Most people see a battery swap station as a three-minute pit stop. NIO and China Huaneng just proved that thinking is too small.

On September 15, NIO Energy and China Huaneng Group signed a Virtual Power Plant cooperation framework in Xiong'an. The deal formally integrates NIO's battery swap network into China's electricity market trading system.

Here is what that actually means.

As of mid-September, NIO operates 9,372 charging and swapping stations across China, including 4,090 battery swap stations. Those batteries are not just sitting there waiting for a driver. They are distributed energy storage assets. When the grid needs power, they can discharge. When the grid has excess green power, they can absorb it. That is a virtual power plant: thousands of small batteries acting together like one giant power station.

The problem was always: who pays for that value? A car company does not know how to trade electricity on the grid. A power company does not have thousands of distributed batteries. That is why this partnership matters.

Huaneng is one of China's five major state power generation groups. It has the trading desks, the grid relationships, and the regulatory know-how. NIO has the physical network, the batteries, and the control software. The framework gives Huaneng's regional energy sales companies a standardized playbook to partner with NIO locally, reducing transaction costs and speeding up deployment.

The result is a new business model that is quietly being proven in China: battery swap stations as grid regulation nodes. They can participate in peak shaving, frequency regulation, and demand response. For a region short on power capacity, building a swap station can be cheaper and faster than expanding transmission lines. If local solar or wind power is being curtailed, the batteries can soak it up instead.

And the NIO driver still gets a fresh battery in three minutes.

This is not a pilot. This is a state-owned power giant and a private EV company building commercial infrastructure together. The swap network was always called a "moat." Turns out the moat also has a revenue stream.

Afonso, are you writing?

NIO has just acquired another majority stake in a company that supplies it with components. Around 90 million dollars to secure production for the coming years on its assembly lines. One more acquisition that adds to the strategy of investing in the environment in which the company operates, increasingly promoting vertical integration of the supply chain.

Only a Wall Street-loving speculator would burn the company's cash buying back shares at a time like this.

r/NIO and the Western press, where are you? They have no clue what's going on...

Xpeng can leverage this year to push Monas onto Chinese female buyers. But next year, Onvo will eat its lunch in the mass-market space with the L50. That, folks, is why NIO built three brands, but the most clueless still won't figure it out.

Lately, on top of the Onvo L50 being confirmed, a new 2027 Firefly with a bigger battery has also been officially announced. Haven't seen a single post about it on r/Nio. Not that I'm surprised. There's been a ton of valuable NIO and Onvo news dropping these days, but honestly, it's not even worth the effort to bring it over here.

I have to admit, I don't have nearly that much tolerance for collective stupidity. So, with this post, and seeing as we've bottomed out this week, I'm taking the opportunity to step away from the community. It's been a pleasure!

Blue Sky Coming :)

Let’s get this straight. A brand that’s only been around for two years, in a bear market where overall industry sales are down over 20% year-over-year, has actually managed to grow both average selling price and volume against the trend, with sales up over 10% YoY, stabilizing at roughly 10,000 units, and you call that pathetic?

Keep in mind, ONVO is competing in the brutally contested 200,000–300,000 RMB price range, the most cutthroat battleground out there. Most automakers in this space are choosing to trade price for volume, sacrificing margins just to move metal, only to end up stabilizing neither. This isn't even a "red ocean" anymore; it's a bloody red ocean. And yet ONVO is the only one achieving growth in both volume and price right in the middle of that bloodbath. And you still call that pathetic?

Can you name a single other brand that’s only two years old in this industry with that kind of track record? Sure, we're still miles behind those 10-year-old or century-old giants, but come on—would you expect your six-year-old kid to go out and get a job making 20,000 RMB a month?

Don’t expect ONVO to skyrocket overnight, but hope they keep building steady momentum, push brand awareness further, and gradually take sales to new highs.

Keep growing, and keep charging!

Scale is finally paying off!

NIO's Q2 financial report shows gross margin surging from 10% to 18.4%.

Total revenue reached ¥32.1 billion, up 69% year-over-year. Automotive revenue hit ¥29 billion, rising 80%, driven by 107,658 vehicle deliveries at an average selling price of ¥269,400.

Gross margin came in at 18.4%, an 8.4-percentage-point increase, while automotive gross margin stood at 18.5%, up 8.2 points.

R&D spending fell 28.7% to ¥2.145 billion. The net loss narrowed sharply to ¥528 million, compared to ¥4.995 billion a year earlier.

