EV maker Nio reaffirmed on Monday that it is “still confident” about reaching its first profitable quarter in Q4 despite seeing it as a “quite big” challenge.
In a new Q&A session with customers in China, the founder and chief executive William Li said the company continues its efforts to control costs and that it “still has a lot of ES8 orders in inventory.”
According to Nio‘s website, customers placing an order for the third generation of the three row SUV this Monday have an estimated delivery time of between 22 and 23 weeks — in mid-April 2026.
“On one hand, regarding our sales in the fourth quarter this year, everyone has seen it — in October we created a new high with 40,000 units,” the CEO said. “We still have a lot of ES8 orders in inventory. This year, the main focus is simply to deliver more.”
2025 Delivery Target Miss
The EV maker said late last year that the target for 2025 was to double its vehicle deliveries.
After having delivered 221,970 vehicles in 2024, doubling the output would represent over 440,000 units this year.
In early September, the management said the target for the final quarter was to deliver 150,000 units across the three brands.
Considering the roughly 200,000 EVs delivered between January and September, the management lowered the full year goal from 444,000 to 350,000 vehicles.
Sub-Brands and Cost-Control
Commenting on both sub-brands Onvo and Firefly, the CEO said their sales situation “is also actually not bad overall” before commenting on the gross margins.
“So for this year’s sales we are still confident. Delivery price — the gross margin is also OK. The gross margin is quite good, and better than our original estimates,” Li stated.
The chief executive said that the fact that the company is not holding any new model launches in the last quarter of the year helps in not having extraordinary expenses.
“Then next is cost control. For cost control — you see in the fourth quarter this year we don’t have new model launches, and we also don’t have operational activities,” Li noted.
Over the past 18 months, the company has launched two sub-brands and several new models and upgrades to existing ones.
Firefly is planned to only launch its second model in 2027, while Onvo will release its third model — named L80 — in the first half of next year.
“Those things that were launched are all basically half done and then done. It’s those R&D projects — the new models have already been rolled out over the past few years — so cost control in the fourth quarter should also be relatively good,” Li stated.
Q4 Profitability Target
Commenting on the profitability target, the CEO cautioned that the company doesn’t know yet if it “can still make it.”
“We predict that our goal is to have an operating boom in the fourth quarter. This isn’t the last day yet, so we don’t know if we can still make it,” Li stated. “But we are still confident, although the challenge is also quite big.”
The chief executive concluded by joking that customers should continue buying Nio, Onvo and Firefly vehicles to guarantee more events with him in the future.
“If we set the expectations too high during research, and in the end we can’t achieve the results, what do we do?” he questioned.
“So if everyone still wants to see me every year, then please help and buy a few more cars,” the CEO joked.
Expansion
Nio said last week it plans to introduce its Onvo sub-brand to European markets starting in 2027.
Later in the week, the company teased — for the first time ever — its expansion into the North American market, without confirming the launch in Canada.
In Europe, expansion is also underway as the Group will begin accepting orders for both Nio and Firefly vehicles in Austria, Greece and Portugal “soon.”
