Nio has delivered the 40,000th ES9, Founder and Chief Executive Officer William Li said on Wednesday, 49 days after the 30,000th and the longest gap between milestones since the flagship SUV went on sale.
Li handed the car to Zhang Wenjie, Chairman of H-Power, a pharmaceutical group based in Hangzhou, he wrote on Weibo.
“The Nio ES9 keeps setting delivery records for premium battery-electric vehicles in China’s 500,000-yuan class and has ranked first in sales in that class for five consecutive months,” Li wrote. “Thank you all for your support. We will keep working hard.”
The 500,000-yuan level is equivalent to about $75,000.
A 45-second video posted with the message called the milestone the “fastest record” for a premium battery-electric vehicle in the 500,000-yuan class.
The milestone comes less than six months after deliveries began on May 28. Yang Bo, Nio’s Assistant Vice President of User Operations, said on Monday that it would arrive this week.
Nio put the 30,000th at 119 days after deliveries began. On the same basis, Wednesday was day 168.
Slower Than the Last
Nio handed over the 10,000th ES9 on June 26, the 20,000th on August 8 and the 30,000th on September 23.
The first 10,000 took about 30 days, helped by orders collected before launch. The second took 43 days, the third 46 and the fourth 49.
That works out to about 204 handovers a day over the latest stretch, down from about 217 in the previous one and 233 in the one before it.
Li said on September 1 that the model had cleared its last pre-launch orders in July and that new orders grew in August.
A Slow Start to November
The ES9 sold 38,884 units at retail in China from launch through October, according to China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) data. Set against Nio’s count, that implies about 1,100 handovers in the first 11 days of November.
That would be approximately 100 a day, less than half the daily average of about 216 in October.
The comparison combines two different records and is only indicative. Nio’s milestone count tracks handovers, and the CPCA figure tracks retail sales, so the two do not match exactly.
The same arithmetic in September pointed to about 5,500 handovers in the first 23 days of that month, or about 239 a day. The ES9 went on to sell 7,706 units in September, its second-best month.
October Decline
The ES9 sold 6,690 units at retail in China in October, down 13.2% from September. It was the model’s lowest figure since August but still above the 6,311 sold in July and the 6,474 in August.
It accounted for 37.1% of the Nio brand’s retail sales in China that month, its highest share since June, as the rest of the lineup fell faster.
The queue for the car has also cleared. Nio’s configurator showed on Monday that all three versions could be collected three to four weeks after an order was locked. In early June, the wait for the two top versions was 16 to 17 weeks.
In the October report, Nio did not break out the ES9 in its monthly delivery releases and has never published order or backlog figures for the model.
Five Months on Top
Li made the same sales claim a day earlier. He wrote on Weibo on Tuesday that the ES9 had ranked first among battery-electric models in the 500,000-yuan class for a fifth consecutive month in October, and that the ES8 had kept its lead among models in the 400,000-yuan class.
He did not cite a source for the rankings. On September 1, Li told analysts that the ES9 had been the best-selling passenger vehicle priced above 500,000 yuan in China in June and July, a wider claim that covered all powertrains.
The ES9 has trailed the ES8, Nio’s other large three-row SUV, in every full month since launch. The ES8 sold 8,735 units in October and passed 160,000 deliveries last month.
Nio has pitched tax breaks to company-car buyers across its lineup. Yang wrote in June that about 70% of the first 10,000 ES9 buyers were new to the brand.
Shanghai, where Nio is based, is one of the model’s largest markets. The ES9 passed 3,000 deliveries in the city at the start of the month.
Prices and Forecasts
Nio launched the six-seat ES9 on May 27 at 498,000 yuan ($74,700) to 628,000 yuan ($94,100), or 390,000 yuan ($58,500) to 520,000 yuan ($78,000) under its battery-rental plan.
Deutsche Bank has forecast 56,000 ES9 sales in 2026. Reaching that would require about 8,560 a month in November and December, a level the model has topped only in June.
Bank of China International expected volume to settle at 3,000 to 4,000 a month once the backlog cleared. The ES9 has stayed above that range in every full month so far.
The model also matters for Nio Inc.’s fourth-quarter goal. Li told analysts in September that the company was targeting an average of more than 40,000 deliveries a month in the quarter. It delivered 34,246 in October, which leaves it needing more than 85,754 in November and December combined to reach that average.
Outside mainland China, the ES9 is delivered in Macao and has gone on sale in Armenia. Nio will hold its NIO IN 2026 technology day in Guangzhou on November 25.
Nio’s New York-listed shares closed down 3.8% at $3.28 on Tuesday. Its Hong Kong shares fell 3.1% on Wednesday.
