Nio Inc.

Nio ES7

Nio ET7

Nio ES8

Nio ET9

Nio ES9

Nio brand

Nio's first car, the Nio EP9 electric sports car, was unveiled on 21 November 2016, the same day the brand was launched.

The company introduced the ES8, a seven-seat electric SUV, in December 2017 and began deliveries in June 2018. The ES6, a five-seat SUV, followed in December 2018 with deliveries starting in June 2019. In December 2019, Nio unveiled the EC6, a five-seat coupé-SUV, with deliveries beginning in September 2020. The ET7 sedan debuted in January 2021, and the smaller ET5 sedan was revealed at Nio Day in December 2021.

As of 2024, Nio has revealed two concept cars: the Eve at SXSW 2017 and the ET Preview at Auto Shanghai 2019.

Onvo brand

In May 2024, Nio introduced a mass-market brand, Onvo (Chinese: 乐道; pinyin: Lèdào). The brand was developed under the internal codename "Alps" until the name was announced in March 2024.

The name Onvo stands for "On Voyage," while the Chinese name means "joyful path," expressing family togetherness.

The brand was initially led by Alan Ai, a senior vice president of Nio, who was replaced by Shen Fei in April 2025 after the brand missed early sales targets.

Onvo's first model, the Onvo L60, began deliveries in September 2024. The L60 targets the Tesla Model Y and was directly compared with it at launch. Nio CEO William Li stated that Onvo vehicles are expected to be sold in export markets.

Firefly brand

In December 2024, Nio announced another new brand, Firefly (Chinese: 萤火虫; pinyin: Yínghuǒchóng), developed from its internal codename of the same name. It is positioned as Nio's electric small-car brand. Firefly's first model was launched in April 2025 in China and in August 2025 in Europe. Nio described it as a competitor to Smart and Mini small cars.

Network development

The first phase of Nio's swap network was completed in November 2018, with 18 stations installed at 14 sites along the 2,273 km (1,412 mi) G4 Beijing–Hong Kong and Macau Expressway, linking Beijing with the Pearl River Delta. A second phase, completed in January 2019, added eight stations along the 1,212 km (753 mi) G2 Beijing–Shanghai Expressway.

By March 2021, Nio had completed its two-millionth battery swap in Suzhou and operated 193 swap stations, 134 supercharging stations, and 327 destination stations across China. In December 2021, the company reached its goal of 700 stations ahead of schedule, after performing more than 5.3 million swaps.

By December 2022, Nio had built 1,305 stations across all provincial regions in China. The stations provided an average of 40,000 swaps per day and had completed a total of 15 million swaps. The company opened its first European swap station in Norway in 2022, and by August 2023, seven were operating in Germany. By February 2026, the network had completed 100 million swaps.

Technology and station design

Nio's second-generation stations use automated systems that park and exchange the battery while the driver remains inside the vehicle. Later versions integrate energy storage and grid-interaction functions for highway service areas.

Technologies

Nomi AI

Nomi is Nio's in-car digital assistant integrated into the dashboard. The company describes it as the world's first AI assistant available in a production vehicle.

The Nomi Mate 2.0 has a circular AMOLED display with an animated, human-like avatar that rotates and blinks to look toward passengers. The system uses artificial intelligence to learn driver habits and can automatically adjust seat position, steering wheel height, and cabin temperature. Drivers can also give Nomi voice commands to open windows, change the temperature, or take in-car photos displayed on the infotainment screen.

Nio Pilot

Nio Pilot is the company's SAE Level 2 semi-autonomous driving system that provides driver-assistance functions. It debuted with the ES8 model. Over-the-air software updates in 2018 and 2019 added features such as lane keeping, adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, automatic emergency braking, highway pilot (Nio Navigate on Pilot, NNOP), traffic jam assistance, and automatic lane changes.

The system uses twenty-three sensors, including a trifocal front camera, five radars, twelve ultrasonic sensors, and a driver-monitoring camera. Nio was among the first automakers to release a production car using the Mobileye EyeQ4 vision processor.

In August 2021, a 31-year-old driver died when his Nio ES8 struck a stationary construction vehicle. The self-driving system was still in beta testing and was not designed to detect static obstacles. The vehicle manual stated that drivers must take control near construction zones. The driver's family later alleged that Nio could have altered or withheld vehicle data stored on its servers.

Aquila (Nio Autonomous Driving)

In November 2019, Nio announced a partnership with Mobileye to create a consumer car called Aquila, using Mobileye's SAE Level 4 automated driving system. The company planned to launch the model by 2022.

Aquila comprises 33 sensors, including 11 high-resolution cameras, a lidar scanner, five radar units, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and two positioning systems: one using short-range communication (V2X) and one using high-accuracy mapping (ADMS).

The system first appeared in the ET7 sedan. Nio began delivering the model in the first quarter of 2022.

Adam

Nio introduced the Adam autonomous driving computer with the ET7 in 2021, and deliveries began in early 2022. Adam uses four Nvidia Drive Orin processors that together provide 1,016 tera-operations per second (TOPS), a standard measure of computing performance for driver-assistance systems.

Adam is standard equipment on all Nio vehicles built on the NT 2.0 platform.

Shenji NX9031

Nio announced the Shenji NX9031, an autonomous driving chip, at Nio Day 2023. The company said the chip was produced in July 2024, marking completion of its design phase ("tape-out").

