Chinese EV maker Nio is on track to deliver more than 10,000 units of its ES9 flagship SUV in June, according to several Chinese automotive bloggers on Friday.
Customer deliveries of the full-size electric SUV began on May 28, making June effectively the model’s first full calendar month on the road.
The ES8 — Nio‘s current best-seller — is also set to reach its 120,000th delivery during the month, the bloggers said.
Once Nio clears the model’s backlog, Bank of China International projected the ES9 would stabilize at monthly deliveries of 3,000 to 4,000 units, while Deutsche Bank forecast an average of around 5,000 units per month once production fully ramps in the second half of the year.
Pre-Sale to Launch
The ES9’s commercial launch followed a carefully staged rollout that began when Nio unveiled the model on April 9 in Hangzhou with pre-sale prices starting at 528,000 yuan ($77,200).
Founder and Chief Executive William Li described it at the time as the most important product of the year for the brand.
Orders from buyers outside the existing Nio community were running at more than 1.5 times the equivalent pace recorded during the first days after the ES8 launch in September 2025, Li said at a media session the following day.
Test drives opened on May 11, and Nio held the official launch event on May 27 with customer deliveries starting the next day — accelerated from the originally guided June 1 date.
Final pricing came in 30,000 yuan below pre-sale levels across all three trims.
The entry Executive Luxury Edition now starts at 498,000 yuan ($73,300) with the battery included, or 390,000 yuan ($57,600) under Nio‘s Battery-as-a-Service leasing program.
The mid Executive Signature starts at 558,000 yuan ($82,400), and the range-topping Horizon Special Edition at 628,000 yuan ($92,700).
To enable same-day handover at launch, Nio had built a pre-launch inventory of at least 6,000 ES9 units at its factory and delivery centers, according to local reports at the time.
The model was separately estimated to have drawn more than 50,000 pre-orders, with frontline sales staff projecting a conversion rate above 50%.
Demand at the Top
Days after deliveries began, Nio’s configurator showed estimated waits of 16 to 17 weeks from order lock for the two most expensive trims, against just three to four weeks for the entry version.
The gap inverts the usual pattern in which an automaker’s cheapest trim, ordered in the highest volume, carries the longest queue.
For the ES9, the wait lengthens as the price rises — a dynamic that echoes the ES8’s launch-period backlog, when waits stretched to 24 to 26 weeks.
The disclosure matters because Nio paired the launch with aggressive financing incentives designed to convert reservations into locked orders.
The headline offer was a 60-month installment plan with zero interest for the first 24 months and a 3% annualized fee over the remaining 36 months.
Customers who paid a 5,000-yuan reservation deposit before May 27 could apply that amount as 10,000 yuan toward the final purchase price, an effective 5,000-yuan discount that expired when formal orders opened.
Nio’s Q2 Guidance
A strong ES9 ramp in June would land at a moment when Nio needs the volume.
The company guided second-quarter deliveries to between 110,000 and 115,000 vehicles across its three brands, representing year-over-year growth of 52.7% to 59.6%.
Nio delivered 29,356 units in April and 37,705 in May, bringing the two-month total to 67,061.
That leaves between 42,939 and 47,939 deliveries required in June to land inside the guidance range.
At an internal meeting in April, Li told staff to seize the second quarter, identifying the ES9 and the Onvo L80 as the company’s top priorities.
He said pre-orders for the ES9 had surpassed internal expectations and were driving order growth for other models in the lineup.
The third-generation ES8 sold out its 2025 production capacity within 36 hours of its September launch and accumulated over 100,000 orders within 48 hours, a pace Li has repeatedly referenced as the benchmark the ES9 aims to match.
On the first-quarter earnings call on May 21, Li voiced confidence in ES9 demand, saying order intake had accelerated following the start of test drives.
He declined to give specific figures but said ES9 showroom traffic was also lifting the ES8, with order intake for the older model reaching its highest level since launch in the first 20 days of May and rising 30% week-over-week after test drives began.
Li framed the two models as complementary rather than cannibalistic, positioning the ES9 as a flagship executive SUV competing with the BMW X7 and Mercedes GLS, while the ES8 serves as an all-around family and business SUV.
ES8 Nears 120,000 Deliveries
On Monday, bloggers also shared that the ES8 is set to reach its 120,000th delivery during June.
Nio marked the 100,000th unit on April 23, roughly seven months after the third-generation model’s first delivery, and hit 110,000 about a month later.
The model has led China’s segment for vehicles priced above 400,000 yuan for five consecutive months regardless of powertrain, according to the company.
Both the ES8 and ES9 are built on Nio‘s NT3.0 platform with the same 900-volt architecture, 520 kW powertrain, and 102-kilowatt-hour CATL battery.
However, the ES9 steps up with the SkyRide intelligent chassis it shares with the ET9 executive sedan — combining ClearMotion’s fully active suspension, steer-by-wire from ZF, and rear-wheel steering.
At nearly 5.4 meters long, the ES9 is roughly 85 mm longer than the ES8 — making it the largest SUV in China.
Nio chose basketball great Yao Ming as a brand ambassador for the model, naming the eight-time NBA All-Star a chief experience officer for the ES9.
