William Li's ES9 Moment: Premium Push, Profitability, and the Next Breakthrough

After emerging from the trough of 2025, NIO is regaining its optimal performance. On May 27, NIO unveiled its latest flagship model, the ES9, in Beijing. Positioned as an executive flagship SUV, the ES9 is available in three trims: Executive Luxury, Executive Signature, and Horizon Special Edition, with a price range of RMB 498,000 to RMB 628,000, representing a reduction of RMB 30,000 across the board compared to the previous pre-sale prices. Based solely on pricing, this is not only the most expensive SUV in NIO’s history but also the highest tier within the automotive industry’s “Series 9” segment.

Beyond its premium positioning, NIO aims to differentiate itself from competitors through original design, core technologies, and brand culture.

During the press conference, which lasted more than two hours, William Li, founder of NIO, repeatedly emphasized the word "leading," and spent considerable time breaking down 43 first-ever technologies and 37 leading configurations on this car. To demonstrate its posture as a leader, NIO also invited five product experience officers, including renowned historian Shi Zhan, CATL chairman Zeng Yuqun, and top basketball player Yao Ming, attempting to comprehensively prove itself from aspects such as humanities, technology, space, driving control, and aesthetics.

The brand’s strategy of continuing to move “upward” reflects NIO’s assessment of the broader market landscape.

At a media briefing following the ES9 launch on May 28, William Li pointed out that the automotive market experienced a severe decline in the first four months of the year. He stated that all automakers must confront a new industrial reality: the market is unlikely to return to its former prosperity. Meanwhile, NIO’s overseas exploration over the past five years has proven that expanding internationally is more difficult and operationally heavier than anticipated, requiring a longer-term layout.

For NIO, which has consistently emphasized an ecological closed-loop, focusing on the domestic market represents a more pragmatic choice. However, breaking through in China’s fiercely competitive domestic automotive market is no easy task. William Li’s assessment is that in the stock competition driven by market downturns, automotive brands will gradually transition from a chaotic phase to a clarifying phase. He believes that while products are currently homogenized, technologies are gradually converging, making brand importance even more prominent.

01ES9, the Crucial Battle for NIO's Premium Positioning

To build a competitive buffer and a brand safety net, NIO has applied all its accumulated expertise and lessons learned from past experiences to this new vehicle.

First, in terms of market positioning, the ES9 carves out an independent category among various 'Series 9' models: the electric executive flagship SUV.

"2025 is the decisive inflection point for China's pure electric vehicle market," William Li pointed out at the launch event. The largest three-row SUV segment has seen pure electric models surpass extended-range vehicles for eight consecutive months, firmly holding the top spot in sales across all powertrain types. The golden age of pure electricity has arrived, a trend that is irreversible. However, what NIO aims to do is not only lead the pure electric wave but also drive premium brands upward, accelerating industry transformation.

William Li's confidence as a premium leader stems from NIO's cumulative investment of over RMB 68.8 billion in core technologies and more than RMB 20 billion in infrastructure such as charging networks over the past eleven years. The ES9 is the culmination of these systematic investments and innovations, featuring 43 industry-first technologies, ten flagship attributes, and seven space metrics that rank first in their class. "It is the most advanced executive flagship in the world, without exception," he stated.

Specifically, the ES9 incorporates the latest results of NIO's twelve fully self-developed technology stacks. These include the world's first integrated hydraulic fully active suspension, "Tianxing Fully Active Suspension"; steer-by-wire; Tianxing VMC Vehicle Motion Management System; the world's first 5-nometer autonomous driving chip, "Shenji NX9031"; a 900 V high-voltage architecture; and the AI-oriented vehicle operating system, "SkyOS · Tianshu." These technologies aim to break through the traditional limits of automotive capabilities.

Among these, the newly equipped "Tianxing Fully Active Suspension" adopts a 48 V integrated technical solution, capable of completing 1,000 dynamic adjustments to damping, stiffness, and ride height per second.

On site, William Li explained that the 48 V integrated approach represents a generation ahead of the 400/800 V split-system active suspensions, offering five major advantages: greater agility, precision, energy efficiency, quietness, and comprehensiveness. It will become the technical standard for next-generation pure electric vehicles.

Unlike past pursuits of extreme technological leadership, NIO is now placing greater emphasis on the tangible improvements in user experience that technology brings.

According to William Li, leveraging this suspension system, the NIO ES9 reduces connecting piping by 95%, compresses response time to under 6 milliseconds, and achieves a turning radius of just 5.4 meters. It delivers an ultimate sense of comfort: no nose-up during acceleration, no nose-dive during braking, almost no body roll in corners, and complete isolation from bumps.

