Nio founder and Chief Executive Officer William Li is due to meet European owners in Amsterdam on Tuesday, according to a Belgian member of the company’s European user advisory board, who says he will have a meeting with him.
The visit to the Old Continent would be his first reported trip to the region since November and his first since the company overhauled its European sales organisation earlier this year after weaker than expected results.
In Germany, the largest automotive market in Europe, the premium EV brand registered one vehicle throughout August — official registration figures from KBA disclosed in early September.
Year-to-date total was at 90 vehicles as of August 31, down 90.1% when compared to the first eight months of 2025.
“Next Tuesday I will have a closed door meeting with William Li in Amsterdam,” Marnix Billiau, who posts as ‘Marnix_Belgium’ from Bruges, wrote on X on Friday. “Any wise questions, to ask him, are welcome.”
Nio has not announced a visit and has not confirmed one.
It also remains unclear whether William Li will visit Europe alongside Nio’s co-founder Qin Lihong and the Firefly brand chief Daniel Jin.
Not an Ordinary Owner
Billiau sits on Nio’s User Advisory Board in Europe, the owner panel the company set up in each market at its 2022 European launch to feed back on service, charging and showroom experience.
Nio said the board had 186 members across the region by May 2024, and 270 in Norway alone at the launch. Members are the customers the company consults on decisions and invites to its events.
He was also Nio’s first customer in Belgium, buying an ET7 in the Netherlands before Nio sold cars in his own country and later taking delivery of an EL8, at a time when Nio had no Belgian sales operation at all.
It opened one in September last year, through the local retail partner Hedin Automotive.
He has attended Nio’s annual user gathering in China at least twice, based on public records: Guangzhou in December 2024 and Hangzhou in September 2025.
The replies to his post were dominated by the complaints that have accumulated among European owners this year, on the age of the model range, the absence of the third-generation ES8 in Europe and the Hong Kong listing.
European Visits
Li’s last confirmed European trip was in early November, when he travelled with co-founder and President Lihong Qin, Firefly President Daniel Jin and Chief Financial Officer Stanley Qu, drove a Firefly from Amsterdam to Oslo and told users at Nio House Oslo that user satisfaction and service were the company’s top priority in Europe and that Nio was planning for the long term.
He said the company did not expect volumes to jump overnight.
Less than four months later, Nio broke up its European operations and moved sales to a distributor model everywhere except Norway, EV reported in March, creating a Europe Sales and Network Development unit under Daniel de Groot that reports to China rather than to the European leadership.
In May, Nio told European users at a customer event in the Netherlands that no model updates would arrive until late 2027 and that no new battery swap stations were planned — a person familiar with the matter told EV back then.
The brand has had no new or updated model in the region since the second-generation EL8 arrived in 2024, while refreshing its Chinese line-up twice and launching the third-generation ES8 there last September.
Four Visits in Five Years
Li has appeared in Europe on four documented occasions since Nio entered Norway in 2021.
He spent about ten days touring the region with Qin in September 2022, posting from Frankfurt about a Nio House then under construction and ending the trip in Norway.
He hosted the Berlin launch event on October 7, 2022, which opened Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden.
He cut the ribbon at Nio House Amsterdam on May 23, 2024, the largest in Europe, alongside then-Nio Netherlands General Manager Ruben Keuter. And he made the Amsterdam-to-Oslo trip last November.
Nio announced its Norwegian entry at an event in Shanghai that May, where Li wore a shirt reading “Norway 2021” and greeted the Oslo team remotely, and the Karl Johans gate showroom was presented by Nio Norway General Manager Marius Hayler on September 30 that year.
He reached it a year to the day later, and described the evening in a speech at Harvard University in April 2024.
“On September 30, 2022, I was in Oslo, Norway, to participate in the first anniversary of the opening of the NIO House,” Li said.
“After the official celebration at 9:30 in the evening, 160 users who participated in the event did not disperse. Everyone sang and danced together on the streets. At that moment, I was completely infected by everyone’s emotions and danced a hip-hop dance that was even worse than my English level,” he added.
