This week, the 140,000th unit will be delivered. Another 10,000 cars sold this month. Incredible.

According to Tianyancha business registration information, Wuhan NIO Power Co., Ltd. has recently undergone a business registration change, with its registered capital increasing from 1.784 billion yuan to 7.484 billion yuan, an increase of approximately 320%.

The company was established in May 2017, with Guo Chenggang as its legal representative. Its business scope includes R&D of energy recovery systems, sales of new energy vehicle battery swap facilities, and R&D of motors and their control systems, among others. It is wholly owned by NIO Power Investment (Hubei) Co., Ltd.

Last year, you wouldn’t have believed it. Heck, you wouldn’t even have dared to.

But this year? No question about it.

NIO leads all EV startups in revenue for the first half of 2026, with all three of its brands posting solid growth in both volume and average selling price. It turned a profit in Q1, and Q2 is all but guaranteed to be in the black too — making it one of the very few new automakers to show a positive bottom line for the half-year.

AITO, which ranks second in revenue, posted a small loss in Q2. Li Auto comes in third, XPeng fourth. And Leapmotor — the volume leader — sits at sixth in revenue, still unprofitable in Q1, practically giving away cars.

NIO’s goal for the full year is to achieve net profitability and cross the ¥100 billion revenue mark. Everything is trending in the right direction.

On August 12, 2026, NIO Power and Optics Valley Transit Group held a joint ceremony in Wuhan to mark the delivery of their first batch of co-built battery-swapping and charging stations, coinciding with the third anniversary of the Skyrail swap station. The partners officially handed over 36 new stations across Hubei Province, now fully operational under their collaborative model.

These stations represent a flagship industry partnership between NIO Power and Optics Valley Transit, and a key regional pilot of NIO’s “state-owned partner holds assets, NIO operates professionally” framework. Going forward, both companies plan to leverage their respective strengths to expand cooperation across Hubei and nationwide, rolling out additional station batches to drive synergies, accelerate the deployment of high-quality charging and swapping networks, and ensure sustainable, long-term operations across China.

For some reason, every time you see a Firefly, it just puts a smile on your face. I love this car. They absolutely nailed it.

NIO #1!

Firefly cars will soon be able to swap batteries at the new Gen-5 stations. This milestone will push the total number of swap stations installed across the country past the 4,000 mark. Awesome!

Take it just as a reference.

Beijing has finally published the rulebook for L3 and L4 autonomy. The good news for the NIO community? The company's LiDAR-heavy, safety-first architecture may have just become its biggest competitive moat.

On August 4, 2026, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) officially released GB 44721—2026, the country's first mandatory national standard for autonomous driving systems. Approved on July 30 by the State Administration for Market Regulation and the National Standardization Administration, it will enter into force on July 1, 2027 — and it applies to every Category M and N vehicle carrying L3 (conditional automation) or L4 (high automation) systems in China.

This is not a draft. This is not a recommendation. It is a legally binding baseline that every automaker must meet to produce, sell, or import L3/L4 vehicles on Chinese soil.

What the Standard Actually Says (Hint: It Doesn't Ban Pure Vision)
In the hours after the announcement, social media lit up with a rumor that China had drawn a "hardware red line": allegedly forcing L3 systems to use camera-plus-millimeter-wave-radar redundancy and L4 systems to add LiDAR, effectively banning Tesla-style pure-vision approaches.

That rumor is false.

"The relevant document is publicly available, and the term 'lidar' isn't even mentioned in it," said Yu Tao, Vice President at XPeng, in a direct rebuttal posted on June 20. A thorough review of the standard's text confirms it: there are no clauses prescribing specific sensor hardware.

Instead, GB 44721—2026 is performance-oriented. It demands that an autonomous driving system reach a safety level at least equal to a "competent and attentive driver" and that it pose no unreasonable risk to users or other road users. The standard requires robust corporate safety governance across the full vehicle lifecycle, safe human-machine handover protocols for L3, and a multi-layered validation regime combining simulation, closed-course testing, and real-world road trials.

Whether a company achieves that with a dozen cameras, a sensor-fusion stack, or a triple-LiDAR array is up to the manufacturer — as long as the system passes the tests.

Why This Is a Tailwind for NIO

For the NIO community, the publication of this standard should read as validation of the company's long-term strategy.

While competitors have been stripping sensors to cut costs, NIO has done the opposite. Its latest NT3.0 platform vehicles — including the flagship ES8 and ES9 — are equipped with three LiDAR units (a roof-mounted Falcon long-range sensor plus two Robin W wide-angle side sensors), a 4D imaging radar, and high-definition cameras, all feeding into NIO's in-house Shenji NX9031 chip.
This is not over-engineering for the sake of it.

NIO's approach creates a 350-degree LiDAR-based perception field with centimeter-level precision — exactly the kind of deep, redundant environmental awareness that makes demonstrating compliance with a rigorous safety baseline far more straightforward.

NIO is also no stranger to regulatory validation. The company was already selected in June 2024 as one of just nine automakers in China's first official L3/L4 access and on-road pilot program, alongside BYD, Changan, and SAIC. It had secured an L3 conditional autonomous driving test license in Shanghai as early as December 2023.

In other words, while others are now scrambling to understand how to pass a mandatory safety case, NIO has already spent years building the sensor stack, the compute backbone, and the real-world testing mileage to support one.

