Nio Group is stepping up efforts to streamline its operations, drawing its mass-market Onvo brand more tightly into the core business as the company intensifies cost-cutting measures.
The Shanghai-based electric vehicle maker has recently begun showcasing Onvo’s debut model, the L60, in its premium ‘Nio Houses’ and ‘Nio Spaces’ across China—marking a departure from an earlier plan to clearly delineate the premium Nio brand from its more affordable sibling.
Mounting pressure to reduce fixed costs has prompted the EV maker to reduce headcount and merge positions both in Europe and China but also consolidate infrastructure across business units. As two separate sources told EV earlier this month, Nio Group is aiming to reduce operational costs by 25% at a global scale.
In an internal email sent on Wednesday and seen by EV, Nio’s Human Resources department announced that Onvo’s Service Operations Department has been “canceled,” with its responsibilities absorbed by the group’s broader Service Operations division.
“To better support the Company’s business development, we’d like to announce the following organizational adjustments: Service Operations Department (OSO) under the ONVO Business Division (OV) is canceled, with its complete functions integrated into Service Operations (SO),” the company wrote in the memo.
He Xiao will continue to lead Onvo’s Service Engineering Team following the reorganization and will now report to Carlos Wu, Nio’s Vice President of Service Operations. The changes take effect immediately.
The memo follows a separate internal communication last week, also seen by EV, detailing a reorganization of Onvo’s marketing functions. The Onvo Brand & Communications (OBC) department has been renamed Onvo Marketing Activity Planning (OMA), and will oversee brand strategy, communications, user growth, marketing planning, and the management of official media channels.
The latest restructuring comes shortly after the appointment of Fei Shen, a longtime Nio executive and Vice President of Nio Power, as head of the Onvo brand. Shen took over in early April following the departure of Alan Ai, a former WeWork executive who had led the Onvo project since 2021, when it was still operating under the internal codename “Alps.”
Ai’s exit came after a rocky start for Onvo’s market rollout. In an interview published in mid-March, he acknowledged that order cancellations had “accelerated” in December, derailing the company’s targets of delivering 16,000 vehicles in January and 20,000 in March.
Despite publicly denying plans to step down in that interview, Ai ultimately left his position in early April following the release of March delivery figures.
Despite reaching 5,000 deliveries in November and doubling that figure in December, demand for the L60 fell short of expectations in 2025, Chief Executive Officer William Li said during Nio’s most recent earnings call.
On March 29, the now-former Head of User Operations and Services Xia Qinghua had posted on social media that Onvo was seeing “a clear rebound in orders” amid demand concerns.
China’s MIIT filing revealed on Wednesday the first images of Onvo’s second model — the six-seat SUV L90. The model will feature a 85kWh battery pack, the same used by the brand’s debut model L60.
The L90 will be officially unveiled next week at the Shanghai Auto Show. Firefly, the other sub-brand of the Nio Group, will start
Nio shares closed 2.80% lower on Wednesday at $3.52 extending year to date losses to 19.3%.
