Nio will host a livestream event on Tuesday evening, a day before its flagship ES9 begins customer deliveries, fueling speculation that the company is preparing to unveil new technology.
The event will stream at 7:30 p.m. Beijing time on Tuesday, May 26 (7:30 a.m. US Eastern time) on the company’s WeChat channel.
The Shanghai-headquartered EV maker has not disclosed the topic.
A Leaked Hint
Speculation intensified after a screenshot of a private group chat began circulating on Weibo on Monday, showing Nio‘s Assistant VP for Branding and Communications Ma Lin, teasing the event.
In the messages, the executive said the ES9 had two more events scheduled, one on Tuesday night and the official launch on May 27.
Ma Lin described Tuesday’s as “very hardcore,” not yet announced and still in preparation, and called it a standalone, single-topic segment.
Several automotive bloggers reposted the screenshot on Chinese social media platforms, and EV independently confirmed it.
What It Might Cover
The single-topic framing has prompted speculation that the event could be focused on a new version of Nio‘s assisted-driving system — named Nio World Model (NWM) —though the company has not confirmed any subject.
What is confirmed is that an NWM upgrade is coming.
Founder and Chief Executive William Li said on last week’s first-quarter earnings call that Nio would release a major upgrade to the Nio World Model in China in June, bringing improvements across driving, parking and active-safety scenarios.
“In June, both new and existing users will receive the next major NWM upgrade,” Li said, adding that two more major upgrades would follow later in the year.
Li claimed the system matches or beats rivals while using only 20% of their cloud computing power, describing an architecture that pairs the world model with closed-loop reinforcement learning.
The company has credited an earlier version, rolled out this year, with a sharp rise in usage.
Urban Navigate on Pilot mileage rose 92% quarter-over-quarter in the first quarter, Nio said, while the share of driving time spent using assisted driving increased 116%.
Total mileage driven on the system topped 200 million kilometers in a single month for the first time in February, up 81.5% from January.
Whether Tuesday’s event covers that software remains unconfirmed.
The event sits one day before the ES9’s formal launch and the start of its deliveries on May 27.
The event sits one day before the ES9’s formal launch and the start of its deliveries on May 27.
The ES9 Launch
The ES9 is Nio‘s new flagship executive SUV and a central piece of its second half of the year sales push.
Built on the NT3.0 platform, the full-size SUV measures 5.3 meters long with a 3.25-meter wheelbase and runs on a 900-volt architecture with the company’s SkyRide intelligent chassis system.
Pre-sale pricing starts at 528,000 yuan with the battery included, or 420,000 yuan under Nio‘s Battery-as-a-Service rental model, with a Signature Edition at 588,000 yuan.
Test drives opened on May 11.
Founder and Chief Executive William Li said on last week’s first-quarter earnings call that ES9 test drives had lifted demand for the existing ES8 rather than cannibalizing it, with ES8 order intake rising 30% week-over-week to a new record high after drives began.
The premium brand delivered the 110,000th unit of the three-row SUV over the weekend, with the last 10,000 vehicles being delivered in 30 days.
Nio expects to deliver between 110,000 and 115,000 vehicles across its three brands in the second quarter.
Earlier on Monday, BOCOM International reiterated its Buy rating and set a price target of HK$65.83 on the Chinese EV maker Nio Inc., citing first-quarter results it said beat expectations.
