered Singapore.
Global Deliveries
Firefly has delivered more than 40,000 vehicles globally since its launch, a milestone reached on January 10.
The brand delivered a record 7,084 units in December before dropping to 2,807 in January and 2,657 in February — its second-worst monthly result since its first full month of deliveries in May 2025.
The Chinese New Year holiday weighed on both production and sales, with this year’s nine-day break the longest on record according to the China Passenger Car Association, reducing February to just 16 working days.
Firefly is now present in nearly a dozen countries. Nio plans to expand the brand to more than 40 markets worldwide.
RHD Expansion
Nio began mass producing right-hand drive vehicles in November in preparation to enter Singapore, Macau, Britain, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.
“Right-hand drive is a sizeable market, and we will be ready to build cars for the market,” Nio co-founder and President Lihong Qin said at a media briefing last year. “We will continue to go global with our Firefly and Onvo brands.”
The right-hand drive configuration of Firefly‘s debut model was first spotted in early October at the company’s UK engineering facilities.
The brand began taking orders in Macau late last year, making it the first market to open orders for the RHD version.
The United Kingdom is among the upcoming right-hand drive markets Firefly will enter later this year.
Thailand will be Firefly’s second market in Southeast Asia after Singapore, where Nio unveiled the brand at Singapore Motorshow 2026 in January and opened pre-sales through local partner Wearnes Automotive — a distributor that also operates dealerships for Lotus, Volvo, Land Rover, Bentley, Ducati, Polestar and Aston Martin.
Tariff Avoidance Strategy
Firefly’s focus on right-hand drive markets without EV import tariffs reflects lessons learned from Nio’s costly European expansion.
The European Commission imposed additional duties on Chinese-made fully electric vehicles in late 2024, forcing Firefly to raise its planned pricing in the region. Firefly chief Daniel Jin told Reuters late last year that the company was in talks with local distributors in the UK and Thailand as it pursues markets with more favorable trade conditions.
Nio aims to expand the Firefly brand across right-hand drive markets that have no tariffs on imported EVs.
Next Generation
Jin revealed last November that the brand is likely to launch a second generation of the model in 2027.
Speaking at the Nio House in Oslo during the founders’ visit to Europe, Jin was asked by YouTuber Bjørn Nyland about whether the brand was considering a performance variant.
“For this generation, we don’t have it on the agenda,” Jin said, noting however that they are “thinking about the next generation two years later.”
