Nio's ES8 hit 150,000 in a year by cutting its price 27%
The SUV that sold 87 cars in August 2025 is now half of Nio
Nio's head of user operations, Yang Bo, said on Weibo on Monday that the third-generation ES8 will reach 150,000 cumulative deliveries this week. The large electric SUV went on sale on 20 September 2025, so the milestone lands inside twelve months. In August 2025 the outgoing ES8 found 87 buyers. In August 2026 the new one found 10,999, more than half of everything the Nio brand delivered that month.
Nio launched the new ES8 at 406,800 yuan, 26.8 percent below the old one
The price did most of the work. The previous 100 kWh ES8 listed at 556,000 yuan; the third-generation car arrived at 406,800 yuan with the same 100 kWh pack, or 298,800 yuan under Nio's battery-rental plan plus 1,128 yuan a month. At current rates that is about €52,300 and €38,400. Nio moved the car up a size at the same time, onto its NT 3.0 hardware, and calls it the longest pure-electric SUV on the Chinese market. A five-seat version followed on 9 July at 382,800 yuan, 5.9 percent below the three-row car.
150,000 deliveries in a year, and the last 10,000 took about a month
The 140,000th ES8 was handed over on 21 August, 335 days after launch, at the Chengdu Auto Show. The next 10,000 have taken roughly four weeks. Monthly deliveries passed 10,000 in July, at 10,288, and rose to 10,999 in August. Over the first eight months of 2026 the ES8 accounted for 99,946 of Nio Inc's 262,893 deliveries, 38 percent of a group that also sells the Onvo and Firefly brands. At launch, Nio promised production capacity of more than 40,000 cars before the end of 2025 and a rate of 15,000 a month by December.
ES8 and ES9 are 82.5 percent of the Nio brand; seven models share 3,696 cars
The Nio brand delivered 21,174 cars in August. The ES8 took 10,999 and the ES9, the larger executive SUV launched in May, another 6,479, which leaves 3,696 for the ET5, ET5 Touring, ET7, ES6, EC6, EC7 and ET9 combined. That is the figure the milestone post does not mention. CPCA data show ET5, ET5 Touring and ES6 deliveries still down more than 50 percent year on year in August. Nio says the brand ranked first in China above 350,000 yuan in the second quarter and the ES9 first above 500,000 yuan in June and July. Both claims rest on two SUVs.
Q2 2026: 107,658 deliveries, 18.5 percent margin, still a 528 million yuan loss
Volume has fixed the margin, not the bottom line. Nio delivered 107,658 vehicles in the second quarter, up 49.4 percent, split 60,945 Nio, 29,124 Onvo and 17,589 Firefly. Vehicle margin reached 18.5 percent against 10.3 percent a year earlier, and revenue rose 69.1 percent to 32.1 billion yuan. The net loss was still 528 million yuan, down from 4.99 billion a year earlier. Guidance for the third quarter is 108,000 to 111,000 deliveries. The last time Nio set a target this public, 150,000 for the fourth quarter of 2025, it delivered 124,807.
Europe still gets the second-generation EL8, sold through distributors since March
None of this is on sale in Europe. The car European buyers know as the EL8 is the second-generation ES8, launched in China in December 2022, and Nio has not announced a European date for its replacement. In March Nio moved Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden from direct sales to a distributor model and kept only Norway in-house; in Belgium the brand arrived through Hedin Automotive at the Brussels show in January. In May William Li told Chinese media that Nio would slow its overseas expansion and weigh returns more carefully, adding that Xinjiang alone is already twice the size of Norway as a market. That month Leapmotor shipped 14,225 cars abroad. Even the price would travel badly: Zeekr's 9X went from 485,900 yuan to €119,500 on the way to Europe, and a 406,800 yuan ES8 would face the same arithmetic.
AutoNext Take
Nio has not become a big-SUV company by design. It has become one because the ES8 and ES9 are the only cars it makes that China wants at Nio's price, and the seven models that made the brand's name in Europe now share 3,696 sales a month at home. The 26.8 percent cut is the whole story: same 100 kWh battery, same swap network, a bigger body, and a number Chinese buyers read as value rather than ambition. Nio spent five years telling Europe it was a premium brand, then found its volume by pricing the ES8 like a mainstream one.
Nio's September figures land on 1 October. If the ES8 holds above 10,000 with the five-seat version a quarter old, the model has a floor and the 108,000 to 111,000 third-quarter guidance is safe. The European side has a simpler measure. Until Nio names a launch date for the third-generation ES8 on this side of the world, a European customer is being offered the car China stopped building a year ago, at a price China stopped charging.
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