Nio’s third-quarter delivery guidance, issued with second-quarter results on Tuesday, implies September deliveries of between 36,230 and 39,230 vehicles.
The company expects 108,000 to 111,000 deliveries for the quarter, growth of 24.0% to 27.5% on the same period of 2025.
Two of the three months are already reported. Nio delivered 35,934 vehicles in July and 35,836 in August, a combined 71,770, so the guidance fixes September at the difference.
Nio guided the second quarter to 110,000 to 115,000 deliveries and 32.78 billion to 34.44 billion yuan of revenue, and came in below both at 107,658 and 32.14 billion.
At the bottom of the range, September would be 1.1% above August and 4.3% above the 34,749 delivered in September 2025.
At the top, it would be 9.5% above August and 12.9% above the year-ago month.
Neither end would produce a record. Even 39,230 would fall 3.4% short of June’s 40,597, the strongest month of 2026, and 18.5% below the 48,135 Nio delivered in December 2025.
The Sequential Step Is Almost Nothing
The more revealing comparison is against the quarter just reported.
Nio delivered 107,658 vehicles in the second quarter. The guidance for the third asks for between 342 and 3,342 more, sequential growth of 0.3% to 3.1%.
A year ago the company guided the opposite way.
Coming off 87,071 in the third quarter of 2025, it guided the fourth to 120,000 to 125,000 — a sequential step of 32,929 to 37,929 — and delivered 124,807, inside the range and 0.15% below the top.
This year’s step is between 1% and 9% of last year’s, in a quarter whose closing month, September 2025, was itself a monthly record when Nio set it.
Revenue guidance points the same way. Nio expects 33.29 billion to 34.05 billion yuan, up 52.7% to 56.2% year on year.
Read at corresponding ends of the two ranges, that implies about 307,000 to 308,000 yuan per vehicle against 298,500 in the second quarter.
That measure is total revenue, so it captures parts, services and used cars alongside the vehicle mix
What the Q4 Would Have to Do
The guidance narrows the annual question to arithmetic.
Founder and chief executive William Li reaffirmed a target of 40% to 50% delivery growth at the China Auto Chongqing Summit in June, which against 326,028 deliveries in 2025 implies a full year of roughly 456,000 to 489,000 vehicles.
Nio delivered 191,123 in the first half. Add the guided third quarter and the nine-month total lands between 299,123 and 302,123.
To reach even the bottom of the annual range, the fourth quarter would have to produce between 153,877 and 156,877 vehicles.
That is 23.3% to 25.7% above the 124,807 of the fourth quarter of 2025, the best quarter the company has recorded, and requires an average of 51,292 to 52,292 a month against a record month of 48,135.
In other words, the least demanding combination available — the top of the third-quarter guidance and the bottom of the annual range — still requires every month of the fourth quarter to beat Nio’s all-time monthly record by 6.6%.
Reaching the top of the range would take 186,877 to 189,877 vehicles in the quarter, or between 62,292 and 63,292 a month, which is 29.4% to 31.5% above the record.
Nio’s record on annual targets is more particular than a simple run of misses.
In 2024 management set no annual figure until September, when co-founder Qin Lihong named 220,000 with 128,100 already delivered, and the year closed at 221,970 — met at 100.9%.
In 2025 it returned to a doubling, roughly 440,000, and delivered 326,028, or 73.8% of the original goal, after cutting fourth-quarter guidance twice.
The only annual target the company has met was announced in September of the year in question with more than half the volume already banked, and it has never published a single hard figure for 2026.
Chief financial officer Stanley Yu Qu said on Tuesday that the company is confident of achieving its full-year operating objectives.
He did not mention the delivery target, and Li’s own comments accompanying the results gave the third-quarter range without repeating the annual one.
The Comparison Base Turns Hostile
September is where the year-on-year arithmetic stops helping.
Nio delivered 34,749 vehicles in September 2025, 40,397 in October, 36,275 in November and 48,135 in December, the strongest four months in the company’s history.
Onvo supplied 15,246, 17,342, 11,794 and 9,154 of those. The sub-brand delivered 8,810 in August this year, down 46.4% year on year, so at that level it shrinks against the base from September onward.
Group year-to-date growth has already fallen from 68.0% at the July release to 57.9% at the August one.
Onvo’s own year-to-date growth fell from 39.1% through July to 13.2% through August for the same reason.
Where the Volume Would Have to Come From
Three model lines are pulling in different directions.
The third-generation ES8 returned above 10,000 units in July and passed 140,000 cumulative deliveries on August 21, 335 days after launch, having reached 130,000 on July 22 — a pace of about 10,000 a month.
The ES9 flagship fell 26.5% in July to 6,315 units on China Passenger Car Association data, its first sequential decline, and Nio does not break it out in monthly releases.
Onvo has no further new nameplate due this year, having launched the L80 in May and refreshed the L90 in April and the L60 in June, with Li telling analysts on the first-quarter call that the next new products arrive in 2027.
Firefly delivered 5,852 in August, up 34.7% year on year, and has been the steadiest of the three.
Li said with the results that Firefly has led market share in China’s high-end small-car segment for 15 consecutive months, and that Onvo has become the sales leader in the 200,000-to-300,000-yuan large SUV segment.
The company’s annual event, known as Nio Day, is set for Wuhan in December with details still unconfirmed.
The model-level breakdown of August volumes is due next week from China Passenger Car Association data.
Nio has published September and third-quarter figures on October 1 in past years.