The chip was first used in the ET9 sedan, introduced in March 2025. It has 32 Cortex-A78AE and Cortex-A65AE cores arranged in a big.LITTLE layout combining high- and low-power cores. The NX9031 provides about 615 kDMIPS, a computing performance measure. Nio stated that its performance is comparable to four Nvidia Orin-X processors used in the earlier Adam computer. Independent estimates suggest that Adam reached about 300 TOPS, while the NX9031 is estimated at around 500 TOPS.

The NX9031 integrates a 26-bit image signal processor (ISP) that handles 6.5 gigapixels per second with 5 ms latency. It uses 64GB of LPDDR5x memory at 8533 MT/s for 546 GB/s bandwidth. The chip conforms to the ISO 26262 ASIL-D safety standard, the highest level defined under that system, and employs Cortex-R52 safety cores. It contains over 50 billion transistors and is manufactured on Samsung's 5 nm process.

On 26 February 2026, Nio announced that its chip subsidiary, Anhui Shenji Technology Co., Ltd., had completed its first round of equity financing, raising over RMB 2.2 billion and valuing the company at nearly RMB 10 billion post-investment. This financing brought together several industrial capital firms and leading industry institutions, including Hefei State-owned Capital Venture Investment, Hefei Haiheng, IDG Capital, SMIC Capital, and Yuanhe Puhua. This will facilitate the company's continued R&D and promotion of high-end, highly competitive chip products, supporting Nio's strategic layout in areas such as autonomous driving and AI-powered devices.

In July 2026, the Shenji NX9031 used in Nio's automotive applications was renamed to NX9031X to differentiate it from new variants in the lineup.

At the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference held in July, Nio chip spinoff Genitech unveiled the Shenji NX9031U, a midrange version of the NX9031X optimized for use in robotics applications. Due to the different needs of robotics applications, such as air cooling, cost, and latency, the NX9031U outputs 800TOPS and has the heterogenous core count cut down to 28 cores, while retaining same 64GB of LPDDR5x-8533 for 546GB/s of bandwidth as the NX9031X, allowing it to encode 4K video at up to 450 frames per second. At the same conference, Genitech announced the NX9031U, an entry-level version of the NX9031X intended for use in general-purpose AI applications.

M97

The M97 is a chip codeveloped by Shenji and Axera Semiconductor and is intended to be sold to third parties. Reports emerged in March 2026 indicated that the chip had successfully been taped-out, and Axera's Hong Kong IPO prospectus indicated that the chip will be released in the third quarter of 2026. It is expected to have over 700 TOPS of performance and compete with the 560 TOPS Horizon Robotics Journey 6P. It will use the core module designs and architecture of the Shenji NX9031 chip, but with some reduced specifications.

Reports have emerged that Geely and Leapmotor are interested in using the chips.

Shenji 9031e

In March 2026, 36kr reported that Nio's spun-off chip division Genitech (Shenji) is working on a lower-end chip codenamed 9031e, which is intended to compete with the 128 TOPS Horizon Robotics J6M. It is also being codeveloped with Axera Semiconductor along with the M97.

Production milestones

100,000 vehicles – 7 April 2021.

200,000 vehicles – 26 April 2022.

300,000 vehicles – 12 December 2022.

500,000 vehicles – 9 May 2024.

1,000,000 vehicles – 6 January 2026

Divisions

Nio Phone

On 22 February 2022, it was announced that Nio is planning to venture into China's smartphone market and preparing to make its own handsets. The company has formed a smartphone division in Shenzhen, and is hiring staff to expand the team. The move is preceded by similar plans to manufacture smartphones by automakers Geely and Volvo.

The first Nio Phone was launched in September 2023. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 system-on-chip and has a 6.81-inch curved screen with 2K resolution from Samsung Display. The phone is equipped with a 5200 mAh battery that supports 66-watt wired charging, 50-watt wireless charging, and 10-watt reverse charging. It is equipped with an action button that allows drivers to launch over 30 functions related to their EV controls. CEO William Li believes that many competitors will learn from the smartphone innovations, however the primary interest of the automaker is likely to collect user data rather than making the phone a key contributor to revenue.

Nio Life

Nio Life is the company's design lifestyle brand. The brand launched in 2018 with a capsule collection made in collaboration with Hussein Chalayan. In 2021 Nio Life launched its sustainable fashion label "Blue Sky Lab". The label collaborated with the Parsons School of Design challenging students to create new products made of leftover car manufacturer materials and, thereby, providing opportunities for young designers.

Nio Service

Nio Service is the company's network of service centers. Nio Users can request a "pick-up-and-delivery" service for their car to the service center. Additionally, mobile service vehicles can carry out simple maintenance work on demand.

Nio Power

Nio Power is the company's network of battery swap stations, power mobile, power home and super chargers. Nio has 1,305 swap stations around China as of 31 December 2022, including 346 battery swap stations along highways. In addition to the battery swap stations, Nio has 1,223 supercharging stations in China and 1,058 destination charging stations.

Performance and Engineering

Nio's performance and engineering division has international offices including in the UK, Germany, and the USA.

XPT

XPT is a subsidiary of Nio, with locations in Nanjing, Hefei, and Shanghai. Nio bought out its minority partners in the company in November 2020, taking full ownership.

XPT designs and manufactures key components for Nio's supply chain, including the EV car motors, powertrains, and gearboxes, which are later assembled elsewhere by Nio and its assembly partners. Nio runs its XPT company as a separate business, as it intends for XPT to become a supplier for other companies in the future.