More importantly, the suspension’s adaptability across scenarios is significantly stronger, offering overall comfort superior to split-chassis solutions. To demonstrate its capabilities, NIO performed two high-difficulty tests at the launch event: a 'random speed bump + six-tier champagne tower' challenge and a 'six-tier champagne tower outside the car on ice + three-tier tower inside the car' test. The company also showcased the steering agility of the large third-row ES9 dancing together with the compact Firefly on ice.

Of course, every debut technology represents a difficult exploration into the 'unknown'.

According to William Li, in order to achieve the current chassis capabilities of the ES9, supplier Clear Motion, which has an academic background from MIT, began its technical exploration as early as 2009. In 2022, NIO discovered this startup at an exhibition, subsequently invested in it, and through integration and breakthroughs, finally achieved its first mass production delivery on the ET9.

After more than a year of mass-production refinement, the maturity of this suspension technology has improved significantly, but costs remain high.

Industry media estimate that the BOM cost of the ES9’s suspension system is more than three times that of conventional air suspensions, adding approximately RMB 20,000 to RMB 30,000 per vehicle. At a media briefing, William Li admitted frankly, 'It is still quite expensive right now,' expressing hope to lower costs together with partners in the future.

Yet, even with the significant effort and cost invested in pushing technological and experiential boundaries, merely stacking specifications and features is no longer sufficient in today's automotive market. NIO aims to differentiate its products by infusing new models with a distinct spiritual core.

As the culmination of 11 years of technology development for NIO, the ES9 has partnered with Yao Ming under the slogan 'Dare to Imagine, Achieve Greatness,' seeking to convey the attitude that 'there are no shortcuts to reaching the pinnacle.'

'A premium brand must first possess a premium spirit,' William Li further elaborated on NIO’s understanding and operational logic for premium brands during a media briefing. 'Once a product reaches a certain price point, users look beyond configurations and parameters; they also seek emotional experience and product resonance.' He believes that a car's spiritual core, akin to the fundamental character of a person as mentioned by Yao Ming, is the core driving force enabling an automotive brand to navigate industry cycles.

02Can NIO Replicate the Success of the ES8 with the ES9?

In fact, NIO’s confidence in moving upmarket stems from the fact that this methodology has already been successfully validated by the ES8.

As a new automaker born from the premium segment and currently in a strategic expansion phase, NIO was severely impacted by the price wars in the Chinese auto market starting in the second half of 2022. From unbundling sales benefits for its main brand and executing a strategic brake to refocus, to incubating new brands like ONVO and Firefly, NIO struggled to transition from 'bleeding cash' to 'generating profit' until the arrival of the new NIO ES8.

In August 2025, this model, inheriting the DNA of the original ES8 as the 'pioneer of high-end pure electric vehicles,' leveraged NIO’s latest platform, intelligent driving, and battery-electric-motor-electronic-control technologies to elevate its positioning from a mid-to-large SUV to a large SUV. Adopting a strategy of 'high specs without high prices,' it achieved a sales surge, delivering its 100,000th unit in just 215 days, thereby setting a new record for delivery speed among premium passenger cars priced above RMB 400,000 in China.

At the launch event, William Li again announced prominently that since first topping the charts in December 2025, the new ES8 has remained the sales champion in the large SUV segment for five consecutive months, while also securing the absolute number one position in the passenger car market priced above RMB 400,000, regardless of energy type.

In April, NIO ES8 monthly retail sales remained high at 13,000 units. It was the only large three-row SUV on the market that month to exceed 10,000 units in sales.

Driven by this model, NIO achieved annual sales of 326,000 units in 2025 and turned a profit in Q4, completing a dramatic turnaround for the brand.

ES8’s position became even more prominent in 2026. According to the latest financial report, NIO’s total deliveries across its three brands reached 83,000 units in Q1 2026. ES8 accounted for more than half of this volume and helped NIO achieve operating profit again, supported by a gross margin of over 20%.

However, the reality remains challenging. On one hand, NIO’s sales target for this year is to achieve scale growth of 40%–50% through synergy among its three brands. Based on this calculation, NIO’s overall sales must reach at least 456,000 units to meet the goal. This means that over the remaining eight months, NIO needs an average monthly sales volume of approximately 43,000 units. Relying solely on strong single-model sales of the new ES8 is clearly insufficient.

On the other hand, NIO’s foundation for profitability remains fragile. In Q1 2026, despite revenue reaching RMB 25.5 billion, NIO’s adjusted net profit was only RMB 43.5 million, resulting in a profit margin of just 0.2%. Notably, this slim profit was achieved after NIO cut nearly RMB 1.3 billion from R&D expenses. Although NIO management emphasized that the effectiveness of investment did not decline compared to previous levels, cost compression has clearly reached its limit.

