Nio Inc. registered 79 vehicles across its eight reporting European markets in July, up 2.6% from June’s 77 but down 26.2% from the 107 recorded a year earlier — with the geography of the volume shifting more than the total, according to data compiled by EV.
Figures for Austria and Hungary had not been published as of Friday.
Portugal registered 32 vehicles, nearly tripling June’s 11 and overtaking Norway for the first time as the group’s largest European market.
The surge that landed in the month Firefly ran the steepest of the price cuts it has since extended, and that offset declines nearly everywhere else.
The reshuffle arrives almost exactly one year after Firefly delivered its first European vehicles on August 14, 2025 — a year in which incremental volume from new countries has replaced, rather than added to, the demand collapsing in the group’s established core.
A standing caveat applies to all of Nio‘s European figures: the company’s subscription model has distorted its registration data since 2022, as EV exclusively reported, with vehicles registered once when they first enter the fleet.
Germany: Three Again
Nio registered three vehicles in Germany in July, a 93.6% decline from a year earlier and the third consecutive month at exactly that figure, according to the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA).
Seven-month German registrations stand at 18 units, down 89.3% from the same period of 2025 — in a market whose battery-electric segment grew 61.7% in July to 78,609 units, and in a month when nearly every other Chinese brand advanced, led by BYD at 5,240 registrations and XPeng at 1,253.
The product explanation is structural.
Every model Nio currently offers in Germany is a 2023 or 2024 build on the older NT 2.0 platform, no updates will reach the region until late 2027, as EV has reported.
A review of the company’s German promotions page last month found the listed vehicles carrying short-term registrations — Kurzzeitzulassungen — indicating pre-registered stock rather than factory-fresh units.
The Network Retreat
The July figures land on a German operation in visible contraction.
Nio is closing its Hamburg Nio House, shutting one of its flagship European showrooms for the first time on record, after a German ledger that ran from 1,263 registrations in 2023 to 398 in 2024, 325 in 2025 and 15 in the first half of this year.
The company’s deputy general manager and marketing lead for Germany, Christian Wiegand, left at the end of July to join XPeng, with no replacement planned — for him or for any other country chief in Europe.
Executive VP Mark Zhou has conceded the company miscalculated when it expanded beyond Norway, and the worldwide Nio House count fell for the first time in 2025, from 180 to 171.
The retreat has a Danish precedent.
As EV exclusively reported, Nio shut its only battery swap station in Denmark — the Slagelse facility, once the 12th on the continent — in November, the first swap-station closure anywhere in Europe since the company’s 2021 debut, trimming the European network to 60 stations.
Firefly, One Year In
Firefly‘s first European year ends with the sub-brand carrying the group — and cooling.
The hatchback, designed in Munich and first handed over at Nio’s Utrecht hub and its Norwegian stores, now sells in seven European markets, though not in Germany or Sweden.
Over the past year the sub-brand became the group’s European volume engine: 27 of Norway’s 44 June registrations and 38 of the 45 Dutch registrations through the first half— 84.4% of the group’s volume in the market where its European headquarters operate.
July split the picture.
Firefly registered six vehicles in Norway, down from 27 in June, and a single unit in the Netherlands, down from five, as EV reported this week — while Portugal, the price-cut market with an August 31 deadline, absorbed the momentum the legacy pair lost.
The response has been price.
Firefly is holding cuts in four of its seven European markets through late summer — deadlines staggered from August 31 in Portugal to September 30 in Norway, an open-ended offer in Belgium and previously unreported reductions in Greece — consistent with discounts of 11% to 17% on the Select trim, limited to existing inventory.
Norway’s roughly 17% reduction is the second in under a year, while the Netherlands carries no promotion at all.
The European weakness inverts the brand’s global picture: Firefly delivered 5,771 vehicles worldwide in July, up 143.9% from a year earlier though 16.9% below June’s record 6,946, taking seven-month deliveries to 34,943 — with the overwhelming majority sold in China and Europe’s contribution measured in dozens.
Norway and the Rest
Norway, the group’s strongest European market, registered 20 vehicles in July — six Fireflys and 14 Nio-brand units, seven EL6 SUVs, sold as the ES6 in China, four EL8s — the second-generation ES8 — and three ET5 sedans, per EU-EVs data, down from June’s 44 and ending the sequential climb that began after January’s nine-unit low.
The year-over-year comparison softens the fall: July 2025’s 31 units included six Firefly test-fleet registrations ahead of the sub-brand’s launch, so the 35.5% decline lands against a partly promotional base.
Seven-month Norwegian registrations stand at 181, down 6.2% from 193 a year earlier.
Even in Portugal, its strongest July market, the group’s 32 units trailed XPeng‘s 207 and BYD‘s 333, per EU-EVs data — a 0.6% share of the Portuguese BEV market against 3.6% and 5.9% for its two compatriots.
A batch of 105 vehicles built for the Norwegian market is due to arrive in August, a delivery the company flagged as evidence of its commitment to the country — and one that sets up a visible test of whether volumes rebuild after July’s pause.
In the Netherlands, home to Nio‘s European headquarters, the group registered two vehicles in July — one EL6 SUV and one Firefly — down from 20 a year earlier, according to BOVAG data.
The year-ago base carried a 17-unit batch of ET7 sedans registered in a single month; that flagship has recorded zero Dutch registrations in 2026, as has the ET5. Through July, the group’s Dutch total stands at 47 vehicles against 74 a year earlier, a 36.5% decline, with Firefly accounting for 39 units — 83.0% of volume.
Sweden — where Firefly is not sold — posted its second consecutive month at zero, against 15 units in July 2025, leaving its seven-month total at 13 versus 32 a year earlier.
Denmark’s three July registrations — against a zero-sales July 2025 — reflect a relaunch effect rather than recovered demand.
Nio abandoned its direct-sales model there after registering just five vehicles in 2024, handed the market to distributor Nic. Christiansen Group, ditched its battery-rental service and now sells only with the battery included.
This rebuilt Danish operation has logged at least one registration in all seven months of 2026, for a total of 25, and Firefly pop-up showrooms opened in Aarhus and Odense in February extended the retail footprint to the country’s three largest cities.
Greece contributed 14 registrations and Belgium and Luxembourg five, rounding out a distributor-served cohort — Denmark included — of 54 vehicles, more than double June’s 24, when Portugal led the expansion group with 11.
The Portuguese dataset does not break registrations down by model, though Firefly has driven the market since the group’s entry there late last year.
