As Nio Inc.‘s family-oriented sub-brand Onvo nears the public debut of its refreshed L60 SUV, an image of the uncamouflaged vehicle has now surfaced on Chinese social media for the first time.
The image was first shared by Weibo user ‘电动星球小新’ on Wednesday. It shows what appears to be a silver L60, parked alongside several other vehicles near what looks like a commercial or logistics facility.
The images mark the first public sighting of the updated model without camouflage wrap or disguise.
The vehicle in the photographs displays a noticeably revised front fascia compared to the current-generation L60.
A visible LiDAR sensor module sits atop the windshield — confirming the hardware addition that was first revealed in a Chinese regulatory catalogue in March.
Pre-Sales Event
The sighting comes just days after Nio‘s founder and CEO William Li confirmed the timeline for the refreshed L60 during a live-streamed event on May 10.
Li said Onvo will open pre-sales for the facelifted L60 at the end of May, with the official market launch scheduled for June.
The updated model will follow the same two-trim structure already deployed across the rest of the Onvo lineup.
One variant will be equipped with LiDAR sensors and Nio‘s in-house Shenji NX9031 smart-driving chip, while a second variant will use the Shenji chip without LiDAR.
Li described the exterior changes as significant.
The images shared on Wednesday appear to validate those remarks, with the front-end redesign representing the most visible departure from the 2024 original.
A Reversal of Strategy
The decision to add LiDAR to the L60 represents a reversal of the sub-brand’s original sensor strategy.
When Onvo launched in 2024, the L60 was marketed as a vision-only vehicle — a deliberate contrast with the main Nio brand, which has used LiDAR as standard equipment across its entire lineup since inception.
The pure-vision approach was positioned as a cost-saving measure to keep the L60 competitive in the sub-200,000 yuan ($29,500) segment against rivals such as the Tesla Model Y.
In late January, Onvo brand chief Fei Shen stated that while both the L60 and L90 would receive annual facelifts, only the L90 would gain a LiDAR-equipped version — with the L60 continuing to rely exclusively on a pure-vision sensor solution.
In March, however, a regulatory catalogue published by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology confirmed a LiDAR-equipped L60 variant was in development.
The Shenji NX9031 chip — a 5-nanometer automotive-grade smart-driving processor integrating more than 50 billion transistors and delivering over 1,000 TOPS of compute — first appeared in an Onvo vehicle with the revamped L90 launched on April 21.
The LiDAR addition pulls the L60 into closer alignment with the main Nio brand’s approach, which has treated LiDAR-based perception as a core differentiator since the brand’s founding.
Lineup-Wide Refresh
The L60 facelift arrives at the tail end of a broader product refresh cycle that has reshaped Onvo‘s entire lineup in a matter of weeks.
The revamped L90 — the brand’s three-row SUV and the first Onvo model to feature a LiDAR-equipped variant — launched on April 21 with its starting price unchanged at 265,800 yuan ($39,100), or 179,800 yuan ($26,500) under Nio‘s Battery-as-a-Service subscription model.
Onvo‘s L90 is available in three trims, with the two higher-spec Max+ and Ultra+ variants featuring LiDAR and the Shenji NX9031 chip.
One week later, the brand unveiled the L80 at the Beijing Auto Show — a five-seat version of the L90 sharing most of its components with the six-seat model.
Pre-sales opened at 245,800 yuan ($36,200) for full-vehicle purchase, or 159,800 yuan ($23,500) under BaaS — undercutting Tesla’s Model Y in China by 17,700 yuan on the full-purchase price.
Pre-order deposits for the L80 outpaced the L90’s debut period, executives revealed the following day during a media roundtable.
Onvo brand chief Fei Shen acknowledged the L80’s deposit volume in the first hours was running slightly ahead of the L90’s during the same window, though he attributed part of the difference to a lower initial deposit threshold.
Li pushed back on that characterization, arguing that product competitiveness was the main driver.
The L80 is scheduled to begin deliveries this Friday, May 15 — timed to coincide with Onvo‘s second anniversary on World Family Day.
The model is also available in both pure-vision and LiDAR variants.
With the facelifted L60 now approaching pre-sale, all three of Onvo‘s models will be offered in dual configurations — LiDAR-equipped and vision-only — powered by Nio‘s proprietary Shenji chip.
The standardization marks a clean break from the brand’s founding approach, which deliberately omitted LiDAR to maintain a lower price point.
Brand Awareness Challenge
The rapid-fire product refresh comes as Nio‘s management works to address what it has described as Onvo‘s most pressing structural challenge: low brand awareness.
CEO William Li has compared Onvo’s current visibility to the main Nio brand’s recognition levels in late 2019 to early 2020 — a period when the parent company nearly ran out of cash before being rescued by a roughly $1 billion investment led by the Hefei municipal government.
At the same time, internal research has shown that Onvo‘s conversion rate from awareness to purchase ranks among the top in the industry.
The pattern — low visibility but strong purchase intent among those who do encounter the brand — has been a recurring theme since early 2025, when Li first acknowledged that Onvo‘s brand recognition was only one-third of Nio‘s.
The company has been expanding its marketing push with offline advertisements, sponsorship deals, and the multi-brand “Sky Stores” that bring Nio, Onvo, and Firefly under a single roof.
Onvo has surpassed 140,000 cumulative deliveries across the L60 and L90 since sales began in September 2024.
After seeing delivery figures fall below 2,000 monthly units in January and February — its two worst months since launch — Onvo deliveries rebounded sharply in March, more than doubling to 6,877 units.
In March and April, the brand returned to growth and posted year-over-year jumps of 43% and 22%, respectively. Onvo delivered 5,352 vehicles last month.
