More than 10,000 ONVO L90 units have reportedly been prepared ahead of the official launch, while CEO William Li says first-month deliveries could exceed 7,000.
Shortly after the launch event for the Li Auto i8 concluded, at around 10:48 PM yesterday, NIO CEO William Li suddenly appeared in NIO’s core user WeChat group—known as the “Carbon Fan Group”—and responded to several pressing issues regarding the company.
Fierce Debate Over Li Auto
Before William Li’s appearance, core NIO users in the “Carbon Fan Group” were already locked in a heated discussion about the newly revealed pricing of Li Auto’s latest all-electric model, the Li Auto i8.
Why did this happen?
Because over the past few years, as two of the most prominent representatives of China’s new EV makers, NIO and Li Auto have fiercely competed on multiple levels, igniting intense debates between their respective fanbases across social media.
Their rivalry today is somewhat reminiscent of the longstanding competition between Mercedes-Benz and BMW in Germany. However, thanks to social media, such competition is now far more visible and intense.
In terms of general trends, NIO had long been viewed as the No. 1 among China’s emerging EV brands.
But thanks to its “extended-range technology,” more luxurious cabin configurations (often summarized in Chinese as “fridge, TV, and big sofa”), and its own emphasis on “greater efficiency,” Li Auto’s annual sales surpassed those of pure-electric-focused NIO in 2022. This lead further widened in 2023 and 2024.
However, as technology progressed, Li Auto recognized the importance of the pure EV route and, in March 2024, launched its first fully electric vehicle—the large MPV, Li MEGA.
Li Auto had pinned high hopes on the MEGA, even projecting monthly sales around 8,000 units, aiming to turn it into a symbolic blockbuster model.
But once launched, the MEGA’s market performance fell far short of expectations. The company quickly slashed its price by ¥30,000 ($4,200) to a starting point of ¥529,800 ($74,172). On November 21, 2024, the 10,000th MEGA rolled off the production line in Beijing, according to official sources.
In many respects, the MEGA’s failure is now regarded as Li Auto’s “Waterloo.”
Li Auto founder Li Xiang has, over the past year, repeatedly reflected on the company’s strategic misjudgment in the high-end pure EV market. As a result, the company postponed the release of two upcoming smart EVs—the i6 and i8. At the same time, Li Auto ramped up investment in building its proprietary ultra-fast charging network and in R&D for intelligent driving systems.
On the morning of July 29, 2025, at 11 AM—just before the i8’s launch event—Li Auto announced the opening of its 3,000th self-operated supercharging station. The official promotional materials emphasized two key messages: “Prepared for the launch of the Li Auto i8!” and “China’s No.1 Supercharging Network.”
For Li Auto, the i8 is their most important high-end pure EV product for 2025.
However, if we zoom out from Li Auto to the broader Chinese market, the segment that the i8 competes in—full-size six-seat electric SUVs—is already a battlefield.
Among the fiercest rivals is the upcoming ONVO L90, which is set to launch on July 31. In public discourse, it is viewed as the i8’s most formidable challenger. In recent months, fierce debates between fans and analysts over which model offers better value and competitiveness have already flared up multiple times.
Head-On Collision
The i8 launch event concluded around 9 PM last night. By 9:20 PM, screenshots had begun circulating widely on social media, stating that the ONVO L90’s top trim would cost no more than ¥320,000 ($44,800).
According to verification by ChinaEVhome, the news that L90’s top trim would stay under ¥320,000 ($44,800) came directly from the brand itself. Several users who had pre-ordered the L90 confirmed they had received private messages from ONVO’s sales reps.
This triggered a heated “mid-lane face-off”—a term borrowed from gaming—among NIO users in the “Carbon Fan Group,” with many users sharing social media posts in the group.
For example, the widely shared image above: On the left is William Li holding up NIO’s self-developed 5nm automotive-grade chip—Shenji NX 9031—giving a thumbs-up at a launch event. Some added a caption: “NIO self-developed chip.”
On the right is a screenshot from last night’s i8 launch, showing Li Auto founder Li Xiang holding a large foldable table removed from the i8, also giving a thumbs-up. A satirical caption read: “Li Auto’s self-developed premium walnut wood table board, rotates 360 degrees every two weeks, pre-sale price ¥1,699 ($237.86).”
This meme later evolved to include a photo of XPeng CEO He Xiaopeng holding up his company’s Turing chip at a press event.
Another example: screenshots of Li Auto’s falling stock price after the market opened that evening.
Yet another example: a screenshot of NIO Senior VP and ONVO President Shen Fei commenting on an i8 ad in the WeChat Moments: “Welcome to test drive the ONVO L90, both are great cars.”
William Li Drops a Bombshell
Let’s return to William Li’s sudden appearance in the chat group at 10:48 PM on July 29.
He posed a question: “How many units do you all think the L90 should deliver in its first month?”
Some said 15,000; others replied, “The more, the better”; one joked, “100,000—just hit the annual goal at once.”
Most users, however, expressed supportive comments like: “First shot must hit,” “Strike while the iron is hot,” “The whole village depends on it, don’t fumble the deliveries.”
Li responded casually, replying to the “the more, the better” comment: “That’s basically saying nothing—be realistic.”
Then, a user posted a screenshot from KIMI (an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT), showing that the current record for first-month deliveries of a new EV model from a Chinese brand was 7,058 units, set by the Xiaomi SU7 in April 2024.
The user tagged William Li and said: “Not sure if this is accurate, but we should at least beat that.”
Li then replied: “That target seems achievable.”
Over the course of about an hour of intermittent chatting, William Li revealed three more key updates:
- NIO will release NIT3 versions of the ES7 and ES9.
- NIO has no plans to launch an MPV model anytime soon. He explained, “You’ll understand why after seeing the Gen-3 ES8.”
The Gen-3 ES8 has already appeared on the MIIT website as a new model and will be officially unveiled in Q3 this year.
Key selling points of the Gen-3 ES8 revealed so far:
- Length: 5.28 meters, with a 3,130 mm wheelbase—claimed to be the largest in its class.
- Equipped with three LiDAR units and the flagship AQUILA super-sensing system.
- World’s first “900V ultra-fast swap-and-charge platform,” supporting up to 5C charging rates with peak power of 600 kW—enabling over 250 km of charge in 5 minutes or a full battery swap in 3 minutes.
- Dual-motor AWD system with a combined max output of 520 kW.
- NIO brand benefits cannot be transferred to the ONVO brand. William Li explained: “Transferring NIO benefits to ONVO—sorry, it just can’t be done. We’ve held numerous internal meetings on this. This year the company is operating under a basic business unit system. ONVO simply can’t afford to take on the cost of NIO perks. We encourage you to apply those benefits to new NIO purchases instead… We’ve crunched the numbers, but those benefits are actually worth a lot. ONVO can’t carry that burden.”
To clarify: what are “NIO benefits”? As the parent brand, NIO previously offered various user-bound perks to promote sales and enhance customer experience. The most notable of these is “lifetime free battery swap”, granted to early adopters.
Under the NIO brand, this benefit can be used during new purchases or offset by approximately ¥50,000 ($7,000) in cash discounts.
Since the launch of sub-brands like ONVO and Firefly, many users have urged NIO to allow these benefits to transfer across brands.
After Li’s comments last night, ONVO President Shen Fei responded quickly. At 11:35 PM, he reposted and commented on Weibo: “How could I not want to cover the cost—but we gotta be able to afford it… There’s a saying: ‘A poor kid grows up fast.’ Gotta remind myself that.”
How many units do you think the ONVO L90 can deliver in its first month?
Discover more from ChinaEVHome
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