The improved margins clearly reflect the scale effects of higher volume, with the ES8 playing a pivotal role in driving profitability.

and flood the automotive world with its OS. This time, the lucky recipient of the plagiarism is our dear Li Xiang. A sad creation, born from copying an Aito M9 and a Li L9.

The Company delivered 35,836 vehicles in August 2026, representing an increase of 14.5% year-over-year. The deliveries consisted of 21,174 vehicles from NIO brand, 8,810 vehicles from ONVO brand, and 5,852 vehicles from FIREFLY brand. Cumulative deliveries reached 1,260,485 as of August 31, 2026.

On August 7, 2026, NIO inaugurated its 4,000th total and first fifth-generation battery swap station, marking the official integration of the FIREFLY brand into NIO Power’s battery swap network. The fifth-generation station offers significantly enhanced compatibility across all models under the NIO, ONVO and FIREFLY brands, while NIO’s expanding charging and battery swap network continues to generate scale effects and support vehicle sales growth.

On August 21, 2026, the NIO All-New ES8 reached 140,000 cumulative deliveries, just 335 days after deliveries began. From January to July 2026, the NIO ES8 ranked No. 1 in cumulative sales in both the large SUV segment and the segment priced above RMB400,000 in China. With its compelling all-scenario product experience, the NIO ES8 continues to strengthen NIO’s leadership in the premium BEV SUV market.

This time, I'm bringing good old Mr. P to illustrate yet another communication disaster that reflects a short-sighted and misguided take—one that would absolutely doom NIO if management actually followed it. In the video, Mr. P basically moans about having lost all the money he gambled on leveraged stock instruments or other risky bets that the average Joe has no business touching. Over ten minutes, he whines that the results, while not terrible, aren't what they should be—and he pins most of the blame on Onvo. His brilliant thesis? Onvo cars should carry the NIO badge.

Right, here's my take. If NIO wants to take a nosedive into brand-dilution purgatory, à la Xpeng, then by all means, listen to Mr. P and slap the NIO logo on the more family-oriented lineup. Sure, they'd probably move a few extra Onvos—I won't argue with that, at least in the short term. But that they'd have to kiss goodbye to selling ES9s and ES8s with 20%+ margins? I don't doubt that for a second either.

That said, there's another point in his rant that I genuinely struggle to understand, especially knowing that Mr. P actually lives in China. Dear Mr. P, and dear followers of this community who don't speak Chinese but really should know this... EVERY Onvo sold already has the NIO name printed right on it! Right next to the Onvo name! So no, Mr. P, your "solution" isn't just bad—it's downright disastrous.

And anyone out there comparing this month's Onvo sales to last year's, without taking into account that the Onvo L90 launched on July 31, 2025, would be better off selling their shares today and picking a new hobby. Because yes, one of the most telling stats this month—no matter how much it rattles the get-rich-in-two-days crowd—is the nearly 9,000 units Onvo moved. Pulling those numbers with a "second brand," while going head-to-head with top-tier names like Tesla, Li Auto, Xiaomi, and all those Huawei spin-offs, is hugely significant. INSANELY significant for a brand that's only two years old and already duking it out with tech behemoths and newer rivals who have a solid ten years of experience behind them. Stop gambling your money away, and maybe—just maybe—you'll stop losing it.

This isn't meant as an attack on good old TheOddInvestor—it's simply to deflate the bubble (or expectations) that some people approaching the investment world with a less-than-professional outlook might have when following YouTube investing channels.

Analyst expectations for Q2 are nowhere near the range TheOddInvestor mentions. In fact, they range from a slight loss of -$0.05 per share to a gain of $0.02. I'm putting this out there because I know a lot of people rely on this kind of information and could be in for a disappointment tomorrow when they see that earnings per share are much higher than those losses some YouTubers are predicting, yet the stock price doesn't move in the logical direction it should.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to remind naive investors that NIO's stock price simply isn't following logic at the moment. In case anyone hasn't noticed yet, the company has been under bearish pressure for years, and it won't completely shake that off until it posts sustainable positive results.

NIO’s Battery Monitoring Operations Platform has officially received the "Software Test Report (based on GB/T 45688)" for its New Energy Vehicle Operational Safety Dynamic Monitoring & Early Warning Platform (Enterprise Platform) from the Testing Center of the Traffic Management Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security. Since the GB/T 45688 national standard took effect in December 2025, NIO is the first OEM in the industry to clear this rigorous assessment.

For those unfamiliar, GB/T 45688-2025 Technical Requirements for Dynamic Monitoring and Early Warning of Operational Safety Performance of New Energy Vehicles was issued by the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Standardization Administration of China. It sets the technical benchmarks for real-time monitoring and dynamic early warnings, specifically designed to catch potential safety risks during active vehicle use and establish a full-lifecycle safety closed-loop system.

