Nio‘s chief financial officer said on Tuesday that the company expects to maintain its vehicle gross margin at roughly the same level in the first quarter of 2026 as in the fourth quarter of 2025.
The CFO Stanley Qu cited a post-Spring Festival recovery in orders for the third-generation SUV ES8 as the primary reason the product mix will remain margin-supportive.
As reported by EV on Monday, the delivery waiting time for the model in Nio‘s domestic market continues to shrink, with the company’s configurator page currently showing “three to four weeks” — down from “24 to 26 weeks” last September.
As reported by the Shanghai-headquartered EV maker earlier on Tuesday, vehicle margin surged to 18.1% in Q4 2025 — its highest reading in nearly three years.
The Guidance
“For the vehicle gross margin in Q1, it will be maintained at the same, similar level as in Q4 last year,” Qu said during the company’s earnings call.
He admitted seasonal headwinds and the lingering effects of policy changes on demand, but added that ES8 order backlogs remained in place and that order momentum for the model had staged a “pretty good recovery” since the Spring Festival holiday period.
“The ES8 model will still be playing a major part in our total deliveries in Q1,” Qu said. “So that part is guaranteed, with the product mix largely decided by the high-margin products like the ES8.”
The CFO also flagged emerging cost pressures that could constrain margin expansion from the current level.
Rising raw material costs, including for memory chips and lithium carbonate used in battery packs, are expected to begin feeding through in the first quarter, though Qu characterised the near-term impact as limited.
“As they have just got started, the current impact on our Q1 vehicle margin is also limited,” he said.
The Margin Arithmetic
The 18.1% vehicle margin Nio achieved in the fourth quarter of 2025 was underpinned by two main factors: the ES8’s high per-unit contribution, and a favourable shift in the Onvo sub-brand’s product mix toward the higher-margin L90, which displaced some volume from the lower-margin L60.
The current margin level was last seen in early 2022, before its first major platform transition and a surge in battery costs collapsed the metric to as low as 5.1% in the first quarter of 2023.
In the first quarter of 2025, vehicle margin fell to 10.2% from 13.1% in the prior quarter, as lower production volumes raised per-unit manufacturing costs and the product mix shifted unfavourably with the higher sales of cheaper sub-brand EVs.
The All-New ES9, Nio’s next flagship SUV and a vehicle management has described as targeting the above-500,000 yuan segment, is scheduled for a technology unveiling on April 9 and deliveries from June 1.
The ES8 Context
The wait time for the ES8 model has fallen steadily: to 13 to 14 weeks by mid-January, 8 to 9 weeks by February 11, and 4 to 5 weeks in the first week of March.
Customers ordering now face a wait of approximately three to four weeks.
The compression reflects both the production ramp at Nio‘s third factory in Hefei and what appears to be a moderation in demand after the initial launch surge.
Nio delivered 71,260 ES8 units through February, including 11,260 in February alone — a figure that compares with a December peak of 22,258, when the model claimed the title of best-selling SUV in China’s above-400,000 yuan segment by single-month volume.
The EV maker said in late February that a supply chain disruption related to a shortage of audio signal processing chips had affected vehicle shipments, with a temporary workaround deployed from March 2.
ES8 Incentives
Nio introduced incentives for the ES8 earlier this month — including a 10,000 yuan purchase tax, seven-year low-interest financing, and five years of free Navigate on Pilot Plus usage.
The company’s co-founder and president Lihong Qin has previously stated that the ES8 carries a gross margin of 20%, generating approximately 80,000 yuan in gross profit per unit at an average selling price of above 400,000 yuan on the showroom floor.
