Nio's Firefly brand passes 90,000 deliveries after record September

Nio’s small-car sub-brand Firefly has crossed the 90,000 cumulative delivery mark, a milestone confirmed at a handover ceremony in Zhengzhou, Henan province, on October 16, 2026. The brand needed less than 18 months to get there; its first customer cars went out on April 29, 2025, and it had only passed 80,000 units in late August, making the latest 10,000-unit stretch roughly a month and a half long.

September was the engine behind the milestone. Firefly handed over 7,327 vehicles during the month, a 26.9% gain year-on-year and 25.2% better than August. That beat the brand’s previous high of 7,084 set in December 2025 and represents only the second time monthly volume has cleared 7,000 units. Cumulative deliveries stood at 87,536 at the end of September, leaving 2,464 vehicles handed over in October before the 90,000th ceremony.

The trend line has not been smooth, however. Firefly’s 2026 volumes climbed to 6,946 in June, slipped to 5,771 in July, then recovered across the following two months. Over the first nine months of the year the brand delivered 48,122 vehicles, or 16.02% of Nio Inc’s total. Its share of the group’s monthly volume climbed to 19.59% in September — the highest since deliveries began and a sign that the compact line is doing real work for the parent company’s overall numbers.

Firefly’s role inside Nio is to push the group into smaller vehicles and lower price brackets, aimed largely at younger buyers and urban commuters. The brand has been widening its range through design-led variants: on August 28 it introduced the Club Spiaggia edition, capped at 666 units and its sixth special edition. On the infrastructure side, Firefly gained access to Nio’s fifth-generation battery swap network on August 7, having previously been excluded from fourth-generation stations because of its shorter body and wheelbase.

The 90,000-unit figure lands as Nio continues to expand Firefly’s offering — including a larger 60-kWh battery pack slated for introduction on October 23 — suggesting the brand’s volume story has room to develop further in the months ahead.