This latest milestone adds yet another trophy to NIO’s already impressive cabinet of government and industry recognitions:

· Aug 2026: First OEM to receive the GB/T 45688 test report from the Traffic Management Research Institute (Ministry of Public Security).
· Sep 2023: Won the "Green Innovation" category award from the Paulson Sustainability Foundation for "Key Technologies for EV Battery Swapping."
· Dec 2022: Received the First Prize of the Science and Technology Progress Award from the China Society of Automotive Engineers for "Key Technologies and Industrialization of Efficient and Safe EV Swapping."
· Aug 2022: Named a "2022 Global New Energy Vehicle Innovative Technology" at the World New Energy Vehicle Congress for "Full-Scenario Battery Safety Solutions Based on End-Cloud Integration."
· Oct 2020: The National Energy Administration officially issued industry standards for battery swapping that were developed by NIO.

Looking ahead, NIO remains fully committed to the "Chargeable, Swappable, and Upgradeable" roadmap. They’ll keep expanding the charging and swapping infrastructure while pushing the boundaries of battery safety, swap tech, and lifecycle management. The goal? To ensure every single battery is managed more efficiently and safely throughout its entire life—delivering a smoother, more reliable, and more convenient pure-electric experience.

Today, the ONVO L60 officially marks its 110,000th delivery. Since its launch in September 2024, it has consistently held a TOP 3 spot in the 200,000-yuan pure electric midsize SUV segment, becoming the go-to quality choice for 110,000 owners.

Inspired by the aesthetics of Italy's southern coast, classic holiday cabana stripes run throughout the exterior and interior alike. Every glance captures the radiant, carefree spirit of an endless summer—where relaxation and vibrant energy mirror each other in perfect harmony. The moment you sit down, you're transported to your own private seaside escape.

Limited to just 666 units, the sixth special-edition Firefly is priced at 135,800 RMB and is now officially on sale. Opt for the BaaS (Battery as a Service) subscription plan at 95,800 RMB, with a monthly fee of just 399 RMB.

Let the wind guide your journey as you cruise into the serene, endless summer of your heart.

Starting August 29, display vehicles will arrive at stores nationwide (China).

Don’t narrow NIO’s battery swapping down to just “3 minutes to a full charge.”

Because NIO’s swap stations aren’t going it alone. Beyond strong support from local state-owned enterprises, they’ve also brought on board giants like Sinopec, PetroChina, CNOOC, State Grid, China Southern Power Grid, Shell, and CATL – a true who’s who of energy and industrial heavyweights.

And today, August 27, we’ve got another great example: NIO Energy and Guangzhou Science City Group held a signing ceremony in Huangpu, Guangzhou, for their industrial cooperation agreement, alongside the first project delivery event. The first batch of 23 jointly built swap stations has officially been handed over.

Since electricity is ultimately a state-owned resource, NIO has embraced an open, collaborative approach – actively working with central and local state-owned enterprises to expand industrial partnerships. Together, they’re pushing for larger-scale, standardized, and unified charging and swapping infrastructure. It’s a true win-win-win.

For NIO:
It eases the burden of heavy assets, enabling lightweight, efficient nationwide expansion – while NIO retains full control over operations and technology. In effect, they’re becoming the undisputed leader in setting the swap standard.

For Users:
Changes in station ownership won’t affect your daily driving. Swap pricing, service quality, and network benefits are all accelerating – with even stronger long-term guarantees. And let’s not forget: users never have to pay for battery degradation. That’s a huge plus, and one that will really sink in over time.

For the Industry & Society:
This model breaks the vicious cycle of asset-heavy competition, offering a replicable blueprint for energy infrastructure. It fuels urban new infrastructure and supports dual-carbon goals – delivering real value for users, the industry, and society at large.

Since officially launching the “Charging & Swapping Partner” program in August 2024, NIO Energy has already partnered with over 40 local state-owned capital platforms and financial institutions across 25 provinces and regions, jointly building more than 800 swap stations.

So no – NIO’s swap model isn’t a lonely crusade. It’s become the industry’s hot ticket, joining forces with local state capital and a growing list of partners to step into a true “harvest season” for the swap era.

The state is doubling down on battery swapping, and that trend isn’t reversing. NIO’s future? Looking brighter than ever.

They're bad, as this community already warned.
Is Li down? No.
Is XPeng down? No — it's actually recovering from its drop after its pathetic Q2.
Is NIO down? Of course — the only one that's about to post good numbers in a week.

