Nio registered 97 ET9 sedans in China in August, the same number as in July, with one unit exported in each month, according to China Passenger Car Association data released on Tuesday.
A single ET9 vehicle was exported last month, bringing the wholesale figures to 98 units. The figures leave the company’s most expensive model below 100 domestic sales for a second consecutive month.
The August domestic figure is 5.4% above the 92 registered in August 2025, the second straight month of year-on-year growth after July’s 14% gain over a base of 85.
Both comparisons are against the three-month stretch of 2025, July to September, in which the ET9 first fell under 100 a month.
Seventeen months after deliveries began, the sedan Nio positioned against the Mercedes-Maybach S-Class has settled at a run rate of about 100 units a month against the 1,500 a month Deutsche Bank’s Wang Bin forecast at launch, and the special editions Nio has issued to sustain interest, two of them in nine days in June, have not moved it.
The Series
Deliveries began on March 29, 2025, with 89 units in three days, and the first full month, April 2025, produced 810 registrations, still the record.
Sales fell to 682 in May and then to 85 in July and 92 in August 2025.
The third quarter of 2025 stayed under 100 each month. A modest fourth-quarter recovery peaked at 198 in December with January 2026 setting a record low of 59 units.
February and March stayed under 100, while in April it rose to 128 and in May to 153, the 2026 high, before June’s 125, and July and August at 97 each.
Cumulative domestic registrations stand at about 3,391 across 18 months of availability, on EV‘s series of 3,294 through July plus August’s 97.
The ET9 was about 0.46% of the Nio brand’s August deliveries of 21,174, down from 0.5% of 20,008 in July, 0.57% in June and 0.76% in May, as EV has tracked, in a month when the brand more than doubled year on year on the ES8, the ES9 and the Onvo L-series.
Exports
The ET9’s overseas record showed a first unit in foreign registration data in November 2025, two in February 2026, one in March, two in May, one in July and one in August, at least ten in all.
Nio expanded to Uzbekistan earlier this year. It opened its first store in February and where the ET9 and the Onvo brand made their overseas debuts.
Nio has not offered the ET9 in Europe, where it sells only 2023–24 model-year stock of its older models, and its group exports were 88 in May, 72 in June and 92 in July, and 181 in August across all three brands.
What Nio Has Tried
The ET9 launched on December 21, 2024 at Nio Day at 788,000 yuan, since reduced to 768,000 yuan ($114,400) with the battery or 660,000 yuan on the battery-rental plan.
A 999-unit First Edition sold out in 12 hours.
Since then Nio has added a Signature Edition, the two-tone Horizon Edition at Nio Day in September 2025 (818,000 yuan), two colours in November, a nine-unit One-Millionth Vehicle edition in January at 818,000 yuan, two themes in March, and two 99-unit Horizon themes in June at 838,000 yuan, “Pursuing Light at the Extremes” on June 21 and “Verdant Woods Tinged with Gold” on June 30.
William Li has personally handed ET9s to CATL’s Robin Zeng and XPeng’s He Xiaopeng.
The model carries Nio’s in-house NX9031 chip, China’s first mass-production steer-by-wire system, an integrated hydraulic fully active suspension and ten years of free battery swaps; none of it has translated into volume in a segment that Chinese brands have entered from above and below.
The Huawei and JAC’s Maextro S800 and BYD’s Yangwang U7 compete for the same executive buyers.
The ES9 Test
Nio’s flagship business has moved to SUVs, and the company said the shift would help the sedan.
At the Beijing Auto Show in April, Head of User Operations Yang Bo said the ES9 “has successfully attracted a new demographic to Nio showrooms, resulting in a notable boost in orders for both the ET9 and the ES8.”
Three months of ES9 deliveries later, the ET9 has gone from 153 in May to 97 in July and 97 in August.
The ES9, launched May 27 at 498,000 yuan, 35.2% below the ET9 and carrying the sedan’s SkyRide active suspension and steer-by-wire system in a body style Chinese premium buyers prefer, delivered 3,108 in its first four days, 8,595 in June and 6,315 in July, and 6,474 in August.
The Battery That Never Came
One of the sedan’s original selling points is still missing.
Nio announced a 120 kWh pack alongside the ET9 at Nio Day in December 2023, on in-house 46105 cylindrical cells at 292 Wh/kg with 5C charging on the car’s 925-volt architecture.
The capacity appeared in the October 2024 regulatory filing, but the production version launched with 100 kWh and 650 km of CLTC range.
The pack was promised again at the third-generation ES8’s debut in September 2025, and William Li recommitted to it at a user event in Quanzhou in early August, saying it would fit all Nio-brand models through the standard swappable format, without a date, price or production plan.
