Onvo said on Tuesday that the new iteration of its three row SUV L90 completed a 2,007-kilometre (1,240 miles) endurance challenge running on assisted driving throughout, finishing in 23 hours, 57 minutes and 40 seconds.
The drive was done hours before the Nio sub-brand officially launches the refreshed flagship model in China at 7:30 PM local time.
The run covered 2,007 kilometres from Zhanjiang in Guangdong province to Hangzhou in Zhejiang province.
Of the total distance, 1,940 kilometres were on highways and 67 kilometres on urban roads, according to the Shanghai-headquartered brand.
The test vehicle was a all-wheel-drive 2026 L90 carrying approximately 350 kilograms of load.
“Flagship intelligence, a generation ahead,” Onvo said in the Weibo post, noting that the run also served as the real-world debut of the latest version of the Nio World Model — the group’s in-house embodied AI driving system.
The Swap Method
Rather than charging, the challenge relied entirely on Nio‘s network of more than 3,500 battery swap stations across China — with each swap taking approximately three minutes depending on the generation of the station.
The run used what Onvo called a “change drivers, change batteries” approach: no vehicle changes, only swap stations refuelling the SUV along the route and different drivers relieving each other to sustain the continuous run.
The drivers were celebrity couple Sha Yi and Hu Ke, who are also the first owners of the L90, Nio founder and CEO William Li described them as “challenge masters” in the launch-event teaser.
The Nio World Model
The 2,007-kilometre run served as the first public long-distance real-world test of the latest version of the Nio World Model (NWM), described by the group as China‘s first embodied driving model based on closed-loop reinforcement learning.
NWM is designed to enable what Nio calls “human-like driving.”
The model includes active lane-change negotiation in urban traffic, proactive route planning ahead of traffic conditions, and a newly added auto-docking function that handles battery-swap station approach and entry without driver input.
The LiDAR Strategy Shift
The refreshed 2026 L90 marks the first time any Onvo vehicle will be offered with LiDAR — reversing the pure-vision-only approach the sub-brand has promoted since its 2024 launch.
The unit is a 192-line, 950-nanometre-wavelength LiDAR mounted in a watchtower-style roof layout, matching the placement used on the main Nio brand’s flagship models, which have fitted LiDAR as standard across the lineup since launch.
The LiDAR-equipped variant will be sold alongside the existing pure-vision trim, giving buyers a choice between sensor configurations.
Pure-vision L90 models already on the road will receive a major over-the-air update later this year including an end-to-end neural network model to enhance their assisted driving capabilities, according to the brand.
Onvo‘s head of product Eric Yu said on Weibo earlier this month that the LiDAR-equipped variant carries approximately 15,000 yuan in additional component cost over the pure-vision trim, driven by sensor hardware and rising prices for high-performance memory.
The existing L90 is priced from 265,800 yuan to 299,800 yuan outright, or from 179,800 yuan under Nio‘s Battery as a Service rental scheme with a monthly subscription fee of 899 yuan.
First Onvo With Nio’s 5nm Chip
Beyond the LiDAR addition, the 2026 L90 is the first Onvo vehicle to feature Nio‘s in-house developed Shenji NX9031 smart driving chip, replacing the Nvidia silicon previously used by the sub-brand.
The NX9031 is the world’s first 5-nanometre automotive-grade smart driving chip, integrating more than 50 billion transistors and delivering over 1,000 TOPS of compute with 546 GB/s of memory bandwidth, according to Nio.
The 2026 L90 also upgrades to 64 GB of LPDDR5x memory to support on-device large-model inference.
The main Nio brand has already fully transitioned to the NX9031 across its model lineup.
The chip migration is the clearest signal yet of Nio‘s strategy to accelerate the penetration of internally developed semiconductor technology into its sub-brands.
Chinese media have described the combination of Shenji NX9031, NWM and watchtower LiDAR reaching the 300,000-yuan-class family SUV segment as a “technology-for-all” moment — the first time this full hardware and software stack has been deployed outside Nio‘s premium lineup.
Sales Context
Onvo crossed 50,000 cumulative L90 deliveries on April 3, approximately eight months after the model first rolled off the line in August 2025.
The L90 was China‘s best-selling large all-electric SUV of 2025.
The SUV contributed 3,360 units to Onvo‘s March total of 6,877 deliveries — a 155.1% month-on-month increase that recovered from a sluggish February, though still well below the sub-brand’s peak months of late 2025.
The L90 held a three-month streak as China‘s best-selling six-seat SUV before sales receded as rivals flooded the segment with competing six-seat electric SUVs and the all-new Nio ES8 diverted some internal demand.
The 2026 refresh is coming just 264 days after the original L90’s July 2025 debut — an unusually short product lifecycle that analysts have described as a defensive response to sales volatility and mounting competition in the segment.
Tonight’s Launch Event
The 2026 Onvo L90 “Intelligent Refresh” launch event takes place at 19:30 Beijing time on Wednesday under the theme “Flagship Intelligence, a Generation Ahead.”
The 2026 L90 also debuts two new two-tone body colour options — purple-gold and silver-purple — alongside 21-inch multi-spoke black-and-silver wheels and small blue indicator lights integrated into the exterior rearview mirrors signalling when assisted driving is active.
Other continuing features from the family lineup include the 240-litre electric front trunk, six- and seven-seat configurations, and the full 900-volt architecture.
The first batch of showroom and test-drive vehicles has already arrived at stores nationwide, with LiDAR-equipped deliveries beginning immediately.
What Comes Next
Onvo is also preparing to launch the L80 SUV, a five seat version of the L90 model.
The L80 will be available in both pure-vision and LiDAR versions, Onvo brand chief Shen Fei said at an offline event last month.
Pricing for the L80 is expected to fall between the L90 and the entry-level L60, filling a gap in the sub-brand’s product lineup.
Onvo‘s existing L60 is also slated to receive a LiDAR option in a future update, a regulatory filing showed last month.