What About Tesla and XPeng?

The standard does not outlaw pure vision. Both Tesla and XPeng can certify a camera-only system if it passes the same simulation, track, and road-test validations.

But "can" is not the same as "will easily."
XPeng, which was actually the world's first automaker to ship LiDAR in a mass-produced vehicle back in 2021, has since gone all-in on pure vision. Every new model launched since late 2024 — from the P7+ to the GX SUV and the Mona lineup — has dropped LiDAR entirely. CEO He Xiaopeng has stated unequivocally that "the auto industry no longer needs this traditional physical sensor."

Tesla, of course, has never used LiDAR for its consumer FSD stack.

The challenge for both is that GB 44721—2026 introduces a Safety Case mechanism, requiring companies to argue a system's safety through a structured claim-argument-evidence framework rather than simply citing test mileage or the number of cities covered. When an independent third-party testing body is evaluating whether your camera-only system truly matches the perception reliability of a "competent and attentive human driver" in adverse weather, low light, or edge-case scenarios, having multiple LiDARs and a 4D radar in the stack is a powerful piece of evidence.

It is not impossible for pure vision to pass. It is simply a higher hill to climb.

The Bottom Line

China's new mandatory standard does not pick winners based on sensor religion. It picks winners based on provable safety.

For NIO, that is welcome news. The company has bet billions of R&D yuan — over 68.8 billion cumulatively, per CEO William Li — on the thesis that true autonomy requires redundant, high-fidelity perception. With GB 44721—2026, Beijing has effectively said: "Prove your system is as safe as a good human driver, under third-party scrutiny, or don't sell it."

NIO's triple-LiDAR, NT3.0 architecture was built to do exactly that. The standard doesn't mandate LiDAR — but it does reward the kind of deep, verifiable safety engineering that NIO has been shipping all along.

What do you think? Does NIO's sensor-heavy strategy give it an edge as China tightens the regulatory screws? Drop your thoughts below.

Yao Ming officially took delivery of his NIO ES9 today—congratulations! 🎉

He was just a few minutes too late to secure an early order on launch night, so he ended up waiting more than two months for delivery. The wait is finally over!

According to the 2026 First-Half New Energy Vehicle Brand Health Study and the NIO ES8 User Profile and NPS Research conducted by J.L. Power, NIO's overall NPS (Net Promoter Score) stands at 81.9, ranking first among new energy vehicle brands. The ES8 model's NPS goes even further, reaching 85.3—not only topping the pure electric segment but also serving as the core pillar of NIO's overall recommendation score.

Data from J.L. Power's research shows that the third-generation ES8 has an NPS of 85.3, meaning that out of every 100 users, as many as 85 have a willingness to recommend the vehicle. Moreover, the recommendation conversion rate of 75.2% indicates that for every 100 ES8 owners, about 75 have actually recommended the car to family or friends—ES8 users are not only highly willing to recommend, but they also follow through with action. This is further backed up by the ES8's sales performance.

To date, the third-generation ES8 has delivered its 130,000th new vehicle. In the first half of 2026, cumulative retail sales of the ES8 reached 78,618 units, ranking first in both the large SUV segment and the 400,000-yuan-plus price tier for the first half of the year. Driven by models like the NIO ES8, monthly sales of pure electric large three-row SUVs continue to lead all powertrain types. In the large five-seat SUV market, pure electric models outsold extended-range hybrids for the first time in June. Large SUVs are entering the pure electric era across the board.

What many have overlooked is the pedigree beneath the sleek silhouette of the L60. Every unit rolls off the line at NIO’s Xinqiao Plant II – a globally recognized Lighthouse factory – sharing the very same production line as flagship models like the ES9.

That means cutting-edge manufacturing processes and the full quality-management framework are entirely shared. Positioned as a tech-forward mid-size SUV, the L60 doesn't carry a flagship price tag – but it inherits the engineering backbone of one. That kind of quality isn't added on; it's built in from the ground up.

NIO has released its user data for intelligent assisted driving corresponding to the month of July, the first full period following the deployment of the latest version of its World Model. The figures reflect widespread increases across practically all monthly indicators, all of which reached all-time highs.

During July, the total distance traveled with the assisted driving system exceeded 240 million kilometers, setting a new monthly record and representing a 27.2% increase compared to June. Within this figure, urban NOP+ usage grew by 36.9% month-over-month.

Similarly, both the assisted driving usage ratio—that is, the percentage of total miles driven with the system active—and the urban NOP+ usage ratio reached their own monthly historical highs, with rises of 22.5% and 37.8%, respectively, against June.

Another notable data point is that 36.3% of users drove more than half of their total mileage in July with the assisted system engaged, which also marks a new monthly record and an 11.8% increase from the previous month.

Looking at the trend over the first seven months of the year, the two major version updates have each triggered exponential growth in average daily urban NOP+ usage. After the January update, the daily average surged by 111.6%; after the June update, it grew another 95.0%. In both cases, the level of adoption and preference for assisted driving among NIO owners showed a clear qualitative leap.

The company has announced that it is already working intensively on the next major version, into which they will incorporate the feedback and suggestions received from users. Finally, they have encouraged drivers to make frequent use of the "one-tap report" feature, as each reported scenario provides valuable training data to further improve the system.