Nio Inc.‘s family-oriented sub-brand Onvo delivered 12,029 vehicles in May, the company reported alongside its monthly group figures on Monday.
Deliveries in May — the month of the brand’s second anniversary — surged 124.8% from April’s 5,352 units and 91.5% year-over-year.
May was the first full month of customer deliveries for the new L80 five-seat SUV, which officially launched on May 15 in Shanghai.
Last month also marked the first time the LiDAR-equipped refresh of the L90 three-row SUV was on the road, with deliveries beginning on May 9.
The sub-brand’s volume sits within the group’s 37,705 vehicles delivered globally in May — across the premium Niobrand, Onvo, and the small-car Firefly brand.
Onvo represented 31.9% of the sales volume.
Last month, the sub-brand surpassed 150,000 cumulative deliveries — about two years after the brand’s introduction.
Below the Long-Term Target Mix
Onvo‘s contribution to group volume remains far below the destination founder and CEO William Li outlined late last week, when he told media that Onvo is expected to eventually account for 55% of total vehicle sales under a long-term 35-55-10 brand mix — with the main Nio brand at 35% and Firefly at 10%.
Through the first five months of 2026, Onvo had contributed 30,720 units of Nio‘s 150,526 global deliveries.
The figures represent a share of 20.4%, just over a third of the long-term destination as the brand has swung to 20.65% above its prior-year pace, reversing the shortfall it carried through April, even as the wider group grew 68.70% year-over-year.
Li also conceded in late April that the biggest issue at Onvo “is still low awareness — many people simply don’t know about it yet,” likening the sub-brand’s brand awareness to that of the namesake Nio brand back in 2019 — before the company’s “rescue” through the post-pandemic period.
To address the awareness gap, the group has been rolling out a new multi-brand “Sky Store” format — first opened in Jiangmen, Guangdong, in February — which brings Nio, Onvo and Firefly under a single roof.
Onvo ended the first quarter of 2026 with 10 more stores than at the end of 2025, while the premium Nio brand closed three Nio Houses and six Nio Spaces over the same period.
L80 Launch
Onvo officially launched the L80 on May 15 in Shanghai, on the same day as the brand’s second anniversary and World Family Day.
Customer deliveries began the same day in 15 cities including Beijing, Hangzhou and Chengdu, alongside a ceremony at Nio‘s F1 factory in Hefei.
The L80 entered the market at 242,800 yuan, or about $35,800.
Under Nio‘s Battery-as-a-Service program, the entry barrier drops to 156,800 yuan, around $23,100, for buyers who lease the battery pack rather than purchase it outright.
The pricing structure maintains a 17,700-yuan undercut versus Tesla‘s Model Y in China, the positioning Onvo signaled at the Beijing Auto Show in late April.
More than 1,000 L80 display and test-drive vehicles had reached showrooms across China by launch day.
At the launch event, Li said pricing reflected the company’s effort to absorb rising costs in raw materials such as semiconductors and metals.
According to a consumer report published late last month, more than 90% of the first batch of buyers chose Nio‘s BaaS rental model when purchasing the vehicle.
Among the three available variants, 62% of buyers selected the mid-tier Max+ model — which is equipped with LiDAR and Nio‘s in-house developed Shenji NX9031 smart-driving chip to support advanced driver-assistance functions.
In terms of styling preferences, 58% of owners opted for a black exterior, while more than 70% chose a brown interior.
Refreshed Lineup
The L80 enters the lineup alongside an updated L90 that began customer deliveries on May 9 — the first Onvo model to feature a LiDAR-equipped variant, marking a reversal of the sub-brand’s vision-only sensor strategy since its 2024 launch.
The 2026 L90 retained the original starting prices of 265,800 yuan, about $39,200, with the battery included, and 179,800 yuan, around $26,500, under BaaS.
The refresh adds the Shenji NX9031 chip across the lineup, with the LiDAR sensor — a 192-line, 950-nanometre unit mounted in a watchtower-style roof layout — restricted to higher trims.
The L90 refresh landed just 263 days after the original L90 began customer deliveries on August 1, 2025.
Completing the trio of 2026 product moves, Onvo opened pre-sales for the third-generation L60 at the Shenzhen Auto Show on May 29 with an official launch scheduled for this month.
The refreshed L60 carries forward the same two-trim structure deployed across the L90 and L80 — one variant with LiDAR and the Shenji NX9031 chip, and a second variant with the Shenji chip without LiDAR.
The L60 refresh marks a second hardware reversal for the brand.
When Onvo launched in 2024, the L60 was marketed exclusively as a vision-only vehicle.
Brand chief Shen Fei said in January that the L60 would continue to rely on a pure-vision solution even as the L90 gained LiDAR, but that position changed in March when a regulatory filing from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology confirmed a LiDAR-equipped L60 variant was in development.
By the end of June, Onvo‘s full lineup will offer LiDAR-equipped variants across all three models, aligning the brand’s sensor strategy with the main Nio brand’s standard-LiDAR approach.
Rivalry With Li Auto Reignites
The L80 launch on May 15 also reopened public hostilities with Li Auto, which used the same date to launch its L9 Livis — both companies leaning on World Family Day for their respective family-SUV product moves.
Asked about a comparison between the two vehicles at a media event the following day, Onvo brand chief Shen Fei told reporters that whenever Li Auto is mentioned, “what comes to mind are some rather unpleasant memories,” adding that he does not “really like being associated with Li Auto.”
The reference is to a series of social-media clashes between executives of the two brands that flared in mid-to-late 2025 around the launches of the Onvo L90 and the Li Auto i8 — both fully electric three-row SUVs targeting the same family-segment buyers.
The exchanges, which included accusations of orchestrated smear campaigns and a Li Auto VP citing user comments that allegedly compared the i8 to a boat, prompted a vow of legal action from Nio and an Onvo recommendation that Li Auto report the matter to the police.
Tensions had cooled in the months that followed, as Nio shifted focus to the main brand’s third-generation ES8 and the ES9 pre-launch cycle, while Li Auto undertook an internal restructuring amid weaker-than-expected 2025 results.
The two-on-two May 15 launches now stage a fresh round of competition in the segment, with Onvo’s L80 directly squaring off against Li Auto‘s broader family-SUV lineup — in a category that has already attracted Tesla‘s Model Y L six-seat variant and continued pressure from Aito’s M8 and M9.
