Nio Inc. said most of the first 10,000 buyers of its ES9 flagship sport utility vehicle were new to the brand and that it is winning customers from luxury combustion rivals.
The ES9 reached 10,000 deliveries 30 days after the first units were handed over.
Around 7,000 of the buyers, or 70%, were first-time Nio customers, and many had switched from luxury petrol brands, Nio‘s head of user operations, Yang Bo, wrote on Weibo on Friday.
Yang said the ES9 owners had “become Nio users for the first time.”
Conquest sales of that scale matter for Nio‘s priciest SUV, which started at 498,000 yuan ($73,500) at its May 27 launch.
Flagship Conquest
The ES9 replaced the ES8 as Nio‘s flagship SUV, a position the ES8 had held since 2018.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer William Li has positioned the model in the executive segment, against the BMW X7 and Mercedes-Benz GLS.
Nio said before launch that orders from buyers outside its existing community were running at more than 1.5 times the pace of the ES8’s September 2025 debut.
Demand at that level was “something we’ve rarely seen before,” Li said at an April media session.
Li has called the ES9 the brand’s most important product of the year.
More than 50,000 pre-orders preceded the launch, the company said.
Pricing started at 498,000 yuan with the battery included, 30,000 yuan below the pre-sale level.
Under Nio‘s battery-leasing plan, the entry trim falls to 390,000 yuan ($57,500).
Higher trims run to 628,000 yuan for the Horizon Special Edition.
Its predecessor, the ES8, sold out 2025 capacity within 36 hours of its September launch and drew 100,000 orders in 48 hours.
Co-founder and President Qin Lihong has said the ES9 will carry the highest gross profit per unit among Nio SUVs.
Among the new buyers was Li Ningchuan, founder of Zhejiang EV-Tech, who took the 10,000th car.
Former NBA star Yao Ming serves as a chief experience officer for the model.
An Accelerated Launch
Nio began deliveries on May 28, a day after the launch and ahead of an originally guided June 1 date.
The company pre-built more than 6,000 ES9 units at its factory and delivery centers to enable same-day handovers.
At 5,365 millimeters long, the ES9 is China’s largest battery-electric SUV.
Built on Nio‘s NT3.0 platform, the model shares a 520-kilowatt powertrain and a 102-kilowatt-hour CATL battery with the ES8.
A full charge gives the ES9 up to 635 kilometers of range under China’s CLTC cycle.
Its SkyRide active-suspension chassis is shared with the ET9 executive sedan.
Two in-house Shenji NX9031 driving chips and 31 sensors, including LiDAR, run its assisted-driving system.
Acceleration to 100 kilometers per hour takes 4.3 seconds.
Standard equipment includes 12 airbags and a 216-liter front trunk.
Within days, wait times for the two priciest trims reached 16 to 17 weeks, against three to four weeks for the entry version.
Demand skewed to the top, an inversion of the usual pattern in which the cheapest, highest-volume trim waits longest.
Management had earlier said the pricier Executive Signature and Horizon Special Edition trims took a far larger share of initial orders than expected.
Registrations reached 3,108 ES9 units in May, 15.5% of the brand’s deliveries, before output climbed in June.
Deutsche Bank expects monthly ES9 sales to reach 5,000 units once production ramps in the second half.
That lifted the bank’s 2026 delivery forecast for Nio by about 5%, to around 420,000 units.
Lineup Nearly Complete
Li said this year’s model launches are nearly complete, with one variant outstanding.
A five-seat version of the ES8 is due in early July, expanding a lineup now limited to six- and seven-seat configurations.
The ES8 has anchored Nio‘s sales since its third-generation launch in September 2025.
Nio‘s best-selling model passed 110,000 deliveries in late May and has led China’s large electric SUV segment for months.
Reaching 100,000 deliveries in 215 days set a record for models priced above 400,000 yuan in China.
Pricing for the ES8 starts at 406,800 yuan, among the highest from a domestic Chinese automaker.
More than 100,000 firm ES8 orders followed that September launch.
For five straight months, the ES8 has been China’s best-seller above 400,000 yuan.
ES9 test drives, which opened May 11, lifted ES8 order intake rather than cannibalizing it, Li said.
Order intake for the ES8 rose 30% week-over-week after the drives began, according to the chief executive.
Production runs at Nio‘s plants in Hefei, each with a designed capacity of 300,000 vehicles a year.
Annual Event Moves to December
Nio said this week it would hold its annual event in December.
The timing marks a change from last year, when the company used a September event to launch the third-generation ES8.
December had been the traditional slot for the yearly showcase, which unveiled the ET9 sedan in 2024.
Historically, the event has doubled as the stage for Nio‘s biggest reveals.
A year-end slot follows a front-loaded run of 2026 launches led by the ES9.
Delivery Targets in Focus
Nio expects to deliver 110,000 to 115,000 vehicles in the second quarter across its three brands.
The target depends heavily on June output, the company has said.
Management has guided to full-year growth of 40% to 50%, implying roughly 456,000 to 489,000 deliveries in 2026.
Group deliveries reached 326,028 vehicles in 2025.
US-listed Nio shares rose more than 8% earlier this month after the company reported its strongest sales month of the year in May.
Three brands make up the group — the premium Nio marque, the family-focused Onvo, and the compact Firefly.
A network of 8,903 charging and battery-swap stations supports the fleet, with fifth-generation swap units due from the third quarter.
Cumulative research and development (R&D) spending has topped 68.8 billion yuan over 11 years, Nio has said.
More than 20 billion yuan of that has funded charging and battery-swap infrastructure.
Long term, Nio expects Onvo to become its top-selling brand under a 35-55-10 sales mix.
