Written by Cláudio Afonso and Matilde Alves
EV maker Nio has tapped longtime executive Fei Shen to lead its mass-market brand Onvo, replacing Alan Ai after the unit missed key sales targets in early 2025.
Onvo, unveiled by the Shanghai-based automaker in May 2024, is positioned as a direct rival to Tesla, with its debut model — the L60, a five-seat electric SUV — launched last September.
The L60 undercut Tesla’s Model Y (the previous version) by 43,000 yuan (about $5,900) at the time, with a starting price of 206,900 yuan ($28,500) when purchased with a battery.
The model — which shares Nio’s battery swap capabilities but with different sizes of the battery pack — has a 900V electrical architecture and is more efficient than Tesla’s 2024 Model Y thanks to what Onvo claimed in September as the “lowest energy consumption among SUVs.”
Despite reaching 5,000 deliveries in November and doubling that figure in December, demand for the L60 fell short of expectations in 2025, Chief Executive Officer William Li said during Nio’s most recent earnings call.
Though he promised to not quit in mid-March, Onvo’s chief and Nio’s VP Alan Ai announced he was leaving the company after four years at the Group.
Ai led the development of the brand since joining Nio in January 2021 when the project was still codenamed ‘Alps.’
In the announcement, Ai mentioned the brand’s aspirations of reaching global markets while conceding, “we failed to achieve matching sales for what was a very competitive vehicle.”
The company missed delivery targets of 16,000 units in January and 20,000 units in March after succeeding in both November and December goals.
Fei Shen, formerly Senior Vice President of Nio Power, was confirmed as Onvo’s new chief shortly afterward. In a post on the Onvo app, Shen said: “As a veteran involved in building Nio Power’s service network, I take on a new challenge today and am confident that I’ll be joining you all on this new journey.”
Shen will now report to Nio co-founder and President Lihong Qin. His previous role overseeing the company’s battery-swapping and charging infrastructure will be assumed by Nio’s Chief Financial Officer Stanley Qu, who now holds both titles.
Qu replaced Steven Wei Feng as CFO last year, following Feng’s resignation for “personal and familiar reasons.” Qu was previously Senior Vice President of Finance and started in July 2024 reporting directly to William Li.
Shen’s Background
Shen joined Nio in 2015 as its 274th employee, according to a 2022 interview with Automotive Powertrain Technology International. He holds a doctorate in electrical engineering and previously worked at Sieyuan Electric from 2007 to 2015 as Vice General Manager and Product Director.
“I prefer to do more and say less because I believe action is key,” Shen said during a media roundtable in March 2023. “After joining Nio, I’m more focused on the innovative energy business, which requires me to invest more time and energy.”
Nio’s Battery-Swapping Strategy
Since joining, Shen became the leader of Nio’s bet on battery swapping, which separates battery ownership from vehicle sales and allows customers to upgrade to a larger battery pack when needed. “Battery as a service,” Shen said in 2022, is “the only means to make a user experience that is comparable with gasoline refueling.”
At the 2023 media roundtable, and while presenting the thid generation battery swap stations, he added: “I have always believed that battery swapping is the true value creator.”
Nio has completed more than 70 million battery swaps in China since launching the first station in 2018. In February, CEO William Li said 2025 will mark a major expansion year for the company’s swap station network. This year, the company plans to increase the number of stations from 3,000 to 4,800—5,000.
The company has signed multiple strategic cooperation agreements with domestic automakers to support battery-swap-compatible EVs, with the first such models expected later this year. It also secured a pledge of up to 2.5 billion yuan ($344 million) in investment from battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL) to co-develop the technology.
