Onvo was intended to be Nio's primary sales driver, but its performance in the first quarter of the year fell short of expectations. After stabilizing its flagship products, founder William Li is now turning his focus back to the mass-market volume segment, making the new Onvo L60 a crucial model that cannot afford to fail.
On the evening of June 11, 2026, the revamped Onvo L60 made its debut. For a model launched less than a year ago, the extent of this facelift somewhat exceeded market expectations.
Lidar, the Shenji NX9031 intelligent driving chip, the SkyOS·Tianshu vehicle operating system, and Nio's world model have all been integrated into the vehicle. Intelligent capabilities originally reserved for flagship models like the ET9 and the new ES8 have now been brought down into the 200,000-yuan price segment.
Simultaneously, family-friendly features such as a 17.3-inch rear entertainment screen, a chiller/warmer refrigerator, sunshades, and foldable tables have been fully incorporated, while the starting price has been further reduced to 192,800 yuan. With the Battery as a Service (BaaS) plan, the price drops to as low as 135,800 yuan. Compared to the previous version, the configuration has been enhanced rather than reduced.
Prior to the launch event, there was widespread external speculation that the new L60 had room for a price increase. William Li had previously stated that the cost increase from the three major intelligent components alone exceeded 20,000 yuan, suggesting a potential impact on the selling price of around 15,000 yuan if all costs were factored in. However, the final reveal was a classic case of "more features for less money."
This is because William Li and Onvo are fighting a battle they cannot afford to lose.
Navigating a Challenging Market Landscape
"Regarding the full-year domestic retail volume, we believe a year-on-year comparison with last year requires preparing for the entire industry to decline by 15% to 20%," William Li asserted at the Chongqing Automotive Forum on June 13.
Li believes the Chinese automotive industry has entered the most brutal phase of the finals starting this year. Domestic retail sales from January to May this year fell by 19.5% year-on-year. "In the first quarter, some still attributed it to unfavorable factors like policy-driven demand being pulled forward last year, but after entering April and May, the industry should no longer harbor such illusions."
The market challenges are immense. How to navigate this period is a mandatory question for every company. For Nio Inc., after securing the profit foundation with flagship models like the ES8, Onvo L90, and Onvo L80, the key to securing a spot in the finals lies in maintaining scale while also managing profitability. Onvo is tasked with precisely this role.
In Nio's plan, the three brands—NIO, Onvo, and Firefly—are ultimately intended to form a sales structure ratio of "3:6:1." In fact, since its establishment, the Onvo sub-brand, focused on families, has shouldered the responsibility of driving volume.
However, for the full year last year, the sales proportion of Nio, Onvo, and Firefly was approximately 55%, 33%, and 12%, respectively. By the first quarter of this year, with the renewal of the main Nio brand's products, this ratio further shifted to 70%, 16%, and 14%.
Onvo still has a considerable distance to cover to reach the ideal "3:6:1" target.
The Shift to a Replacement Market
More crucially, the Chinese automotive market has changed. During the post-event discussion, William Li mentioned a telling detail: "From January to May this year, the total vehicle market declined by about 20% year-on-year, but pure electric vehicles overall are still growing. Particularly in May, fuel vehicle sales dropped by over 40%, yet pure electric vehicles still grew."
This signifies the market has entered a stage of competition for existing customers. Over the past decade, the biggest红利 (bonus/benefit) in the Chinese auto market came from first-time buyers. But today, most families already own more than one car. Genuine first-time purchase demand is diminishing, with replacement and additional purchases becoming mainstream.
"For many families with more than one car, genuine new purchases have become fewer; most are replacement purchases," Li said.
For Onvo, this presents both pressure and opportunity. The users it now faces are no longer first-time car buyers, but a group who have already driven vehicles from BBA (German luxury brands), joint-venture brands, and even other new energy vehicles.
Onvo President Shen Fei revealed that currently, 35% of Onvo users come from BBA and traditional luxury brands, 30% from mainstream joint-venture brands, about 10% are converted from other new energy brands, and nearly 10% are additional or repeat purchases from the Nio community. This indicates Onvo is effectively capturing the largest wave of consumer migration in the Chinese auto market.
Overcoming Brand Recognition Hurdles
In this process, Onvo needs to clear several hurdles. After the L60 launched last year, its biggest shortcoming was not product capability but brand recognition. William Li admitted they underestimated the difficulty of building a new brand. "According to our survey data, many people simply don't know the Onvo brand. Today, Onvo's brand awareness is roughly equivalent to Nio's six years ago, or even earlier."
This has been Onvo's biggest contradiction over the past year. On one hand, it must fulfill Nio Group's volume-driving mission; on the other, it lacks the corresponding brand awareness. The product is strong enough but hasn't formed a sufficiently strong brand perception. Therefore, the mission of the new L60 is essentially not just to boost sales, but to help Onvo complete the transition from a "Nio sub-brand" to an "independent brand."
The solution to this issue is also the core logic behind this facelift—positioning Onvo as the most technologically competitive family pure electric SUV in the 200,000-yuan segment. From a product perspective, the biggest change for the new L60 is catching up on intelligence. For a long time, Nio's technological advantages were more evident in its high-end models, while Onvo was tasked with scaling, creating a natural gap between the two.
