Gasgoo Munich-In June 2026, ONVO President Shen Fei pushed back against the market perception that "people only buy ONVO because they can't afford NIO," dismissing it as an early misunderstanding. He revealed telling details about the user profile: a significant portion are middle managers. "It’s not that they lack purchasing power," he said, "but that they care more about whether the car is appropriate and suitable for the family."
Behind this rebuttal lies the skepticism that has shadowed ONVO since its inception—a microcosm of how the two-year-old brand is gradually proving it is not merely a "budget version" of NIO.
ONVO's Growing Pains
ONVO officially launched in May 2024, targeting the mainstream family market between 200,000 and 300,000 yuan. Its first model, the L60, hit the market that September with a starting price of 206,900 yuan. By the third full month on sale, L60 deliveries topped 10,000 units. For a completely new brand, that was a striking debut.
Image Source: ONVO
But the momentum didn't last. Entering 2025, ONVO suffered a steep decline. Deliveries slipped to 5,912 in January, fell further to 4,049 in February, and edged up only slightly to 4,820 in March. That performance fell far short of the 20,000-unit monthly target set by former President Ai Tiecheng.
Insufficient production capacity was the direct culprit. A large number of orders scheduled for January 2025 production were lost because they couldn't be delivered before the Lunar New Year to qualify for government subsidies. NIO Chairman William Li acknowledged during an earnings call that 50% to 60% of ONVO's lost sales were due to the inability to deliver vehicles sooner.
A deeper issue lay in brand perception. The public largely viewed ONVO as NIO's "downward pricing play," leading to the quip that "you buy ONVO only if you can't afford NIO." Some owners complained on social media that while the launch event emphasized "one big family," they felt like "second-class citizens" after taking delivery. In April 2025, Ai Tiecheng stepped down, and Shen Fei, the former head of NIO's energy business, took the helm as ONVO president.
From "NIO's Shadow" to Independent Brand
After taking office, Shen oversaw a series of adjustments. In February 2025, NIO announced it would merge the delivery channels for NIO and ONVO, integrating teams and resources. By May of that year, ONVO and Firefly were fully brought back under group management, involving the integration of R&D, sales, and service departments.
More critical was the redefinition of brand positioning. Shen repeatedly emphasized that the relationship between NIO and ONVO is analogous to Audi and Volkswagen, or Lexus and Toyota—not a simple hierarchy of high and low trim, but a multi-brand segmentation targeting different markets.
The main NIO brand continues to target the high-end market, while ONVO takes on the task of entering the mainstream family sector. They share the same roots and the same quality management system; behind the scenes, the same teams handle body engineering, batteries, and operational services.
Image Source: ONVO
On the product front, ONVO is also accelerating its efforts. In April 2026, the 2026 L90 launched; in May, the L80 was officially released, positioned as the "flagship of value in the large five-seat SUV segment"; and in June, the new L60 debuted. ONVO has entered a phase with a product matrix consisting of the L60, L80, and L90.
Meanwhile, sales are warming up. In May 2026, ONVO delivered 12,029 vehicles—a 91.5% year-on-year surge and a 124.8% monthly jump. That month, NIO as a whole delivered 37,705 units, up 62.3% from a year earlier. From initial deliveries to April 2026, a span of 19 months, ONVO's cumulative deliveries neared 150,000 units. In its first full sales year of 2025, the brand delivered over 100,000 vehicles in total.
Shen attributes ONVO's core competitiveness to three factors: its battery-swapping system—"even if competitors are determined to copy it, it will take two or three years"; the advantages of its native EV platform regarding comfort, space, lightweighting, energy efficiency, and safety; and the "flagship-level experience" of offering top-tier intelligent hardware in a 200,000 to 300,000 yuan family car.
NIO's "Three-Layer Architecture" Takes Shape
ONVO's growth serves as a touchstone for NIO's multi-brand strategy. Since launching the strategy in 2021, NIO has built a three-layer architecture: "main brand defends the high end, ONVO drives volume, Firefly explores new territory." NIO anchors the premium market above 300,000 yuan, ONVO focuses on mainstream families between 200,000 and 300,000 yuan, and Firefly cuts into the entry-level and personalized niche markets.
Image Source: NIO
The data suggests this matrix is working. In full-year 2025, NIO delivered 326,028 new vehicles, a 46.9% increase and a record high. Of these, the NIO brand accounted for 178,806 units, ONVO 107,808, and Firefly 39,414. In the first quarter of 2026, NIO achieved an operating profit of 66.8 million yuan, marking two consecutive quarters of profitability. Notably, ONVO's sales share rose to 31.9% of the group's total in May 2026.
Challenges, of course, remain. Although NIO has integrated ONVO and Firefly into the group system through organizational restructuring to achieve resource synergy, issues such as price range overlaps between sub-brands and the main brand, balancing resource sharing with distinct brand identities, and continuously improving internal collaboration efficiency remain long-term tasks. A multi-brand strategy is never built overnight.
Two years on, ONVO has proven one thing: it is not NIO's "cheap substitute," but an automotive brand with its own distinct user profile and product logic.
