Nio is seeking subtenants for its four flagship showrooms in major German cities after the Chinese EV maker registered just eight new vehicles in the country in the first quarter of 2026.
The retreat, reported by Manager Magazin, marks one of the most concrete signals yet that Nio‘s high-cost European direct-sales model is now seen as unsustainable by the EV maker — which pursues in 2026 its first full year of profitability.
The company is attempting to exit long-term leases at its Berlin (1,300 square meters), Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Hamburg showrooms.
The large-format sites that combine car displays with cafés, member lounges and co-working areas, rather than conventional dealership floor space.
As of Saturday, it remains unclear whether the Shanghai-headquartered EV maker will seek similar solutions for other European showrooms — known as ‘Nio Houses’ — including the Amsterdam location, the largest one on the Old Continent.
Eight EVs in 3 Months
Nio registered just eight new vehicles in Germany during the first quarter of 2026, according to official registration figures.
The quarterly total breaks down as one vehicle in January, five in February, and two in March.
The first-quarter figure represents a roughly 90% year-on-year decline against the first three months of 2025.
Nio registered 1,263 vehicles in 2023, its first full year in the market. That figure fell 68.5% to 398 in 2024 and declined a further 18.3% to 325 in 2025.
The eight units registered across the four German flagship Houses this year amount to an average of 0.67 sales per showroom per month.
The headline figure is complicated by German registration practices.
As EV reported in March, Nio had been marketing ET5, ET5 Touring and EL6 units as Kurzzeitzulassungen — vehicles registered for a maximum of 24 hours and immediately deregistered, then resold as near-new inventory at steep discounts without a formal cut to list prices.
The KBA counts the initial 24-hour registration as a new vehicle registration regardless of whether the car is subsequently resold to a retail customer — meaning the eight-vehicle Q1 figure captures the point of registration rather than the point of customer handover.
Outlier Among Chinese Rivals
Nio‘s difficulties stand in isolation among Chinese automakers operating in Germany, where nearly every other brand from the country is growing rapidly.
BYD registered 3,438 vehicles in March — a 327.1% year-on-year increase that pushed its German market share to 1.2% — and its local subsidiary has targeted 50,000 vehicle sales in the country for 2026.
Leapmotor, which entered through its Stellantis partnership, posted a 318.1% year-on-year surge in March and reached 0.5% German market share.
XPeng set a monthly record of 549 registrations — a 211.9% increase — bringing its Q1 total to 1,207 units, up 179.4% year on year.
Tesla, which has its only European factory near Berlin, registered 9,252 vehicles in March — a 315.1% jump year on year and its strongest month in the country since December 2022 — for a 3.1% share of all new vehicle registrations.
Q1 registrations reached 12,829, up 160%. Polestar posted 456 registrations in March — up 28% year on year — and 1,284 for the first quarter, up 50.2%.
Fully electric vehicles accounted for 70,663 of March’s German registrations overall, a 66.2% year-on-year increase and a 24% market share.
Total new car registrations in Germany rose 16% in March to 294,161 units, with the first quarter closing up 5.2%.
Chinese EV makers, including Nio and XPeng, face a 20.7% countervailing duty on top of the EU’s standard 10% import tariff, bringing total levies on their vehicles to 30.7%.
Cash Burn
The Nio Deutschland GmbH 2023 annual report, first reported by Manager Magazin and covered by EV, disclosed a net loss of more than €58 million on gross revenue of approximately €9.4 million in 2023.
Negative equity widened from roughly €22.3 million to nearly €80.4 million in a single year. The filing was completed on January 16, 2026 — well past the legal deadline.
Nio Deutschland warned in the report that 2024 and 2025 would bring a “sharp decline in revenue” and that annual losses would likely exceed the 2023 figure.
The collapse has unfolded against a German cost base disclosed by Manager Magazin as including the four showrooms, roughly 20 battery-swap stations, and a Berlin lobbying office — the latter rented at €36 per square metre, according to the magazine’s reporting, and already shut down.
Showroom Network Declines
Nio describes its flagship showrooms on its global website as “an open, welcoming space for our users and community, to express, share and experience memorable moments together.”
The sites combine a Gallery displaying the company’s vehicles with a Nio Café, a library, a bookable co-working Lab, a children’s area, a Forums event space and a Living Room designed for community gatherings, according to the company’s own description of the concept.
The global House network entered decline in 2025 for the first time since the concept launched.
Data compiled by EV from Nio‘s monthly disclosures shows the network peaked at 187 locations between April and July 2025, before contracting to 171 Houses globally by the end of 2025 — a net reduction of nine locations from the 180 reported at the end of 2024.
The figures mark the first annual decline since the first flagship showroom opened in Beijing in November 2017.