Now, this gap is being bridged. "The new Onvo L60's entire intelligent driving baseline is basically aligned with the ES9, using the latest version of the Nio world model," Li said. Behind this lies Nio's long-term investments over the past few years in chips, operating systems, and the world model. This long-termism is now finally beginning to benefit Onvo.
A Test of Nio's Technological Foundation
In a sense, the new L60 is not just a new car model but a concentrated realization of Nio's decade-long technological investment. The full-domain 900V platform, Shenji chip, self-developed operating system, world model, and battery swap network—capabilities originally serving the high-end market—are now entering the mainstream market through Onvo.
It's not about proving whether Nio can build a good car, but about validating a more important question: can the technological system Nio has built over the past decade achieve scale effects in the mass market?
If successful, Onvo will become Nio's true sales engine, propelling the entire group past the scale threshold. From this perspective, the importance of the new L60 even exceeds that of a mere hit model. It determines not only Onvo's future but also the direction of Nio's next phase of development.
With the L60, L80, and L90 all now in play, Nio has finally completed its most crucial layout in the mainstream market. The upcoming test is no longer R&D capability, but sales capability, brand capability, and organizational capability. As William Li stated, "Starting in the second half of the year, we will focus more energy on selling cars and serving users."
For Nio, which has passed its ten-year entrepreneurial milestone, this perhaps marks the true moment of decisive battle.
Key Insights from Leadership Dialogue
Regarding market strategy, Onvo President Shen Fei noted their user base primarily comes from higher-end brand conversions, making the value proposition clear for those switching from fuel vehicles, especially when considering lower monthly operating costs with options like battery rental.
William Li emphasized the market's shift to a replacement era, where consumers moving from fuel vehicles are increasingly likely to choose new energy vehicles, and within that, pure electric intelligent vehicles, due to improved infrastructure and product competitiveness.
On competition, Li expressed confidence in Nio's product competitiveness and technological lead, stating that a focus on sales and service in the latter half of the year is welcomed, as evidenced by wait times for models like the Firefly.
Regarding intelligent driving comparisons with Tesla's FSD, Li acknowledged Tesla's leadership in certain areas but highlighted Nio's strengths in its full-stack self-research approach, from chip and sensor to world model and reinforcement learning, citing recent demonstrations of capability.
On the rationale behind the rapid, feature-packed update for the L60, Li explained it stems from unified internal engineering through full-stack self-research, allowing synchronized deployment across different vehicle platforms and hardware, which benefits data reuse and model management.
Addressing the impact of the "more features for less money" strategy on margins, Li acknowledged significant cost pressures from the supply chain but stated that profit growth this year would depend more on total volume.
On collaboration with CXMT regarding memory price increases, Li confirmed the significant cost impact but noted smooth progress in validation for LPDDR5X.
Regarding battery rental penetration, Li stated it is very high for Nio/Onvo (over 90%) and that industry penetration will rise as the market for such schemes grows.
Reflections on Brand Building and Future Outlook
Sharing lessons from building the Onvo brand, Li admitted underestimating the difficulty, noting that establishing a new brand is challenging in today's crowded market. He highlighted that Onvo's clear brand positioning, focus on family, quality, safety, and community were strengths, but creating emotional resonance remains a key challenge.
On current sales performance, Shen Fei pointed out that Onvo's sales growth in its first two years has been faster than Nio's was at the same stage. Li added that models like the L90 and L60 have achieved top positions in their respective segments, but acknowledged the ongoing process of brand and sales system building.
On investment in computing power for the world model, Li noted a significant increase in training compute investment this year, with more planned for the second half, leading to good results.
Regarding market positioning for Nio's three brands, Li explained that all three maintain a high-end定位 (positioning) within their respective target markets, with shared principles of high quality, technological leadership, and prioritizing features that resonate emotionally with their specific user groups.
On the decision to deploy flagship technologies in the 200,000-yuan segment with the new L60, Li stated it aligns with the strategy of applying the best technology to each target market, positioning the new L60 as the "tech flagship" in its category.
On Nio's advantages in its self-developed intelligent driving chip, Li emphasized the depth of its full-stack, in-house engineering capability, the importance of metrics like memory bandwidth and multi-modal signal processing, and features like millisecond-level hot-switching for redundancy, which are crucial for higher-level autonomous driving.
On the successful demonstration of driving through a narrow cave, Li attributed it to the aligned intelligent driving baseline with the ES9, powerful image processing in extreme low-light conditions, and the robust inference capability of the Nio world model, all built on a deep technological foundation developed with a long-term perspective.
On convincing Tesla Model Y owners to consider Onvo, Shen Fei pointed to strong conversion rates between the brands and noted that the new L60 offers a compelling tech-forward, comfortable, and value-packed alternative. William Li highlighted the L60's comparable size to the Model Y, its abundance of comfort features at a significantly lower price point, and the advantage of its intelligent driving system being included, along with the benefit of battery swap capability.
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