Nio Inc. must deliver between 228,943 and 261,943 vehicles across the final five months of 2026 — an average of 45,789 to 52,389 a month, every month, from August through December — to reach the annual target set by founder and CEO William Li.
According to calculations by EV based on the group’s July delivery release, the floor of that requirement is a monthly pace the group has reached only once.
Last December’s surge of 48,135 units is now needed as the average for five straight months. The ceiling sits 8.8% above that all-time record.
The group said on Saturday that it delivered 35,934 vehicles in July, up 71.0% from a weak year-earlier month but down 11.5% from June and the third-best month of 2026, taking deliveries through seven months to 227,057.
The total split 20,008 vehicles from the premium Nio brand, 10,155 from the family-oriented Onvo and 5,771 from the urban marque Firefly, and carried cumulative deliveries past 1.2 million, to 1,224,649, since the first customer handover in June 2018.
The 2026 Target
Nio has never published a single hard figure for 2026.
Li has guided to 40% to 50% volume growth, which against 326,028 deliveries in 2025 implies a full-year range of roughly 456,000 to 489,000 vehicles, and he has described 2026 as the start of a “third growth cycle” driven primarily by large SUVs.
Deliveries of 227,057 through seven months leave the group at 46.4% to 49.8% of that range, with 58.3% of the year elapsed — behind the calendar at both ends.
Reaching the 456,000 floor requires averaging 45,789 vehicles a month from here — 27.4% above July, 12.8% above 2026’s best month of 40,597 in June, and within 5% of the 48,135 all-time record set last December.
The 489,000 ceiling requires 52,389 a month, 8.8% beyond a record the company has touched once.
The year-ago comparison softens the floor considerably.
Nio delivered 190,861 vehicles across August-December 2025, so the low end of the target needs 20.0% growth over that stretch — far below the 71.0% July printed and the 68.0% the year has run — while the ceiling requires 37.2% against the toughest base months the group has ever set.
The composition of that base is the real constraint.
Last year’s second-half surge was carried by Onvo‘s L90 launch — the sub-brand delivered 16,434, 15,246 and 17,342 vehicles across August, September and October 2025, peaking at 42.9% of group volume — and by the Nio brand’s 31,897-unit December as the third-generation ES8 ramped.
Onvo now runs at 10,000 to 12,000 a month and declining — 12,029 in May, 11,743 in June, 10,155 in July.
The latest figures arrive even with the brand’s full refresh cycle already in the market, the L80 since May 15 and the refreshed L60 since June 11, leaving no further Onvo launch to reverse the slide before the comparisons hit.
Li has said he expects Onvo to eventually account for the majority of the group’s sales — a long-term vision rather than a 2026 forecast — but the target math makes a nearer version of it immediate.
Nio ran the highest first-half completion rate among the major Chinese startups, a group most of which closed the half below 40% of their annual goals.
The reinstatement of a 5% purchase tax on new energy vehicles in China from 1 January 2027 gives the sector a reason to pull demand into the closing months of this year.
July Lands Against a Weak Comparison
Nio delivered 21,017 vehicles in July 2025, split between 12,675 from the main brand, 5,976 from Onvo and 2,366 from Firefly.
That base was among the softest months of the group’s 2025, which inflates the year-over-year figure reported on Saturday.
Deliveries in June reached 40,597 vehicles, up 62.9% year over year and 7.7% from May — the strongest month of 2026, though below the group’s all-time monthly record of 48,135 set in December 2025.
Monthly volumes across the year have run 27,182 in January, 20,797 in February, 35,486 in March, 29,356 in April, 37,705 in May and 40,597 in June.
Cumulative deliveries stood at 806,731 at the end of July last year and 1,188,715 on 30 June.
Q2 Missed Guidance
Second-quarter deliveries came to 107,658 vehicles, an increase of 49.4% year over year but short of the 110,000-to-115,000 range Nio guided to when it reported first-quarter earnings on 21 May.
April carried the shortfall. The company delivered 29,356 vehicles that month as industry headwinds bit, before recovering across May and June.
First-quarter volume of 83,465 had cleared the top of an 80,000-to-83,000 guidance range, making the second quarter a break in pattern rather than a trend.
First-half deliveries totalled 191,123 vehicles, up 67.4% and a record for the period, with all three brands setting first-half highs.
Brand-level first-quarter figures ran 58,543 for Nio, 13,339 for Onvo and 11,583 for Firefly.
The Precedents Cut Against the Ceiling
Li’s targets have a record, and the record is three consecutive years of misses — two of them severe.
In 2023, Li targeted a doubling of 2022’s 122,486 deliveries to roughly 245,000; the group delivered 160,038 — 65.3% of the goal, a miss of about 85,000 vehicles.
In 2024, management set no annual target at all until September, when co-founder and president Qin Lihong named 220,000 units — with 128,100 vehicles already delivered — and the year closed at 221,970, meeting the number at 100.9%.
In 2025, management returned to a doubling — approximately 440,000 off the 2024 base — and delivered 326,028, or 73.8% of the initial goal, after cutting its fourth-quarter guidance twice in consecutive quarters, from 150,000 in September to the 120,000-to-125,000 range it ultimately met with a record 124,807.
Both doubling targets missed by a quarter to a third. The only annual target the company has ever met was announced in September of the year in question, with more than half the volume already banked — conservative by construction.
Original targets get missed and revised ones get hit.
The 40-to-50% guidance is, by Li’s own description, “not aggressive, but more sustainable” — the moderate species of target, like 2024’s, after two failed doublings.
