Nio‘s deputy general manager for Germany is leaving at the end of this month, and the Chinese carmaker does not intend to replace him or any other country chief in Europe.
Neither of the two most senior posts at its German business will be filled. Germany is now run directly by a European team headquartered in Amsterdam, alongside the Netherlands and Sweden.
Christian Wiegand disclosed the exit himself, in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday saying he would “officially leave” the company on July 31.
A person close to the matter told EV on Thursday that Wiegand’s exit was decided in March amid the European overhaul, four months before he made it public.
Nio has not announced it through its own channels.
Wiegand joined in June 2022, four months before the company began selling cars in Germany, and held five concurrent titles at the point of his exit.
The company described him in 2024 as one of the first employees of its German business.
Appointed as a pair, gone within two years
Among those titles was deputy general manager for Germany.
Nio announced that appointment on June 17, 2024, in the same statement that named David Sultzer general manager, filling both roles from within the German business.
Sultzer became the third executive to run Germany, succeeding Marius Hayler, who had succeeded Ralph Kranz.
The company said at the time that Hayler was stepping down for personal reasons, quoting him as framing the move as a decision for his family in Norway rather than against Nio.
He then joined Polestar as director for the Nordic countries, as EV reported.
Twenty months later, EV exclusively revealed that Sultzer had been dismissed in February, after the brand registered a single vehicle in Germany in January.
Days before that report, Sultzer had published a LinkedIn post warning that new EV brands fail in Germany by prioritising premium positioning over service coverage and residual values, as EV reported.
He did not mention his employer.
The general manager post has stood empty since. Six months on, the company has not replaced him and now loses his deputy as well.
Both halves of the leadership pair installed in June 2024 are now gone, five months apart, and the structure that held them is going with them.
European operations now have only a single general manager, An Ho, based in Norway — the group’s strongest regional market and the one outside the European Union’s tariffs on China-built cars.
Germany, which absorbed the largest share of Nio‘s early European investment, has no country head of its own.
A widening role
Wiegand’s responsibilities expanded through the period in which German sales collapsed.
He arrived as head of marketing and communications for Germany in June 2022, a role the company then styled head of user development.
Deputy general manager followed in June 2024, head of user relations for Germany in February 2025, head of European marketing and communications in June 2025, and head of European user relations that August.
Registrations moved the other way across the same span.
Nio registered 1,263 vehicles in Germany in 2023, then 398 in 2024 and 325 in 2025.
First-quarter registrations fell 87.0%. The company managed 15 across the whole first half, down 87.6% from 121 a year earlier, as EV reported.
That six-month total is lower than eleven of the twelve individual months of 2025.
Attempts to move stock have included 0% financing on short-term registered vehicles and a six-month paid trial of the ET7, as EV reported.
What was promised in Berlin
Nio set out its German plans at a launch event in Berlin on October 7, 2022, four months after Wiegand joined.
Three models built on the NT2 platform were offered — the ET7, EL7 and ET5 — with the first ET7 deliveries due that month and the other two following in January and March 2023.
The centrepiece was a subscription service the company called new for Europe, running from one month to 60 and bundling insurance, maintenance, winter tyres, a courtesy car and battery swapping. Outright purchase followed the following month.
The subscription model registers each vehicle once however many customers subsequently use it, and has distorted Nio‘s European sales data since 2022, as EV exclusively reported in March.
Direct-to-consumer was the stated model for European buyers, and the release named Hamburg among the Nio Houses it would build alongside Berlin, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Gothenburg.
Battery swapping carried the most ambitious target: 20 stations in Europe during 2022, 120 the following year and 1,000 outside China by 2025, most of them European.
Founder and chief executive William Li called the four-market expansion a step toward the company’s 2025 plan and the start of a new chapter in its global development.
How much of it survived
Direct-to-consumer lasted until February, when Nio split its European operation into six departments and moved sales toward a dealer-and-distributor model in Germany, Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden, as EV first reported.
The swap network reached 300,000 cumulative swaps in Europe on June 21, though the pace has slowed even as more vehicles reached the road, as EV reported. No new stations will be built during 2026.
The three launch models are still the ones on sale.
Every Nio available in Germany is a 2023 or 2024 build on the older NT 2.0 platform, with no model updates due until late 2027, as EV first reported, leaving the brand competing on an ageing lineup.
Hamburg, named in that 2022 release, closed on Monday.
His own account
Wiegand described arriving before the German operation existed in any form.
