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NIO’s recent sales growth has continued in 2026. After a long period of slow growth, in August of last year, NIO’s sales jumped up tremendously. Then sales continued to growth throughout the rest of the year. But what about January, with other Chinese EV makers struggling to get rolling this year to the same level as in 2025?
Well, NIO jumped into 2026 banging!
The company had 27,182 deliveries in January 2026, up 96.1% compared to January 2025, when the company had 13,863 deliveries. Looking at the numbers by brand, this is how those 27,182 deliveries split out:
- NIO — 20,894
- ONVO — 3,481
- FIREFLY — 2,807
NIO also reached 1,024,774 cumulative deliveries by the end of January. As I reported in the first week of January, the company reached the 1 million vehicle milestone at the beginning of the month.
In addition to the sales update, NIO summarized some tech updates the company has implemented this year. “On January 28, 2026, NIO rolled out the latest version of the NIO WorldModel (NWM), which has been gradually delivered to over 460,000 vehicles equipped with the Banyan system, with updates for vehicles running the Cedar and Cedar S systems to follow. The release introduced full closed-loop reinforcement learning into assisted and intelligent driving, with the upgraded architecture comprehensively modeling both urban and highway driving scenarios to improve assisted and intelligent driving experience. In addition, smart parking and active safety features have been further optimized for smoother performance and improved user experience.”
With huge growth continuing in 2026, what can we expect from 2026? It reached 326,028 vehicle sales in 2025. Could it rise to 400,000, or even 500,000, in 2026? We shall see.
Wrapping up, I’ve long found it interesting how much XPENG and NIO have achieved similar sales growth quarter after quarter, or year after year. One of them will rise up a bit quicker and sooner, but then the other isn’t far behind and is capable of leapfrogging them. After trailing XPENG for a while, NIO is trying to retake the #1 spot. It is off to a good start this year, but can it hold onto that position?
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