The Nio ES8 delivered 8,966 units in June — falling below 10,000 monthly deliveries for the first time since the model began its production ramp late last year and extending a decline that has now run for three consecutive months.
Demand for the large SUV has roughly halved since March, when Nio closed the first quarter with 16,255 ES8 deliveries — a drop of 44.8% in the space of 90 days.
June’s figure confirms an estimate that Deutsche Bank published last week of approximately 8,900 units.
Nio did not disclose the ES8’s June delivery figure separately when it reported group results on July 1, breaking from the practice it had maintained throughout the model’s run — a departure that itself signalled the number had slipped.
The decline lands less than 24 hours before Nio launches the five-seat version of the ES8 at a July 9 event scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Beijing Time.
Pre-orders for the variant opened on June 28, with display units arriving at stores the same day.
Best-Seller for 9 Months
The third-generation ES8 has been Nio‘s best-selling model every month since October 2025, when deliveries reached 6,703 units and overtook the ET5 Touring for the first time since its revamp.
The model surged through the final quarter of last year, peaking at 22,258 units in December as Nio cleared a backlog that had stretched wait times to 24 to 26 weeks at launch.
Nio unveiled the third-generation ES8 at Nio Day in Hangzhou on September 20, 2025, pricing the six-seat Executive Luxury Edition at 406,800 yuan ($59,800) — 100,000 yuan below its predecessor.
The reduction pulled in over 100,000 firm orders within roughly 48 hours. Deliveries began the following day and reached 10,000 units in 41 days.
In the first quarter of 2026, the ES8 accounted for 54.14% of all Nio-brand deliveries and 45,160 units.
The model drove the company’s first-ever quarterly profit in the fourth quarter of 2025 and carried a gross margin of roughly 20%, making it Nio‘s earnings anchor.
The initial frenzy of the launch has since faded.
Cumulative deliveries reached 100,000 in 215 days — a record for any model priced above 400,000 yuan in China — and crossed 120,000 on June 22, 275 days after the first delivery.
The intervals between each 10,000-unit milestone trace the arc: 41 days for the first, then 29, 19 and 11 in rapid succession through December, before lengthening to roughly 30 days per 10,000 units by mid-2026 — about three times slower than the peak.
June’s 8,966 units still made the ES8 Nio‘s top-selling single model, but the margin has narrowed to almost nothing: the recently launched ES9, Nio‘s new flagship SUV, delivered 8,595 units in what was effectively its first full month on the road, trailing the ES8 by just 371 units.
In the first five months of 2026, cumulative ES8 deliveries reached 69,690 units, accounting for 46.3% of Nio Inc.‘s total over that period.
Adding June’s figure brings the year-to-date total to approximately 78,656 units.
Waiting Times
The ES8’s configurator wait time has served as a real-time demand gauge since launch. At debut, buyers faced a 24-to-26-week wait — nearly half a year.
By mid-January the figure had fallen to 13 to 14 weeks, then compressed to 8 to 9 weeks in early February, and onward to 3 to 4 weeks through March.
As of early May, founder and Chief Executive Officer William Li said the wait time had begun lengthening again after months of compression, attributing the rebound to ES9 showroom traffic spilling over into ES8 orders.
Li said ES8 order intake in the first 20 days of May had reached its highest level since the model’s October ramp.
That rebound did not hold.
Nio‘s configurator now shows a wait of two to three weeks for both six-seat ES8 trims — the Executive Luxury Edition at 406,800 yuan ($59,900) and the Executive Signature Edition at 446,800 yuan ($65,800) — with some configurations running slightly longer.
The seven-seat Executive Luxury Edition, also priced from 406,800 yuan, carries a longer lead time: the configurator lists estimated deliveries starting at the end of August.
The Cannibalization Question
Nio has consistently maintained that the ES9 is lifting the ES8 rather than displacing it.
Li pointed to a 30% week-over-week rise in ES8 orders after ES9 test drives began on May 11 and said that ES8 order intake in early May had reached its highest level since the production ramp.
The ES9 has accumulated more than 11,700 deliveries in roughly 40 days since customer handovers started on May 28, reaching 10,000 cumulative units in 30 days — a figure Nio announced on June 26 alongside an estimated backlog of more than 40,000 non-cancellable orders.
Deutsche Bank’s dealer checks support Nio‘s position.
The bank said a significant price gap between the two models limits overlap: the ES8 is positioned as a family vehicle competing with the Li Auto L8 and the Huawei-backed Aito M8, while the ES9 targets business executives and competes with the Aito M9 and Zeekr 9X.
According to the company, 70% of the first 10,000 ES9 buyers were new to the brand, suggesting the flagship is drawing conquest buyers from luxury combustion marques rather than redirecting existing Nio customers.
Deutsche Bank also attributed part of the June ES8 shortfall to Nio phasing out a 10,000 yuan vehicle purchase tax subsidy that had supported orders through the spring.
Upcoming 5-Seat
The five-seat ES8 shares the three-row model’s body shell and is built on the same 900-volt architecture, it carries the same 102-kilowatt-hour CATL battery pack and offers a CLTC range of 655 kilometres.
Li has framed the variant as a push into the premium large five-seat SUV segment, a market he says is roughly three times the size of the three-row segment the ES8 currently serves.
Nio‘s assistant Vice President of Brand Ma Lin has said the five-seat variant will not be heavily discounted, arguing that the existing six-seat ES8 is already aggressively priced.
Pricing and powertrain figures for the five-seat version are expected at the July 9 launch event, alongside the start of formal order-locking.
Co-founder and President Qin Lihong has denied an overlap risk between the five-seat ES8 and the Onvo L80, pointing to a price gap of more than 100,000 yuan between the two models.
On the first-quarter 2026 earnings call, Li called the five-seat ES8 the major new product for the second half.
The five-seat ES8 traces its origins to the discontinued ES7, a five-seat mid-to-large SUV that Nio pulled from sale in China in early 2025 after demand collapsed — sales had fallen 71.3% in 2024 to just 1,874 units.
