NIO Delivers 30,000th ES9 Less Than Four Months After Launch

The flagship electric SUV continues to attract new customers in China, supported by strong order flow and multi-month delivery waits 

NIO's 30,000th ES9 at its handover ceremony in Suzhou on September 23, 2026

NIO delivered its 30,000th flagship EV SUV ES9 on Sept. 23, just 119 days (less than 4 months) after deliveries began on May 28, marking another sales milestone for the Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker's premium lineup. 

NIO founder, chairman and CEO William Li announced the milestone on Weibo on Wednesday. 

William Li handed over the 30,000th ES9 on Wednesday to He Yinjun, chairman of Chinese imaging software developer Insnex, in Suzhou, a city neighboring Shanghai. 

The ES9 went on sale in China on May 27 with a starting price of 498,000 yuan ($73,810), including the battery pack, making it among the most expensive models from a domestic automaker. 

Deliveries of the SUV began on May 28. Cumulative deliveries reached 10,000 on June 26 and 20,000 on August 8. The pace has held up well across each 10,000-unit milestone. 

ES9 took about 30 days to reach its first 10,000 deliveries, followed by 43 days for the next 10,000 and 46 days for the third. That is meaningful volume for an all-electric SUV priced above RMB 500K ($74.6K). 

ES9 was China’s best-selling all-electric vehicle priced above RMB 500K ($74.6K) for a third consecutive month in August. 

The more important question now is whether fresh orders can keep coming in. NIO management said during its second-quarter earnings call that wait times for the ES9 Horizon and Executive Signature editions remained at three to four months, while new orders increased in August from July. 

More than 75% of ES9 buyers were new to NIO. That suggests ES9 is drawing a meaningful share of demand from outside NIO’s existing owner base, rather than relying mainly on current customers moving up within the brand. 

“Around three quarters of the ES9 users are actually from non-existing NIO users, from users outside of the NIO user community,” Li said on the September 1 call. 

That updates the 70% of the first 10,000 buyers that user-operations head Yang Bo cited in late June, and follows Li’s May remark that orders from outside the community were running at more than 1.5 times the pace of the 2025 ES8 launch. 

Mid and high trims took about three-quarters of orders in the first 72 hours and have dominated since. The brand’s average transaction price reached 443,000 yuan in June and 434,600 yuan in July, and President Qin Lihong has said the ES9 will deliver the highest gross profit of any NIO SUV.