Nio’s configurator is quoting 11 to 12 weeks for the two most expensive versions of the ES9, the shortest since the flagship went on sale in late May and a week less than on September 8, according to checks of the Chinese site on Thursday.
The entry trim, the Executive Luxury at 498,000 yuan ($74,300), shows 3 to 4 weeks, where it has stood in the centre-island layout at every check since June.
The gap between the two has not closed. The Executive Signature costs 60,000 yuan ($8,900) more than the entry car and waits roughly three times as long. The Horizon Special Edition costs 130,000 yuan ($19,400) more and waits the same as the Signature.
The Series
Nio does not publish order numbers for the ES9 and does not break the model out in its monthly delivery release. The configurator is the only official lead-time figure the company puts in public, and it has been checked repeatedly since launch: June 1, July 8, August 8, September 8, September 15 and Thursday.
On June 1, four days after deliveries began, the Horizon Special Edition at 628,000 yuan ($93,600) and the Executive Signature at 558,000 yuan ($83,200) both showed 16 to 17 weeks, according to a screenshot posted that day by the X user @Almighty_Heini. The Executive Luxury showed 3 to 4 weeks in the centre-island layout and 8 to 9 in the walkthrough layout, which did not begin deliveries until mid-July.
By July 8 the top trims showed 15 to 16 weeks. By August 8 they were at 13 to 14. On September 8 they showed 12 to 13. The same X user posted 11 to 12 on September 15, and Thursday’s check found the same figure on all three trims in both layouts.
The entry trim has shown 3 to 4 weeks in both layouts on every check since the walkthrough version caught up.
“15 weeks later, delivery time only dropped by 5 weeks,” the X user wrote on Monday, quoting their own June post.
What the CEO Said
Founder and Chief Executive Officer William Li addressed the ES9 at length on the second-quarter call on September 1, and his account of where demand sits matches the configurator’s split.
“Regarding our flagship executive SUV ES9, it also sees strong demand since its launch, especially for the Horizon Edition and the Signature Edition,” he said.
Those are the two trims that queue. He did not name the Executive Luxury, which has never queued.
On the shape of orders through the summer: “If we look at the sales number of the ES9 in August and July, I think in July, we were still consuming some preorders. But if we are making a comparison between the incremental orders in July and August, we actually have seen a growth from July to August. So we are also confident in the continuous popularity and also demand for the ES9.”
That is the company’s account of the July decline, when CPCA wholesale fell from 8,595 to 6,311. July, on Li’s reading, was the month the launch backlog ran out, and August was the first month of new orders alone.
On the wait, he said customers ordering now “will need to wait for three months or nearly four months to pick up a new car,” he said. That is 13 to 17 weeks. Two weeks later the configurator shows 11 to 12 for the trims Li was describing.
The site’s wording is specific, expected collection after the configuration is locked, which is the later of the two points a buyer might count from. If Li was counting from order rather than lock, the two figures may not conflict.
If he was not, the queue has cleared in recent weeks.
On who is buying: “Around three quarters of the ES9 users are actually from non-existing NIO users, from users outside of the NIO user community,” he said. That updates the 70% of the first 10,000 buyers that Nio’s head of user operations, Yang Bo, gave in late June, and it is the company’s answer to the question of whether the ES9 takes sales from the ES8.
Li said on the call that the ES9 led passenger vehicles with transaction prices above 500,000 yuan ($74,600) in June and July, across all powertrains.
Nio’s vehicle margin for the second quarter, across the whole company, was 18.5%. Management has said the ES8 and ES9 sit above 20%.
Cheapest Trim
The configurator lists what each trim carries, and the list explains the split.
The Executive Signature and Horizon Special Edition both have Tianxing fully active suspension. The Executive Luxury has dual-chamber air suspension with external-valve CDC instead.
Beyond that, the entry trim keeps steer-by-wire and rear-wheel steering, the 9.2.4.8 immersive audio system, sensing power doors, twin 16-inch NIO Link executive screens and the dual zero-gravity executive seats.
It gives up the active suspension, the 22-inch wheels and the LC privacy glass.
The Volume Behind the Queue
The China Passenger Car Association’s model-level figures are the only monthly volume series for the ES9, since Nio does not break it out.
Cumulative domestic volume through August is 24,488. Exports were 4 in July and 5 in August, and Nio has announced no overseas plan for the car.
June was the peak and the month the queue first shortened. July was the decline Li attributes to the pre-order backlog running out.
August was flat, and the queue kept shortening anyway, which indicates that supply is now running ahead of the order rate on the trims that queue.
The Road Ahead
Deliveries began May 28.
The 10,000th unit was delivered on June 26 and the 20,000th on August 8.
The launch benefits were extended from July 31 to September 30 for orders locked by that date: a zero-deposit finance plan with two of its five years interest-free, the Feihang executive seat package, a delivery gift box and five years of free NOP+ assisted driving.
The package leaves the sticker price untouched, which is how Nio held its margin, and it gives buyers a reason to lock orders in the next thirteen days.
