Nio Inc. delivered 109,178 vehicles in the third quarter, within the 108,000 to 111,000 range it guided on September 1, as growth at its premium Nio brand made up for a slump at its mass-market brand Onvo.
The total was 1,178 vehicles above the range’s bottom and 1,822 below its top. Third-quarter deliveries rose 25.4% from a year earlier and 1.4% from the second quarter.
September deliveries rose 7.7% from a year earlier to 37,408, within the 36,230 to 39,230 the guidance implied after deliveries of 35,934 in July and 35,836 in August.
Back in Range After a Miss
The result followed a miss in the second quarter, when Nio delivered 107,658 vehicles, 2,342 short of its 110,000 to 115,000 guidance.
In the first quarter, it delivered 83,465, ahead of its 80,000 to 83,000 range.
Nio has not yet given guidance for the fourth quarter, which it normally sets when it reports quarterly results.
Three Brands, Three Directions
The premium Nio brand delivered 21,318 vehicles in September, up 55.3% from a year earlier and 0.7% from August.
The brand delivered 62,500 vehicles in the third quarter, up 69.2% from a year earlier, and 181,988 in the first nine months of the year.
Nine-month deliveries rose 63.4% from a year earlier, and the brand accounted for 60.6% of the group’s total.
September was still below the brand’s 2026 monthly high of 21,908, set in June.
The Nio brand delivered its 1,000,000th vehicle on September 21, and its cumulative total reached 1,011,597 by the end of the month, according to figures Nio released in China.
Onvo delivered 27,728 vehicles in the third quarter, down 26.4%, and 8,763 in September, down 42.5% and its fourth straight monthly decline since May.
Firefly, the group’s small-car brand, delivered a record 7,327 vehicles in September and 18,950 in the quarter, up 51.8%.
The Nio brand accounted for 57.0% of September deliveries, Onvo for 23.4% and Firefly for 19.6%.
Two SUVs Lead
The all-new ES8 delivered 10,542 vehicles in September, about half of the Nio brand’s total.
The all-new ES8 reached its 150,000th delivery on September 20, the first anniversary of its launch, Nio said.
The ES9 reached 30,000 deliveries on September 23, 119 days after deliveries began on May 28.
Nio said the ES9 had ranked first in monthly sales among fully electric vehicles priced above 500,000 yuan ($74,600) for three consecutive months.
Retail sales of the ES9 were 6,474 in August, below the 8,595 of June, its first full month, according to the China Passenger Car Association.
A Shorter Queue for the ES9
Waiting times for the ES9 have shortened since Li gave a three-to-four-month estimate on the September 1 call.
“Right now, for users placing an order, they will need to wait for 3 months or nearly 4 months to pick up a new car,” founder and CEO William Li said on the September 1 call.
He said ES9 orders grew from July to August, after the brand worked through the last of its pre-orders in July.
Li told employees at an internal meeting on September 8 that ES9 orders still faced a three-month wait.
Waiting times for the ES9’s two top trims had shortened to 11 to 12 weeks by mid-September.
By Thursday morning, Nio’s online configurator showed a wait of 9 to 10 weeks after an order is locked for its two top versions, the Horizon Edition, priced from 628,000 yuan ($93,700), and the Executive Signature, from 558,000 yuan ($83,200), the shortest since deliveries began in May.
The entry Executive Luxury version, priced from 498,000 yuan ($74,300), showed 3 to 4 weeks, unchanged from earlier checks.
The all-new ES8 showed a wait of 2 to 3 weeks across its versions.
Editions and Packages
Nio has added special editions and option packages across its lineup to support demand for older and slower-selling models.
It launched the EC6 Aura Edition on September 22, priced from 369,800 yuan ($55,200), or 261,800 yuan ($39,000) under its battery-rental plan.
The EC6 coupe SUV sold 322 units in August, down 71.9% from a year earlier, according to the China Passenger Car Association.
Onvo added design packages to its L80 and L90 SUVs in September, and Firefly launched its latest limited edition in August.
The Annual Target
Li set a goal in January of raising deliveries by 40% to 50% this year, from 326,028 in 2025.
“We expect our annual volume growth to be around 40% to 50%, and we will maintain that for the mid and long term,” he said on the September 1 call.
Reaching 40% would require 156,138 deliveries in the fourth quarter, or 52,046 a month, more than Nio has delivered in any single month.
Its record is 48,135, set in December 2025, and its best month this year was June, at 40,597.
Li has set a narrower target for the whole group of more than 40,000 deliveries a month in the fourth quarter, against an average of about 36,400 in the third quarter.
That would take full-year deliveries to about 420,300, growth of roughly 29%.
It would also leave fourth-quarter deliveries about 4% below the 124,807 Nio delivered in the same period of 2025, a record quarter.
Nio has not announced a new Nio-brand model for the rest of 2026.
In the long term, Li expects the Nio brand to account for 35% of group sales, with Onvo at 55% and Firefly at 10%.
New Models in 2027
“For the NIO brand, for next year, we will be introducing new products coming from the 5 and 6 series product lines,” Li said on the September 1 call. Those lines include the ES6 and EC6 SUVs and the ET5 and ET5 Touring.
Co-founder and President Qin Lihong has said the third-generation ES6 is due in 2027, saying it would “probably be the most popular model in our third-generation lineup.”
Onvo will add “a major strategic new product” next year, Li said on the same call.
Li told staff on September 8 that Nio would have “heavyweight new cars next year” and that the pace of its launches had improved.
Europe
The group has relied on China for almost all of its sales, and the Nio brand exported 39 vehicles in August, according to the China Passenger Car Association.
Li said in September that Nio would not pursue expansion in Europe “for its own sake.”
“We will not simply replicate what works in China,” he wrote on LinkedIn. Nio has no model updates planned for its European lineup until late 2027.