Furthermore, amid intensifying competition within the automotive industry, the hot-selling cycle for new models has shortened significantly. According to William Li, the trend toward a “death valley” for new model effects is obvious. The question remains how long the new ES8 can maintain its strong sales performance.

Currently, NIO urgently needs to expand its lineup of new models to boost brand momentum and reinforce its profitability foundation with high-gross-margin vehicles, thereby achieving its full-year profit target. The ES9 is NIO’s most critical card this year.

With the launch of this new model, NIO not only replicated the brand operation logic used for the ES8 but also attempted to avoid the pitfalls encountered during the ES8’s launch.

For instance, NIO President Lihong Qin has previously reviewed the situation multiple times, noting that the older ES8 was priced too high due to pressures from raw material and technology costs, causing NIO to cede its pure electric vehicle market share to extended-range vehicles. With the launch of the ES9, memory chips, lithium carbonate, copper, and aluminum—materials heavily used by NIO—are also entering an upward cost cycle. However, facing similar circumstances, NIO’s understanding is clearer and its approach more mature.

On the evening of May 27, when William Li finally revealed the final launch price of the new car on stage at a diamond-shaped court near Beijing’s Olympic Forest Park, cheers erupted. Compared to the pre-sale price announced in April, the final launch price of the ES9 was reduced by RMB 30,000 overall, exceeding widespread industry expectations.

It is worth noting that just five days earlier, during the Q1 earnings call, many major brokerage analysts were still uneasy about the prospects for NIO’s upcoming new model.

The new car’s pricing undoubtedly increased the probability of NIO delivering strong financial results. Based on the overall pricing range of RMB 498,000 to RMB 628,000, under NIO’s battery leasing model, the actual entry threshold for using the ES9 drops to RMB 390,000.

In comparison, the AITO M9, which launched on the same day as the NIO ES9, has a starting price of RMB 479,800. The previously launched Li Auto L9 Livis is priced at RMB 509,800, while the Zeekr 9X starts at RMB 465,900.

Improved market confidence was also reflected in NIO’s stock price. On May 27, following the official launch of the ES9, NIO ended its downward trend since the Q1 financial report release, surging 9.3% that day.

During the media briefing, William Li and Lihong Qin emphasized that NIO’s pricing decisions are made from the user’s perspective rather than being overly focused on competitors’ reactions. They stated that the ES9’s pricing had been set long ago: “It wasn’t decided ad hoc yesterday afternoon.”

However, price advantages are a double-edged sword for NIO. Previously, William Li explicitly stated on an earnings call that if the average selling price of each NIO vehicle drops by RMB 10,000, the company would need to sell three to four times the volume to recover the same EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes).

Furthermore, every new technology integration presents hellish difficulties at the delivery stage. The production ramp-up and delivery speed of the ES9 in subsequent mass production will determine the final performance of this model.

According to information announced at NIO's IPO launch event, the ES9 mid-island version will begin deliveries upon launch, while the channel version will be delayed until July.

Considering product ramp-up and new car delivery speeds, Guosheng Securities estimates that total sales of the NIO ES9 in 2026 will reach approximately 14,500 units, with specific distribution as follows: Q2 sales of 7,000, Q3 sales of 3,500, and Q4 sales of 4,000.

After the new car's launch, NIO management refused to disclose order figures and sales expectations, attempting to divert external attention away from excessive focus on new car sales.

William Li reiterated his argument for systemic competition at a media briefing, stating that the entire industry is transitioning from a period of brand confusion to one of brand clarification. Users no longer pay for specification sheets; instead, automakers' operational focus will shift toward competing in brand management, strategic stability, and full-cycle service capabilities.

In a sense, NIO is currently experiencing its most comfortable competitive state in recent years because systemic capability is its greatest strength. However, William Li remains anxious. He pointed out that the macroeconomic data from January to April is public, and based on the first three weeks of May, conditions have not improved. The overall market is unlikely to return to its former prosperity, and 'hardship' will become the main theme of the industry.

For NIO, which has just found its footing, the timing feels somewhat ill-fated. Yet, as William Li stated, every additional unit sold and every extra yuan earned counts. "Building fortified camps and fighting straightforward battles, advancing a pawn each day and persevering over time" is the only way forward.

From an external perspective, this new-wave automaker once regarded as a benchmark has become more pragmatic as it enters the second decade of its vehicle manufacturing journey. This may well be the essence of evolution.

Written by: Florence Edited by: Daji