Source: NIO

On August 22 at a media group interview with NIO President Qin Lihong and CEO William Li, both were asked about the current state of pre-orders of the newly launched 3rd gen NIO ES8.

Qin Lihong answered by first prefacing that the company does not announce unaudited order numbers, but “just by looking at the order flow by the hour, the number of ES8 pre-orders have exceeded that of the Onvo L90 at launch”. Note that the Q&A session was held about 12 hours after the ES8 launch.

Source: NIO

The all-new NIO ES8 will be offered in three trims with a standard 102 kWh battery, starting at 416,800 yuan for both the 6-seat Executive Luxury and the 7-seat Executive Luxury editions and 456,800 yuan for the 6-seat Executive Signature edition.

With BaaS plan, these prices drop to 308,800 yuan and 348,800 yuan, respectively, lower than the starting price 339,000 yuan of the new 6-seat SUV Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) Model Y L.

The Onvo L90 was launched on July 31, 2025 and began deliveries the next day on August 1 for the six-seat version with the seven-seat coming late September.

Both 6/7 seat versions of the L90 come in three trims, Pro, Max, Ultra, with the 6-seater priced at 265,800 yuan, 279,800 yuan, and 299,800 yuan, respectively and the 7-seater coming at 6,000 yuan more expensive on the Max and Ultra trims.

With Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) plan, the L90 with an 85 kWh starts at just 193,800 yuan with monthly rental payments of 899 yuan. That rental payment can be further lowered to 599 yuan if the buyer opts in for the smaller 60 kWh battery pack. In other words, BaaS plan can reduce upfront price by 72,000 yuan for the 85 kWh Onvo L90.

Source: Onvo

Onvo has delivered 2,331 units through last week (August 11-17) for an estimated cumulative total of 6,404 units since August 1 start of deliveries.

The Onvo L90’s sales ranked second last week among all NEV large SUV in China, trailing only the BEV/EREV Huawei-backed AITO M8.

The 102 kWh 3rd gen NIO ES8 will start at 416,800 yuan with the battery, or 136,900 yuan more expensive than the Onvo L90. With BaaS plan, that price drops by 108,000 yuan to 308,800 yuan.

That starting price of 416,800 yuan is particularly competitive when considering that the 2nd gen 75 kWh NIO ES8 starting price was 498,000 yuan including the battery and 428,000 yuan under the BaaS plan.

In other words, the all-new ES8 with the 102 kWh battery included is cheaper than the NT2.0 ES8 with 75 kWh battery under the battery rental plan.

The larger 100 kWh 2nd gen ES8 came at 536,000 yuan, or roughly 120,000 yuan more expensive than the new ES8.

Deutsche Bank analyst released a research note that it anticipates monthly average deliveries to be at 3,000 units for the 3rd-gen ES8 based on the competitive pricing.

NIO has only managed to sell over 3,000 ES8 twice through almost 7 years since it was first delivered to customers, but the early launch momentum vis-a-vis the Onvo L90 leaves room for optimism.

Morgan Stanley’s equity analyst Tim Hsiao stated that Onvo had secured between 30,000 and 35,000 pre-orders through its first four days of launch.

Onvo President Shenfei made an internal target to deliver in excess of 10,000 L90 in August and management has confirmed having delivered over 7,000 units already through August 1-21.

However, NIO has not announced a first month delivery target, especially as it plans to start deliveries toward the end of September, leaving fewer days for vehicle deliveries as opposed to Onvo starting on August 1.

While the company does not officially release delivery figures, the 3rd gen ES8 will likely continue to draw comparisons with the L90’s pre-order and delivery traction.