Nio Inc.‘s design and branding chief Kris Tomasson said China’s compressed facelift cycle needs ‘a good balance,’ as automakers increasingly refresh models within six to twelve months of launch to keep pace with competitors.
Tomasson, recently appointed to oversee branding design across all three of the Shanghai-headquartered company’s brands, made the comments in an exclusive interview with EV at the Beijing Auto Show on Friday.
Chinese carmakers have been compressing product cycles to unprecedented speeds, mostly due to an ultra level of competition and rapid tech-related improvements where new models typically see sales peak early before declining sharply without constant updates.Â
BYD‘s premium Denza brand launched the N9 large plug-in hybrid SUV in March 2025, and introduced the 2026 model six months later on September 17, 2025.Â
Geely‘s Zeekr brand followed a similar cadence on the 001, releasing the 2024 model-year version in February 2024 and refreshing it in August 2024 — also six months later.
Within Nio Inc, the Onvo brand launched the second iteration of the L90 this week, nine months after the model’s first version.
The design chief was asked about the impact it has on his team’s job.
“I mean, obviously the competitiveness of the environment creates that. And the need for it,” Tomasson said.
“You know the competitive environment in China. There are so many new products, so many [inaudible] come to market. I think that there is this basic need to stay relevant and stay up to date,” Nio Inc.‘s SVP added.
Asked whether the six-month cycle risks becoming standard practice across the industry — a cadence that has no parallel in the United States or Europe — Tomasson called for “a good balance.”
“That pace, from my perspective, it needs to be a good balance to understand — six months is quite, you know… really understand how the product is, what needs to be updated as well,” the design chief said.
“If you’re just talking about a stylistic upgrade, there’s nothing to it. But as I need, those sorts of facelifts, there needs to be more,” he defended. “A general understanding that we’re making the product better.”
Howecer, Tomasson acknowledged that designers see it as a new challenge.
“Six months is a tight […] For designers, obviously, we love it — designing things, designing new things,” he said.
Special Editions as a Faster Path
Tomasson framed the proliferation of special and limited editions across Nio‘s three brands — including multiple Firefly editions, the ET9 Horizon Edition, and other model-specific limited runs — as a faster, more flexible alternative to full facelifts.
“I think that’s a way of actually doing it faster, when you are doing these special editions,” Tomasson said.
“Keeping it fresh. I think uniqueness, too. People want more and more unique products. They want to have something as almost bespoke. And that’s something we’re trying to do in the products, make them unique.”
The Firefly sub-brand, in particular, has been positioned by Nio closer to streetwear than to traditional automotive product cycles.
“Especially with Firefly, just like the sneaker culture, where you have special editions and new editions all the time — it drives demand,” Tomasson said.
What It Means
The BYD incident referenced by EV in the interview — a facelift with a price cut that generated 5,000 complaints in a single week in early 2025 — has become an industry cautionary tale about refresh cycles that arrive too quickly and undercut existing owners.
Nio is scheduled to launch the Onvo L80 on April 28, begin deliveries of the 2026 Onvo L90 on May 9, and start ES9 customer deliveries on June 1.
