Onvo, the family-oriented brand of Chinese EV maker Nio, handed over the 60,000th unit of its L90 SUV on Sunday, reaching the mark slightly faster than it did the one before, as a mid-year refresh lifted the model off its winter lows.
The L90 took 107 days to climb from 50,000 to 60,000 deliveries, 13 days quicker than the 120 days it spent moving from 40,000 to 50,000.
The 60,000th unit went to Han Xiao, a well-known Chinese extreme-sports adventurer, at Nio‘s experience centre in Huzhou, in eastern China.
He is the latest in a line of high-profile recipients, after Onvo handed earlier milestone cars to mainland actors Xiaoshenyang and Hai Qing and Hong Kong star Louis Koo.
The brand said its cumulative deliveries in the Huzhou area had passed 10,000 this weekend.
Onvo‘s brand chief, Shen Fei, cast the milestone as a win for battery-swapping SUVs over range-extended rivals.
Writing on the social platform Weibo, he said fully electric models had outsold range-extended ones in the three-row segment for ten straight months and that the L90, alongside Nio‘s ES8, was “leading three-row SUVs into the pure-electric era.”
He also claimed the L90 was the best-selling large pure-electric SUV in China’s 300,000-yuan price class, and said Nio‘s cumulative deliveries in Shanghai had passed 150,000, with the group leading the city’s passenger-car market in the first half.
A Quicker Last Leg, Off a Low Base
The pickup is real, but it follows a steep fall and remains far below the model’s launch pace.
The L90 reached 40,000 deliveries on December 4, just four months after its August debut — a record ramp for a large electric SUV in China.
The next 20,000, however, took more than seven months: the 50,000th arrived on April 3 and the 60,000th on Sunday.
The 20,000th milestone came on September 29 and the 30,000th on October 25, roughly four weeks apart.
At its launch peak, the L90 was adding roughly 10,000 units a month, clearing 10,000 in each of its first three months and cresting at 11,722 in October 2025, when it was China’s best-selling large all-electric SUV.
Deliveries then collapsed to 5,971 in November, 4,120 in December and a low of 1,317 in February, before the refresh drove a partial recovery to 4,054 in May that eased to 3,461 in June.
The Refreshed Version
Onvo launched the 2026 L90 on April 21, with deliveries beginning on May 9.
The update brought more than 70 changes and, for the first time on an Onvo model, a version fitted with a LiDAR sensor— a reversal of the sub-brand’s original camera-only approach — alongside Nio‘s in-house Shenji NX9031 autonomous-driving chip and its Nio World Model software.
The LiDAR unit, mounted in a watchtower-style roof housing, is restricted to higher trims, and the new edition adds 64 gigabytes of memory to run large AI models on board — the first time Nio‘s full driving stack has reached below its premium line.
The SUV retains a 900-volt architecture, an 85-kilowatt-hour battery, up to 600 kilometres of range and three-minute battery swaps, with prices held at 265,800 yuan, or 179,800 yuan under Nio‘s battery-as-a-service rental.
Founder and chief executive William Li publicly defended the refresh, which arrived barely nine months after the original L90 went on sale, and Onvo said the updated version completed a 2,007-kilometre drive on assisted driving in under 24 hours.
A Brand Nio Is Counting On
Onvo launched in 2024 with the L60, a mid-size SUV pitched against Tesla‘s Model Y, and has since added the L90 and the five-seat L80, refreshing all three during 2026 to add a LiDAR option and Nio‘s in-house Shenji chip.
The brand passed 150,000 cumulative deliveries in May, about two years after its launch, when it contributed 31.9% of Nio‘s 37,705 group deliveries; the L60 crossed 100,000 in June, buoyed by a rebound of its own once its refresh reached buyers.
Onvo said the L90 had lifted the brand’s resale value to 81.5%, which it claimed was the highest among mainstream marques in China, helped by the battery-swap model that lets buyers rent the pack and refresh it in minutes.
The sub-brand remains central to Nio‘s recovery plan.
Onvo delivered 11,743 vehicles in June, down month on month but up 83.5% from a year earlier, and is Nio‘s second-largest brand by volume behind the main marque.
The sub-brand set a monthly record of 12,029 in May before June’s dip, and delivered 29,124 in the second quarter.
Li has said he expects Onvo to become the group’s biggest brand over time, eventually taking a little over half of total sales under a long-term 55-35-10 split with the premium Nio marque and the small-car Firefly brand.
Through the first half of 2026, Onvo contributed 42,463 of Nio‘s deliveries, and the group as a whole closed the second quarter with 107,658 vehicles, short of its own guidance.
