Nio‘s co-founder and president Lihong Qin reaffirmed during a media briefing over the weekend that the new ES8 SUV has a gross margin of 20%.
The margin level of its best-selling model is considered a key factor in the Shanghai-based company’s path toward reporting its first profitable quarter for the final three months of 2025.
“The ES8’s gross margin is 20%,” Nio’s co-founder stated. “The average selling price on the showroom floor is over 400,000 yuan [$57,360].”
He added, “everyone can do the math — how many units of other cars does the gross profit from a single ES8 roughly equal?”
According to the figures provided by Lihong, Nio generates 80,000 yuan ($11,470) in gross profit per ES8 sold.
Data from China’s Passenger Car Association (CPCA) shows that 42,453 units were delivered between September 21 — when deliveries began — and December 31, with 39,650 of those units registered in the final quarter of the year.
The figures suggest that Nio has made a profit of 3.17 billion yuan ($454.9 million) with the ES8 alone in the past three months.
Margins
Founder and CEO William Li said earlier this month that current indicators suggested profitability “is achievable, as our current product gross margins are solid.”
Li said the company achieved its vehicle gross margin target of 17% to 18% in the fourth quarter, a goal he had outlined during the third-quarter earnings call.
In the latest earnings report, covering July through September, Nio disclosed a 14.7% vehicle margin, up 1.3 percentage points year over year and 3 percentage points when compared to the previous quarter.
By then, the chief executive said “this year and next year [2025 and 2026] for the cost structure, the cost optimization and the cost-saving opportunities that we’ve identified on the ES8 and L90 can also be carried over to these three new models.”
“With five large models combined, we expect them to contribute to good product performance as well as on the margin levels, overall speaking, achieving 20% vehicle margin,” the CEO added.
This idea was previously mentioned in August, when the CEO pointed to larger vehicles as the foundation for stronger margins.
“Selling one all-new ES8 equals selling several ET models,” Li stated referring to the ET5 and ET7 sedans.
“Even with the same production capacity, the profit is different. I think this is very important,” he said, adding that the L90, ES8, ES9 and L80 will showcase Nio’s technology and larger usable space compared with rivals.
Large SUVs
Among the “five large models” scheduled to launch this year are the Nio ES7 and ES9 SUVs and the Onvo L80.
The brand will launch its flagship ES9 model on April 10, as Qin stated during a Q&A session earlier this month.
The debut will take place weeks before the Beijing Auto Show, which is scheduled for later that month, and where the model will be showcased.
The Onvo L80 — a five-seat version of the L90 — will launch this year.
Its release was delayed last year as the company focused on ramping up production of the ES8 and L90 SUVs.
A new LiDAR-equipped L90 is also scheduled to launch in the second quarter, according to brand chief Fei Shen.
The five-seat L80 will be available in both pure vision and LiDAR versions when it launches this year, unlike the sub-brand’s debut model L60, which will remain vision-only.
After a new version of the ES7 was spotted being transported in China, management confirmed that the model will debut in the third quarter.
The SUV had been discontinued in China in the first half of 2025 due to weak demand.
