Nio co-founder and president Lihong Qin said on Friday that pre-orders for the company’s new ES8 have already exceeded those of the Onvo L90 in the same period after their respective pre-launches.
The six- and seven-seater variants of the ES8 Executive Premium Edition have a starting price of 416,800 yuan ($58,030) with a 102-kWh battery pack, or 308,800 yuan under the company’s Battery-as-a-Service subscription plan.
By comparison, the Onvo L90, unveiled six weeks earlier, entered pre-sales at a starting price of 279,900 yuan ($39,000) including an 85-kWh battery pack.
At a media Q&A session held about 12 hours after ES8 pre-sales opened late on Thursday, the executive said: “From the moment the press conference ended until now, in the same time period, the number of orders for the all-new ES8 has exceeded that of our L90 last month.”
However, and as done with previous models, the company did not reveal any pre-order figures.
As reported earlier this Friday, Deutsche Bank raised the price target on Nio’s Hong Kong-listed shares to HK$75 citing ES8’s competitive pricing and the focus on a large three-row SUV.
Lihong described the performance as a vote of confidence in Nio’s long-term strategy.
“So we are relatively confident,” Qin said.
“We believe that starting from the third quarter of this year, by leveraging our ten years of R&D achievements and our decade-long accumulation of infrastructure, we can eliminate people’s concerns about long-distance travel and concentrate these advantages into two large three-row SUVs under different brands,” Lihong stated.
Nio‘s president added that the results also showed early returns from the company’s decade-long investment. “It should be said that in a short time we have seen the return on our long-term, sustained investment,” he said.
But he cautioned that the company’s work had only just begun.
“This is only the beginning — it’s just the first day of pre-orders,” Lihong said.
“I think we still need to let the road test the horsepower. What we need to do next is to ensure proper execution, do well in the official launch, release, and deliveries.”
“Right now, our eyes are only on the work at hand, with many things still to be done,” he added. “This is the situation regarding orders.”
Here’s the video with Lihong’s full statement.
The ES8, Nio’s first mass-produced vehicle, was introduced in 2018.
Deliveries of the third-generation model will begin after its official launch at Nio Day in September.
Nio has also announced pre-order incentives for the ES8. From August 21 until the official launch, users who place an order can apply a 5,000 yuan deposit as a 10,000 yuan deduction from the purchase price.
Existing Nio customers are eligible for additional benefits: a 12,000 yuan repurchase voucher for original ES8 owners, with an extra 20,000 bonus points for Founders’ Edition buyers; an 8,000 yuan voucher for owners of other Nio models; and 20,000 bonus points for owners of Onvo or Firefly vehicles.
In early July, Morgan Stanley analyst Tim Hsiao said that Nio’s newly unveiled Onvo L90 SUV has secured between 30,000 and 35,000 pre-orders in the first four days.