He arrived “at the very beginning” of the German operation, he wrote, before there was a team or a structure, and the four years that followed were among the most unpredictable of his career.
“We built the entire German organization from the ground up,” the post said, listing team, structure, community and brand presence.
The company built a battery swap network from scratch and grew a community he put at several hundred thousand users, according to the post, which also said Nio had opened “NIO Houses, not just showrooms.”
Germany is now the market where that distinction has begun to unwind.
Nio closed its Hamburg Nio House on Monday, the first confirmed closure of one of its flagship European showrooms, as EV reported.
The Hamburg site had opened in June 2024, the same month the two appointments were announced. New general manager, new deputy and new flagship arrived together; all three are now gone.
Berlin, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf remain open.
The restructuring behind the departures
Wiegand’s exit follows a reorganisation EV revealed on March 5, drawn from an internal email dated February 12 and circulated by the company’s human resources department.
Nio Europe, until then a single top-level department covering the continent, was broken into six units, as EV exclusively reported.
Two were removed from European control altogether.
Norway and a newly created Europe Sales & Network Development division were transferred to the Global Business department in China, headed by Chris Chen.
That new division was tasked with expanding sales channels through general distributors or dealerships across Europe, excluding Norway, under Daniel de Groot, who reports to Chen in China rather than to European management.
Sultzer was dismissed as part of the same programme, and the German business recorded six registrations across January and February as the restructuring began, as EV reported.
Three tiers, and only one country chief left
Europe now runs on three levels.
Norway keeps its own general manager in An Ho, and is the only market on the continent that faces no European Union tariffs on China-built cars. The February reorganisation moved it, along with the new sales division, under the Global Business department in China.
Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden are run directly by the European team in Amsterdam, without country chiefs of their own. None of those posts will be refilled.
Everywhere else, Nio sells through local distributors — the model the February email set out when it created a division to expand sales channels through general distributors or dealerships across Europe, excluding Norway.
Five of the group’s ten European markets had been entered through distributors by April, contributing nine units between them that month.
Every country general manager across the original European markets has now gone except An Ho.
Denmark shows where this ends
One of the four markets launched in Berlin has already made the full transition.
Denmark opened in late 2022 on the same direct-to-consumer model, built around online sales, battery-as-a-service and battery swapping. Registrations reached 41 in 2023, then five in 2024.
Nio appointed the Nic. Christiansen Group as distributor in June 2025 and installed a country manager for the relaunch, making Denmark the first European market where it abandoned direct sales.
The company then closed its only Danish battery swap station, the first such shutdown anywhere in Europe, as EVexclusively reported. Battery-as-a-service went with it, and the first delivery under the new arrangement came on November 23, as EV reported.
The sequence — weak sales, a leadership change, a distributor, a closed swap station and a dropped battery subscription — has since begun repeating in Germany, minus the distributor.
Nio is also seeking sub-tenants for flagship showrooms across Europe, Germany included, according to Manager Magazin, as EV reported.
Several of the departed executives still list Nio as their current employer on LinkedIn as of Thursday, a lag the company has form for. Sultzer’s profile still described him as general manager for Germany when EV revealed his dismissal in March.
Commercial consequences have shown up market by market.
Nio‘s premium brand failed to register a single vehicle in the Netherlands in April, its first shutout there since entering in October 2022, as EV reported.
A run of European exits
Wiegand is the third senior departure from Nio‘s European business this year, and the second this month.
Sultzer went in February.
Peter Seitz, head of product for Firefly in Europe, left on July 3 after about three years, as EV reported. Wiegand follows on July 31.
Firefly was designed at the company’s Munich studio with Europe as its focus market, and is not sold in Germany.
Co-founder and president Qin Lihong said in March that the company planned larger-scale overseas expansion within two to three years, as EV reported.
Nio has rejected the suggestion that it is retreating from the continent, with its Norwegian unit saying in June that recent coverage gave an unnuanced picture, as EV reported.
Across eight European markets the group registered 77 vehicles in June, a total propped up by the cheaper Firefly brand.
Vehicles imported from China carry combined duties of 30.7%, a 20.7% countervailing levy on top of the standard 10.0% tariff.
Executive vice-president Mark Zhou has conceded the company miscalculated when it expanded beyond Norway, underestimating infrastructure costs and hearing from European staff that its cars were too big, as EV reported.
The worldwide Nio House count fell for the first time in 2025, from 180 to 171, as EV reported.