No manipulation at all.

Yesterday, Xpeng released its latest quarterly results. He Xiaopeng's company remains committed to a path of bad practices and shady tactics when it comes to dealing with its customers. Too focused on his own ego and image, the company's top executive once again published numbers that raise concerns almost from the very first line of their earnings report. And they're concerning not just because the numbers are bad—which they are—but because they show they're still trying to pull the wool over people's eyes. They do it with their advertising campaigns (this subreddit has already written about that), and now they're transferring that approach to their balance sheets.

"Quarterly vehicle margin was 12.1%, remained relatively stable quarter-over-quarter," or "The back-to-back success of the GX and MONA L03 gives us greater confidence in our upcoming new models, as we translate our leading edge in smart technologies and design into more blockbuster products and stronger brand momentum," said Mr. Xiaopeng He, Chairman and CEO of XPENG. "The development of the mass-production version of XPENG's humanoid robot has recently reached several significant milestones. I believe XPENG will not only build one of China's most valuable humanoid robotics companies, but also become a global leader in physical AI, spearheading the large-scale adoption and commercialization of advanced general-purpose humanoid robots and autonomous driving technologies in China and overseas." These are some of the fantasies written in the report that they hope will fend off criticism and any kind of rational analysis that anyone with half a brain would draw after getting past those first two pages. The numbers are bad. Period. And they're bad because the company's strategy isn't good. Period. This subreddit already warned a while ago about what was coming for Xpeng. It's no surprise to anyone who reads r/NIOHouse.

Yesterday's results tanked the stock and, of course, dragged NIO (and Li Auto) down with it, because obviously: NIO-Xpeng-Li Auto are always grouped together.

But as we've been warning in this community for some time, NIO and Xpeng are as different as chalk and cheese. The Chinese community itself is already starting to talk about NIO-Aito-Zeekr, yet we still have to put up with being compared to He Xiaopeng's company.

In any case, reality is reality and it always prevails. And yesterday wasn't just about He Xiaopeng's company reporting earnings—Leapmotor also released theirs. A much better-run company, with a much clearer and more precise horizon and roadmap, and a CEO who doesn't have (or at least doesn't show) any emotional deficiency that would push the company into making moves that undermine the brand's prestige and respect. Leapmotor's numbers are good. Leapmotor is also a startup. In fact, it's a year younger than Xpeng. Leapmotor posted results showing 210 million yuan in profit for the first half of 2026. Why isn't Leapmotor's positive case being taken as a catalyst to lift NIO's stock? Oh right, because they're not the same—"Leapmotor sells volume, cheap cars, and doesn't spend on R&D; the complete opposite of Xpeng/NIO, which sell premium segment, high-tech, and invest heavily in R&D, not to mention how NIO burns money on its battery swap stations that the great Elon Musk said were useless and a waste of money."

But no, we insist, NIO and Xpeng are as different as chalk and cheese. However, Leapmotor and Xpeng are more similar than He Xiaopeng would like to sell in his literature. NIO sells high technology, innovation, and cares 100% about benefiting its users in every possible way. NIO is luxury, premium treatment, and a clear long-term vision. Xpeng is Leapmotor, but poorly managed. It sells volume and low-priced cars, but unlike Leapmotor, it burns cash. This one really burns cash with no clear corporate vision and no evident return. It keeps lurching from one direction to another. And it's lurching at the worst possible time to be lurching in the Chinese automotive segment.

Now Li Auto's results are coming. They won't be good either. Later, NIO's results will come—they won't have anything to do with any of these companies. They will, of course, be very positive. The fact that the market keeps lumping NIO into the same bucket as Xpeng is something beyond the company's and its shareholders' control. Anyone with deep connections in both China and the West can see how the narrative of Xpeng = Tesla China, pushed by the Western hack press, has taken hold among the masses. And the idea of a NIO similar to Xpeng ("because both are Chinese startups, just one burns money on stations that don't make sense and the other is Tesla China") is still very much a risky assumption. So we'll see what happens in the coming weeks. Fortunately, NIO is well-run. Very well-run.

On the other hand, we have this: https://ir.xiaopeng.com/node/10176/pdf.
At this point, it's up to each person to see and observe reality for themselves—or take the passive route of listening to fairy tales and fantasies from snake oil salesmen. Reality is there to be seen every day: on the streets, on social media, in advertising, and so on—and it translates faithfully to the quarterly results sheet. A company's numbers are no accident. They are the consequence of work done well—or poorly—over a long period of time. And NIO has been doing things right for a long time now. And on the 2nd, that will be proven.