Nio‘s flagship model ES9 recorded 6,315 wholesale units in July, down 26.5% from June, according to data published on Tuesday by China’s Passenger Car Association.
The figure is the model’s first sequential decline since customer deliveries began on May 28.
Domestic sales came in at 6,311 units, down 26.6%, with the two measures tracking within four units of each other as they have in every month the ES9 has been on sale.
The drop landed three days after Nio publicised the model’s 20,000th delivery as a segment record.
No Nio executive has commented on the July figure.
The company has been breaking out monthly ES8 volumes on Weibo but has never published a monthly ES9 number, an order intake figure or a backlog, leaving the association’s data as the only regular read on the flagship’s trajectory.
The July Numbers
The ES9 accounted for 31.6% of Nio-brand volume in July, down from 39.2% in June.
Across Nio Inc., the model represented 17.6% of the 35,934 vehicles the group delivered in the month.
The Nio brand delivered 20,008 vehicles in July, an 8.7% fall from June, while group deliveries dropped 11.5% in the company’s first sequential decline in three months.
The ES8 moved the other way, rising 14.7% to 10,286 units after the five-seat version began reaching customers on July 10.
That divergence undercuts any reading of the ES9’s fall as internal cannibalisation, since the two models moved in opposite directions in the same month.
The rest of the Nio range contracted further, with the ES6, ET5, ET5 Touring, EC6, EC7 and ET9 together falling to about 3,407 units from 4,344 in June, a second consecutive monthly decline of roughly a fifth.
Cumulative ES9 wholesale volume reached 18,018 units through July, against 3,108 units in the last four days of May and 8,595 in June.
The Milestone Three Days Earlier
Founder and CEO William Li handed over the 20,000th ES9 on Saturday in Wuyi Mountain, Fujian province, to Xiao Wenhua, chief of the tea producer firm Huaxiangyuan.
Writing on X alongside a photograph of the handover, Li described the 20,000 units in 73 days as “another record for premium BEVs” in China’s 500,000-yuan-plus segment, thanked owners for their support and said the company would keep pushing forward.
Nio reached the 10,000th ES9 delivery on June 26, 30 days after the first handover, with Li attending that ceremony as well.
The second 10,000 units took about six weeks.
Waiting Times Fell as Volume Did
Days after deliveries began, Nio‘s configurator showed waits of 16 to 17 weeks for the two priciest trims against three to four weeks for the entry version.
The same trims showed 15 to 16 weeks in early July and 13 to 14 weeks by now, while the entry configuration has held at three to four weeks throughout.
The gap inverts the usual pattern, in which the cheapest and highest-volume trim carries the longest queue.
Both of the trims with long waits carry the SkyRide fully active suspension, a second in-house Shenji NX9031 chip.
Expired July 31
Nio paired the launch with a 60-month installment plan charging no interest for the first 24 months and a 3% annualised fee across the remaining 36.
Launch benefits including zero-down-payment financing, an accessory set, a delivery gift box and five years of free NOP+ assisted driving applied to orders locked through July 31.
The month in which those terms ran out is the month volumes fell.
What the Forecasts Now Require
Deutsche Bank raised its full-year ES9 forecast to 56,000 units in June, when it counted more than 25,000 non-cancellable orders.
Reaching that total from 18,018 units through July requires about 7,596 vehicles a month from August through December, roughly 20% above the model’s best month to date.
The bank put the ES9’s non-cancellable backlog above 40,000 units on July 9, a figure that sits awkwardly against a 26.5% decline recorded in the same month that waiting times were shortening.
Bank of China International has taken the more conservative view, expecting the ES9 to settle at 3,000 to 4,000 deliveries a month once the launch backlog clears, with combined ES8 and ES9 volume above 10,000.
That combined threshold was met comfortably in July at 16,601 units.
Deutsche Bank had also lifted its 2026 sales estimates for the company on the strength of the flagship programme.
The Mix Effect on Pricing
The Nio brand’s average transaction price fell to 434,600 yuan in July from 443,000 yuan in June, disclosed by vice president of branding and communications Ma Lin in a Weibo post.
Ma credited the figure to continued ES8 and ES9 sales.
The composition behind the number moved against the more expensive of the two, with the ES9 shedding 2,280 units while the five-seat ES8 ramped at 382,800 yuan, 5.9% below the three-row versions.
The ES9 starts at 498,000 yuan with the battery included, or 390,000 yuan under Battery-as-a-Service, with the Executive Signature at 558,000 yuan and the Horizon Special Edition at 628,000 yuan.
Final pricing landed 30,000 yuan below pre-sale levels across all three trims.
President Qin Lihong has said the ES9 will generate the highest gross profit amount of any Nio SUV, benchmarked against an ES8 gross margin near 20% and roughly 80,000 yuan of gross profit per unit.
A 2,280-unit sequential fall in the highest-margin SUV in the range is a third-quarter question rather than a second-quarter one, but arrives before the company has scheduled its second-quarter results.
The First Exports
July’s data carried four ES9 units in the export column, the first non-zero entry since the model reached the market.
Nio has announced no overseas plan for the flagship and Li has signalled a more cautious posture on overseas investment, shifting away from direct sales in Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden toward local distribution partnerships.
Four units are a volume consistent with demonstration or homologation vehicles, although no confirmation has been made as of Tuesday.
A few hundred vehicles were the display and test-drive cars placed at stores nationwide, alongside the more than 6,000 units the company built ahead of launch to enable same-day handovers.
What Comes Next
Nio has not announced a date for its second-quarter results, while XPeng reports on August 24.
Second-quarter group deliveries closed at 107,658 vehicles, 2,342 short of the low end of the company’s own 110,000-to-115,000 guidance.
Full-year guidance calls for 40% to 50% growth on 2025’s 326,028 units, implying a range of roughly 456,000 to 489,000 vehicles, against 227,057 delivered through July.
Li told staff in April to seize the second quarter, naming the ES9 and Onvo‘s L80 as the top priorities and calling the models high-margin large vehicles.
The July insurance registration figure for the ES9 has not yet posted and will show how much of the 6,315 units reached customers within the month, after June registrations ran to 9,664 against 8,595 wholesaled.