First-quarter deliveries cleared guidance; the second quarter’s 107,658 fell short of the 110,000-to-115,000 range Li had guided, with April carrying the miss.
At 46.4% to 49.8% of the annual range with 58.3% of the year gone, Nio holds the best completion rate among China’s major EV startups — and is still behind its own calendar at both ends.
Five-Seat ES8
July was the first month carrying handovers of the five-seat ES8, which launched on 9 July from 382,800 yuan for the Executive Premium trim and 422,800 yuan for the Executive Signature.
Buyers opting for the battery-as-a-service rental plan pay from 274,800 yuan. Deliveries began on 10 July, a day after launch.
Order incentives covering five years of complimentary NOP+ driver assistance and a cabin package were tied to buyers confirming by 31 July, concentrating intake inside the month.
Pre-orders had opened on 28 June.
The model fills a gap Nio created when the company quietly discontinued the ES7, a five-seat SUV launched in August 2022 whose sales fell 71.3% in 2024 to 1,874 units.
Co-founder and President Qin Lihong has rejected the suggestion that the five-seater and the Onvo L80 will cannibalise one another, citing a price gap of more than 100,000 yuan between them.
The third-generation ES8 reached its 130,000th delivery on 22 July, 305 days after launch, with the milestone car a five-seat variant. The flagship lineup now spans five-, six- and seven-seat configurations — a spread the delivery release presented as reinforcing the company’s “leadership in the premium battery electric SUV market.”
Flagship SUVs Dominate the Mix
The ES9 launched on 27 May with deliveries from 28 May, taking 3,108 units in the final four days of that month and 8,595 in June, its first full month.
Cumulative ES9 deliveries passed 10,000 on 26 June, which Nio said set a record pace for a battery-electric model priced above 500,000 yuan in China.
The model starts at 498,000 yuan, falling to 390,000 yuan under battery rental program and the brand said on Tuesday that it will hand over the 20,000th unit this week.
The third-generation ES8 cooled in June to 8,969 units, down 21.9% sequentially and ending a run of seven consecutive months above 10,000.
Deutsche Bank attributed the narrow second-quarter guidance miss primarily to that softness.
Taken together, the two flagships accounted for 17,564 units in June, or 43.3% of group volume and 80.2% of the Nio brand.
The ES8 reached 120,000 cumulative deliveries in 275 days and led both the large-SUV segment and the above-400,000-yuan segment on first-half retail sales.
Model-level detail for July arrives with China Passenger Car Association data roughly a week after the delivery release.
Margins Face Input-Cost Pressure
First-quarter gross margin reached 19% and vehicle margin 18.8%, a fourth consecutive sequential improvement.
Management guided vehicle margin of roughly 17% to 18% for the second quarter and the full year.
Chief financial officer Stanley Qu flagged material inflation across chips, lithium, nickel-cobalt-manganese, copper and aluminium worth more than 10,000 yuan per unit from the second quarter onward.
Nio is targeting positive non-GAAP operating profit for the full year.
Flagship Mix Lifts the ASP
The Nio brand’s average transaction price reached 434,600 yuan in July, driven by the continued strong sales of the ES8 and ES9, communications head Ma Lin said on Weibo on Saturday.
That extends a climb management has framed as evidence of premium positioning. On the first-quarter earnings call, William Li put the brand’s average selling price at 390,000 yuan — around 50,000 yuan above BMW‘s and 50% higher than Audi‘s — and said Chinese buyers had formed a consensus that Nio would be “the next car after Mercedes, BMW, and Audi.”
Li added that the brand’s market share in Shanghai, the Yangtze River Delta and China’s first-tier cities had surpassed that of the combustion models from the traditional luxury marques.
The brand-level figure sits well above the group average, which the Onvo and Firefly brands pull down. Group average selling price, derived from vehicle revenue against deliveries, climbed to roughly 273,000 yuan in the first quarter, up 15.6% year over year, and a full quarter of ES9 deliveries points the second-quarter figure higher when Nio reports.
Onvo‘s average selling price runs at roughly 240,000 yuan, with Firefly positioned at a claimed 50% premium to small-car rivals.
Footprint Expands Faster Than Export Volume
Li set a goal in a New Year letter of cumulatively entering 40 countries and regions by the end of 2026, up from roughly 20 at the close of 2025, using a national-distributor model with Firefly as the pioneering brand.
Shipments have not followed at the same pace. Nio exported 475 vehicles across the first half of 2026, comprising 231 from the Nio brand, 221 from Firefly and 23 from Onvo.
June exports came to 72 units, down 18.2% from May, leaving the half-year average just under 80 vehicles a month.
That figure represents roughly 0.25% of first-half deliveries.
Qin said in March the company targets “several thousand units” delivered overseas this year while preparing for larger-scale expansion over the following two to three years.
Firefly has entered more than ten overseas markets, reaching Singapore in January and Thailand in March, and continues to lead the group’s international rollout.
The brand showed its right-hand-drive model at the Hong Kong Auto Show in June ahead of a distributor-led entry mirroring the arrangement Nio uses in Macau. Onvo reaches Europe in 2027.
4,000 Battery Swap Stations
Nio‘s 4,000th battery swap station — also its first fifth-generation station — goes into operation on August 7 in Quanzhou, Fujian, Ma Lin said in the same Weibo post, and will serve Nio, Onvo and Firefly users.
The date puts a marker on the fifth-generation rollout the company had scheduled for the third quarter.
Cumulative battery swaps passed 100 million on 6 February.
