Shanghai-based EV maker Nio registered 153 ET9 vehicles in China last month and exported two units, bringing the flagship sedan’s total for the month to 155.
The result marks a fourth consecutive month-over-month increase following a record low of 59 units in January.
May’s domestic figure represents a 19.5% increase from the 128 units registered in April and the highest monthly tally since December’s 198 units.
Year over year, however, the sedan declined 78%, down from 682 units in May 2025 — the second-highest month in the model’s history and the second full month of deliveries.
The numbers remain far below analyst expectations and a fraction of the brand’s overall volume.
While the four-month upward streak is the longest sustained run of gains since the ET9 launched, the sedan’s monthly volumes remain well below the roughly 1,500 units Deutsche Bank analyst Wang Bin had forecast at the time of the model’s debut.
The two exports bring the ET9’s cumulative overseas registrations to at least eight since the first unit appeared in foreign data last November, with all shipments so far aligned with Nio‘s entry into Uzbekistan.
ET9 Sedan
The ET9 was unveiled at the company’s annual Nio Day event in 2023, with pricing and specifications revealed at the same event a year later.
Deliveries began in the final three days of March 2025, when 89 units were handed over. The first full month, April 2025, produced 810 registrations — still the model’s all-time high.
Sales then declined sharply through the middle of the year, spending the entire third quarter below 100 monthly units before a modest rebound in the final quarter.
Priced from 768,000 yuan ($113,500) with the battery included — or 660,000 yuan ($97,500) under Nio‘s Battery-as-a-Service subscription — the ET9 sits at more than twice the cost of the ES6, the brand’s entry-level SUV.
The sedan features Nio‘s in-house Shenji NX9031 autonomous driving chip, a steer-by-wire system, and an integrated hydraulic fully active suspension.
A First Edition, capped at 999 units, sold out within 12 hours of going on sale.
Since then, Nio has released multiple limited variants — including the Horizon Edition with two-tone exterior themes and a nine-unit One-Millionth Vehicle Commemorative Edition — in an effort to sustain interest.
Through May, cumulative ET9 registrations since launch stand at approximately 3,272 units across 15 months of availability.
Share Within Nio
The ET9’s 153 domestic registrations accounted for roughly 0.8% of the Nio brand’s 20,013 deliveries in May — a total that rose 50.8% year over year and 5.2% from April.
The brand’s volume continues to be dominated by the third-generation ES8 three-row SUV, which delivered 11,475 units during the month and has ranked first among models priced above 400,000 yuan in China for five consecutive months.
Across all three brands — Nio, Onvo, and Firefly — the group delivered 37,705 vehicles in May, a 62.3% year-over-year increase and the highest monthly total of 2026.
Onvo contributed 12,029 units, boosted by the launch of the L80 SUV on May 15, while Firefly added 5,663 vehicles.
Year-to-date deliveries reached 150,526, up 68.7% from the first five months of 2025.
ES9 Enters the Lineup
While the ET9 sedan continues to struggle for traction, Nio‘s attention has shifted to the ES9 — the company’s new flagship executive SUV and the largest fully electric SUV currently sold in China.
The model launched on May 27 with customer deliveries beginning the following day — five days ahead of the originally scheduled June 1 start.
Early reception signals have been substantially stronger than the ET9’s launch trajectory.
The EV maker reportedly built over 6,000 ES9 units ahead of the launch to enable immediate nationwide handovers.
According to CPCA, 3,108 ES9 units were delivered in the first four days of deliveries alone.
Within days of deliveries starting, wait times for the two top trims stretched to 16 to 17 weeks, while the entry variant showed waits of three to four weeks.
Founder and CEO William Li said orders from non-Nio customers were running at more than 1.5 times the equivalent pace of last year’s ES8 launch.
Bank of China International expects the ES9 to stabilise at monthly deliveries of 3,000 to 4,000 units, driving combined ES8 and ES9 sales above 10,000 units per month. The SUV is priced from 498,000 yuan ($76,100) with the battery included.
Nio paired the launch with aggressive financing incentives, including zero interest for the first two years of a 60-month installment plan and a 5,000-yuan effective discount for customers who reserved before the launch event.
June will provide the first full-month reading on whether the SUV can match the front-loaded demand pattern seen during the ES8’s launch last September — when the three-row model ramped from 2,803 units in its partial first month to 22,258 by December.
