Nio co-founder and President Qin Lihong has visited the Chinese carmaker’s dealer in Armenia, the dealer said on Monday, a trip that took one of the company’s most senior executives to one of its smallest overseas markets.
“At N-Motors, we had the pleasure of welcoming Lihong Qin, Co-founder and President of NIO, and his team,” the dealer wrote on LinkedIn, in a post that also appeared in Armenian on Facebook.
“During the meeting, we reflected on our journey so far, celebrated our achievements, and discussed our vision for the year ahead and our future goals,” it said, without giving details of those goals or any sales figures.
Photos shared with the post show the delegation touring the showroom at 7 Grigor Lusavorich Street in Yerevan with dealer staff.
In Yerevan for COP17
Qin was in the Armenian capital for COP17, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity conference, which runs from October 19 to 30.
Nio was the only Chinese company invited to give a keynote speech at the opening of the conference’s China Pavilion and served as the pavilion’s green mobility partner.
The brand supplied a fleet of ES9 and ES8 SUVs to carry the Chinese delegation and senior guests.
“Sustainable development is the founding aspiration of Nio,” Qin said, according to China News Service. Corporate green practice should not stop at cutting carbon in production but should also contribute technology and resources, he said.
“Protecting biodiversity requires multi-party cooperation and cannot do without the participation of governments, international organizations, enterprises and all sectors of society,” he added.
A shy market debut
Nio’s presence in Armenia has been low-key from the start.
EV first reported the expansion in October 2025, citing an internal source. A Nio spokesperson confirmed the plan days later, but the company has never issued a formal launch announcement, unlike for neighboring Azerbaijan.
N-Motors opened its showroom in early March, about three months after the late-December date shown on its website at the time.
Nio signed N-Motors as a dealer rather than a full distributor, a lighter arrangement with a fixed term and no authorization to open branded Nio Houses, the spokesperson said.
The expansion was led by Arsen Zakharyan, a business developer who previously ran Zeekr’s Armenian operations and brought Geely to the country. The dealer’s Chief Executive Officer is Artyom Hakobyan.
Neither Nio nor N-Motors discloses sales in Armenia, and the country does not publish registrations by brand.
From four models to eight
The dealer has doubled its range since opening. It launched with four SUVs, the EL8, the EL6 and Onvo’s L60 and L90.
Its website now lists eight models across 25 versions, from Nio’s ES8, ES9, EL6, ET5 and ET5T to Onvo‘s L60, L80 and L90. Prices range from 12.8 million dram ($35,500) for the Onvo L60 to 44.6 million dram ($123,600) for the ES9 Horizon Special Edition.
The ES9 has not been announced for any other market outside China.
The L80, which N-Motors began promoting in August, was the first market for that model outside China.
Firefly, Nio’s smallest brand, is still missing. Armenia was among the markets where both the Nio and Firefly brands were due to launch in 2026, and N-Motors described itself on LinkedIn last year as representing Nio, Onvo and Firefly.
A testing ground for Onvo
Armenia is one of the few markets where Onvo sells outside China, alongside Uzbekistan and Costa Rica. Nio has pushed back Onvo’s European launch to 2028 or 2029.
The brand had shipped 23 vehicles overseas in the first half of 2026, mostly to Uzbekistan, Armenia and Costa Rica.
Qin himself has been candid about Onvo. “To be honest, Onvo still hasn’t done well enough,” he said in September, and the brand remains the group’s lowest priority for international expansion.
An EV-friendly market
Armenia has become one of the region’s most electrified car markets. Fully electric vehicles made up 27% of new registrations in the first eight months of 2025, and more than a third of imported vehicles, according to official data.
The government has extended a value-added tax exemption on electric car imports until the end of 2026, and in August proposed adding 5,000 vehicles to its 2026 quota for duty-free EV imports.
Of those, 500 would be reserved for companies with a direct dealer or distributor agreement that meet extra requirements, including warranty and service documentation and a closed technical service facility, according to Public Radio of Armenia.
Armenia is part of Nio’s shift to expanding abroad through local partners rather than its own stores, which it says lowers fixed costs.
Qin said in March that Nio planned a larger-scale overseas expansion “in the next two to three years.” The company has delivered more than 1.29 million vehicles in total.
