EV maker Nio delivered fewer than 100 units of its flagship sedan for the third consecutive month, data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) showed on Tuesday.
The Shanghai-based premium brand began deliveries of its most advanced and highest-priced model to date on March 29.
In the final three days of March, Nio delivered 89 units of the sedan. Deliveries rose to 810 units in April — the first full month of sales — before declining sharply in the following months.
The company delivered 90 units of its flagship ET9 sedan in September, down from 92 in August.
The last time sales of the model exceeded 100 units was in June, when Nio registered 305 vehicles.
As of the end of September, the company founded and led by William Li had delivered a total of 2,155 ET9 vehicles.
One of the ET9’s main rivals, the Huawei-backed Maextro S800 sedan, has secured more than 10,000 firm orders within 67 days of its launch.
The model is available in both fully electric and extended-range electric (EREV) versions, with configurations offering either four or five seats.
The five-seat BEV variant starts at 708,000 yuan ($99,500), while the four-seat version is priced from 818,000 yuan.
Shortly after its launch at the annual event last year, Deutsche Bank analyst Wang Bin said the firm expected Nio to sell “approximately 1,500” ET9 vehicles per month.
“We appreciate the ET9 sedan’s elegant design and advanced technologies, and estimate it will sell approximately 1,500 units per month,” Bin wrote back then.
The ET9 is available through Nio‘s battery-as-a-service (BaaS) programme, which lowers the starting price to 660,000 yuan ($92,800) for customers leasing the battery separately.
With the battery included, the four-seat sedan is priced at 788,000 yuan ($110,800) — more than twice the starting price of the ES6 SUV, Nio‘s best-selling model, which begins at 338,000 yuan ($47,500).
Launched at Nio’s annual event in December, the ET9 sold out its 999-unit First Edition within 12 hours.
The sedan features what Nio calls its most advanced suite of technologies to date, including its Shenji NX9031 autonomous driving chip.
It features a steer-by-wire system, a next-generation digital cockpit, and a high-end audio setup, plus an integrated hydraulic fully active suspension.
In mid-July, Nio filed for a new version of the flagship sedan, the ET9 Horizon Edition — which adopts a two-tone body scheme and a brand-new wheel design.
The new edition was launched in mid-September and deliveries began in the last week of the month.
Prices for the ‘Horizon Edition’ begin at 818,000 yuan, equivalent to $115,000 — when acquiring the model with the battery.
In the same week, the company started rolling out a new software update for the ET9, introducing improvements to both the smart cockpit and the assisted driving system.
The Nio Group delivered 34,749 vehicles in September, a new record for the EV maker. Of those, 13,728 were vehicles from its main premium brand.
The figures indicate that the ET9 represented only 0.7% of the brand’s total sales.