Founder and CEO William Li confirmed the 171 figure on the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call in March. “On the sales side, we currently operate 171 Nio Houses and 395 Nio Spaces, while Onvo has 420 stores,” Li said.
Nio stopped publishing monthly House-opening figures in its global newsroom after June 2025, the month it reported reaching 187 locations.
The company does not publicly disclose which individual Houses have closed.
Nio‘s retail strategy has pivoted toward partnerships with local distributors in all new markets outside China, Li said on the same call.
For 2026, Nio plans to expand into lower-tier Chinese cities through “Sky Stores” — shared sales and service outlets that host the main Nio brand alongside the Onvo and Firefly sub-brands under a single roof, reducing the per-brand fixed cost.
The first multi-brand store of this kind opened in China earlier in 2026.
Four country chiefs in four years
David Sultzer’s departure, first reported by EV on March 4, makes him the fourth executive to hold the top operational role in Germany since Nio entered the market in October 2022 — a pace of leadership turnover that has mirrored the brand’s inability to gain traction.
Ralph Kranz, former Director of Commercial Operations at Volvo Germany, was hired in March 2022 to build the business from scratch.
He oversaw the market launch and the opening of the first two Nio Houses in Berlin and Frankfurt, but exited the company in early 2024 after registrations failed to scale. Nio registered 1,263 vehicles in 2023, Kranz’s only full year in the role.
Marius Hayler, who had led Nio‘s entry into Norway as the brand’s first European country manager after joining from Jaguar Land Rover Norway in March 2021, was moved to Germany in October 2023 to replace Kranz.
He lasted eight months before departing in June 2024 to join Polestar as Director for the Nordic countries and managing director of the Norwegian market.
On the same day, Matt Galvin — Nio‘s UK country manager and head of European sales — also departed for Polestar, taking the role of UK and Ireland managing director.
David Sultzer as New Chief
Sultzer, who had joined Nio in September 2023 as regional manager for eastern Germany after a year as head of field sales at Genesis Motor Europe, was promoted to general manager in June 2024 to replace Hayler.
His tenure coincided with the sharpest phase of the sales decline — from 325 vehicles in the full year of 2025 to a single unit in January 2026 — and he was dismissed by management in February after the country recorded its weakest month since entering the market.
Sultzer’s departure also sat within a sweeping restructuring of Nio‘s European operations executed in February, when the company dismantled its unified European management structure, split the region into six separate departments, and shifted sales toward a dealer and distributor model.
Two of those units — Norway and a newly created European sales division — were transferred out of the European organisation entirely and placed under the company’s Global Business department in China.
Days before his dismissal was made public, Sultzer published a LinkedIn post — reported by EV on March 4 — warning that new EV brands were failing in Germany by prioritising premium positioning over operational fundamentals.
Sultzer did not mention Nio in the post.
Push of Incentives
The retreat follows an escalating series of promotional campaigns in the German market through the first quarter of 2026, each more aggressive than the last.
In January, Nio was already running 0% financing offers on the ET5 sedan, ET5 Touring wagon, and EL6 SUV with no stated expiration date.
In February, after registering a single vehicle in January — its worst month since entering the German market in late 2022 — Nio introduced a “Try & Buy” programme for the ET7 executive sedan, allowing customers to drive the car for six months for a one-time payment of €4,500, fully credited toward the purchase price.
In mid-March, the company went further, combining 0% financing with a Kurzzeitzulassung short-term-registration scheme that cut effective prices by as much as 37% from the original list price.
Under the offer, the ET5 carried a promotional price of €30,850 against a prior list price of roughly €49,000. That promotion expired on March 31.
The vehicles on offer were 2023 and 2024 model year units. Nio refreshed its Chinese lineup during the first half of 2025 — updated versions of the ET5, ET5 Touring, ES6 and EC6 were launched in China in May — but the updated versions have not reached European markets.
“Fundamental Miscalculations”
Executive VP Mark Zhou, in a podcast interview, said the company had made “fundamental miscalculations” when it expanded from Norway into the broader EU in 2022, underestimating infrastructure costs and GDPR compliance requirements.
Zhou said European staff “kept telling us, our cars are too big.”
The strategic direction now, according to Manager Magazin, is a shift to partnerships with established German car dealers combined with smaller compact Nio Spaces, replacing the high-cost flagship Houses.
Europe and the Q2 Strategic Bet
The company’s Firefly small-car brand launched across six European markets between August and December 2025, and the Onvo family-SUV brand is preparing European entry planned for next year.
Nio founder William Li told staff on Wednesday that the Nio ES9 and Onvo L80 launches this quarter represent the company’s key Q2 priorities, with the CEO describing the two models as “high-margin large vehicles” and telling employees they “absolutely have to seize the next two months.”
Globally, Nio delivered 83,465 vehicles in the first quarter of 2026, up 98.3% year on year.
