Shanghai-headquartered NIO (NYSE: NIO) ranked as the top-selling brand in its home-city passenger car market in the first quarter of 2026, founder, chairman and CEO William Li told employees during an April 16 internal meeting.

The disclosure, surfaced by domestic automotive media on April 18, places the brand ahead of Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), BMW and Xiaomi in one of China's most fiercely contested auto markets.

Shanghai has long been Tesla's Chinese heartland. The U.S. automaker's Lingang gigafactory produces the Model Y and Model 3 for both domestic and export customers, and Tesla had led the city's new-energy registrations for much of the past five years.

German premium brands BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi have additionally dominated Shanghai's luxury segment, and Xiaomi's SU7 has surged up local sales charts since its 2024 debut.

Li separately said in an earlier dialogue that NIO's total Shanghai sales had exceeded BMW's for several consecutive months, counting both battery-electric and combustion models, and the company tracks an internal "NIO-BMW Index" to benchmark the gap.

NIO also claimed the No. 1 passenger car position in its Anhui hometown of Hefei for the quarter — a dual-city milestone for a brand that shipped roughly 222,000 units globally in 2025.

NIO Group's nationwide Q1 deliveries reached 83,465 vehicles, a 98.3% year-on-year jump that topped the upper end of the 80,000–83,000 guidance range by nearly 500 units. The core NIO brand accounted for 58,543 units, while family-oriented Onvo and compact Firefly contributed the balance.

March alone posted 35,486 deliveries, up 136% year-on-year, with the NIO brand at 22,490, Onvo at 6,877 and Firefly at 6,119. The third-generation ES8, launched in September 2025, drove most of that growth. The large SUV has topped its segment for four consecutive months and hit 80,000 cumulative deliveries in just 181 days.

NIO's Shanghai result contrasts with pressure elsewhere. Tesla's China retail sales fell 16% year-on-year in Q1 2026, plunging 24% in March alone, and domestic delivery waits shrank to one to three weeks.

Xiaomi Auto crossed about 79,000 Q1 deliveries and has set a full-year target of 550,000. Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI) reached 95,142, while BYD (HKG: 1211) remained China's overall NEV volume leader at 700,463 Q1 units, though its domestic retail sales softened.

The all-new ES9, a full-size three-row electric SUV aimed at the above-500,000 CNY (c. $73,300) luxury bracket, opened pre-sales on April 9. The car sits on NIO's third-generation pure-electric platform, uses the in-house 5nm NX9031 driving chip and claims 620 km (385 miles) of CLTC range.

NIO plans to officially launch the vehicle in late May, with customer deliveries starting June 1. A refreshed Onvo L80 five-seat family SUV is slated for the same quarter.

Li told employees Q2 would be tougher across the industry, citing continued year-on-year declines in overall passenger-car sales since April, per China Passenger Car Association data. He positioned the ES9 and Onvo L80 as the company's two levers for sustaining momentum. Non-vehicle revenue — including battery-swap services and insurance — generated roughly 10 billion CNY (c. $1.47 billion) in 2025.

NIO is targeting 456,000–489,000 deliveries for 2026, implying 40%–50% growth, and is aiming for full-year non-GAAP profitability after posting its first quarterly GAAP operating profit in Q4 2025. Q1 revenue growth is expected to significantly outpace delivery growth as higher-priced models take a larger share of the mix, Li said.

Will NIO's grip on its two hometown markets prove durable as Tesla prepares a refreshed China lineup and Xiaomi scales its factories toward its half-million target?

Conversion rate: 1 USD = 6.8224 CNY as of April 17, 2026