On the same day it celebrates its 11th anniversary, the EV maker Nio reported its third quarter earnings results with improved margins and lower losses while providing a new guidance cut for the final three months of the year.
The company founded and led by William Li said it now expects to deliver between 120,000 and 125,000 electric vehicles between October and December — down from the 150,000 units communicated by the management in early September.
Back then, the management had already reduced the goal as it started including the Firefly sales in the 150,000 goal.
In June, Li said the core Nio brand would target about 25,000 deliveries per month in the fourth quarter, while Onvo would aim for the same goal — resulting in 150,000 units for the two brands while excluding Firefly figures.
The 150,000 target has been mentioned as a key driver for the overall profitability goal.
Deliveries in November + December
Considering the 40,397 vehicles delivered in October, the company now needs to deliver 79,603 in November and December combined to reach the low end of its guidance.
The result represents a monthly average of 39,801 units.
If considering the high end of the guidance (125,000 units), Nio must deliver 84,603 in the final two months of the year across its three brands.
Last week, the company’s co-founder and President Lihong Qin said that Nio will “break through 10,000” ES8 vehicles in November while hinting that December’s delivery figures of the three-row SUV can surpass 15,000 units.
No Production Issues
At an event celebrating the 300,000th ES6 delivery, the company’s co-founder and president Lihong Qin reassured customers last week that the long delivery wait times for the ES8 model were not caused by slow production, but by an “explosive order demand.”
The company received more than 100,000 orders for the three-row SUV with delivery waiting times reaching 6 months only two days after the event.
Over the last few weeks, and according to Nio‘s website for the Chinese market, the model has a delivery waiting time of 22 to 23 weeks. Orders placed this Tuesday are planned to be delivered in the final days of April 2026.
Incentives Halved From January 1
China’s plan to reinstate the electric vehicle purchase tax in 2026 may cause consumers to rush to buy electric vehicles before the year end, followed by a sharp decline in January.
When launching the ES8 last September, Nio said that customers who could not receive their vehicle before the year end wouldn’t be affected by the purchase tax incentive phase-out, as the company would cover that value.
