Firefly, the small-car sub-brand of Chinese EV maker Nio, held a ceremony in Hefei on Saturday to mark the delivery of its 80,000th vehicle, 494 days after the brand handed over its first car on April 29, 2025.
The brand announced the event on its official Weibo account, writing that the ceremony for the 80,000th delivery had been “successfully held in Hefei” and that it was now “together with more than 80,000” owners.
The post did not say on which date the 80,000th vehicle was delivered.
Nio‘s monthly delivery releases already put the threshold behind the brand before the weekend: Firefly delivered 5,852 vehicles in August, and the seventeen monthly brand figures the group has disclosed since April 2025 add up to 80,209 as of August 31.
Nio itself publishes a cumulative figure only for the group as a whole, 1,260,485 at the end of August, and has never issued a Firefly-only running total.
On the summed figures, the 80,000th car was handed over in the closing days of August rather than in September, and the Hefei event was the celebration of the milestone.
Firefly has not said whether its milestone counter includes vehicles delivered outside China, and Nio‘s monthly brand figures are global.
The Milestone Sequence
Saturday’s event extends a cadence of publicly dated 10,000-unit markers that the brand has kept since launch.
Firefly reached 10,000 deliveries on July 26, 2025, 20,000 on September 27 and 30,000 on November 21, the last of those announced by founder and CEO William Li at the Guangzhou Auto Show.
The 40,000th car was delivered on January 10 this year, the 50,000th on March 29, the 60,000th on May 23 and the 70,000th on July 16, in Lishui, Zhejiang province.
The two previous 10,000-unit blocks took 55 and 54 days respectively.
Measured to Saturday’s ceremony, the latest block took 51 days; measured to the month-end tally, which had already crossed 80,000, it took at most 46.
Hefei, in Anhui province, is where Nio builds the Firefly hatchback, and where a production-line adjustment in July 2025 preceded the brand’s ramp from a low of 2,366 deliveries that month.
The Delivery Record
Firefly delivered 231 vehicles in its partial first month, April 2025, and closed that year with 39,414 units after a record 7,084 in December.
January and February 2026 fell to 2,807 and 2,657, the second-worst month since launch, as China halved its purchase-tax exemption and the Lunar New Year holiday ran to a record length.
March recovered to 6,119, followed by 4,980 in April, 5,663 in May and 6,946 in June, the brand’s best month of 2026 and second-best on record.
July slipped to 5,771 and August edged up 1.4% to 5,852, a 34.7% increase from the 4,346 delivered in August 2025.
Deliveries in the first eight months of 2026 totaled 40,795, giving the brand a 15.5% share of the 262,893 vehicles Nio Inc. delivered across its three brands over the period, and 16.3% of the group’s 35,836 units in August.
Since April, monthly volumes have stayed within a band of 4,980 to 6,946, a narrower range than either the Nio brand or Onvo has posted this year.
The Year-End Target
Brand president Daniel Jin said in September 2025 that Firefly aimed to reach 100,000 customers globally by the end of 2026.
At 80,209 through August, the brand has completed 80.2% of that goal and needs 19,791 more deliveries across September to December, an average of 4,948 a month, below every monthly result since March.
Nio Inc. guided on Tuesday for third-quarter deliveries of 108,000 to 111,000 vehicles, which after 35,934 in July and 35,836 in August implies 36,230 to 39,230 for September.
At Firefly‘s August share of 16.3%, that range would correspond to about 5,900 to 6,400 vehicles for the brand, though the company does not guide by brand.
The group’s full-year goal of 40% to 50% growth on 2025’s 326,028 deliveries implies 456,000 to 489,000 vehicles, of which 53.8% to 57.7% had been delivered by the end of August.
One Model, Many Editions
Firefly still sells a single model, a compact hatchback priced in China at 119,800 to 125,800 yuan with the battery included, or 79,800 to 85,800 yuan under Nio‘s battery-rental plan with a 399 yuan monthly fee.
Li told analysts on last week’s earnings call that the approach will not change next year: “And for the Firefly brand, we will keep this single model strategy but keep rolling out special editions and also technology upgrades,” he said, likening it to “taking the iPhone approach.”
The brand has leaned on limited runs to keep the nameplate visible, launching its seventh design variant in a year on August 28, a 666-unit coastal-themed edition priced at 135,800 yuan, after the design-led Halo series debuted in July with its first model priced from 133,300 yuan.
August also brought the brand into Nio‘s battery-swap network for the first time, when the group opened its 4,000th station and first fifth-generation unit on August 7; earlier stations could not accommodate the hatchback’s shorter wheelbase.
On August 14 Firefly began rolling out Aster 2.0.0, the first full version change to its operating system since launch.
Overseas Volumes
The 80,000 total is overwhelmingly a China number.
Firefly began European deliveries in August 2025 and sells in seven markets there, plus Singapore and Thailand in right-hand drive, but exports from China ran at 54 vehicles in July, the brand’s second-strongest export month of 2026.
The brand has extended price cuts of 11% to 17% across four European markets through late summer, while none of its special editions has been offered outside China.
Jin said in March that brand awareness remained the brand’s main obstacle abroad, and that Firefly would rely on local distributors rather than repeat the direct-sales model Nio used in its early years in Europe.
Saturday’s Weibo post thanked owners who joined an owner “face-to-face” session held alongside the ceremony and closed by saying the brand looked forward to reaching “the next growth milestone” together.
