Why does the new Onvo L60 offer more features without a price hike? Li Bin directly answers 8 major questions

Hello everyone, I am the editor from Electric Vehicle Commune.

Not long ago, the 2026 model Onvo L60 officially launched.

Compared to the old model, not only is the starting price reduced by as much as 14,000 yuan, but it also brings up to 106 comprehensive upgrades.

Including Max+ and Ultra+ versions, it is the first time equipped with NIO self-developed 5nm smart driving chip Shenji NX9031, aiming directly at NIO flagship Series 9. At its launch event, smart driving with zero handover traversed a very narrow natural cave, the promotional effect can be said to be fully maximized.

At the same time, new configurations include a 17.3-inch rear foldable entertainment screen, new small table boards on rear seats, intelligent driving small blue lights on exterior rearview mirrors, as well as more extreme vehicle lightweighting, lower energy consumption, more comfortable driving quality, etc.

In summary, this round of upgrades for the new Onvo L60 is completely more value without price increase. In today's environment where supply chain costs have generally surged significantly, achieving this is enough to show Onvo's sincerity.

The day after the press conference, Onvo organized an internal communication meeting for media face-to-face. NIO Founder and CEO Li Bin and Onvo President Shen Fei participated in the group interview. The editor had the honor to attend this meeting. Based on the meeting content, 8 major questions and answers were summarized to share with everyone:

Q1: Yesterday, NIO just participated in setting the battery swap standard for Singapore. How do you view the future market prospects of battery swap overseas?

Li Bin: We already have over 60 battery swap stations in Europe, mainly in 5 Nordic countries. Germany and a few Nordic countries already have over 60, including over 20 in Norway. For the Singapore market, Firefly is already selling there. We, like with European countries or Singapore, have been having very active exchanges with relevant departments regarding battery swap station standards.

At that time when Shen Fei was still responsible for NIO Energy, we started pushing battery swap standards with relevant national departments very early, we participated in many standards. We are definitely going all out to promote the standardization of battery swaps, not only domestically but also internationally, because it really solves many routes where EVs can only charge but not swap now, it solves many problems like vehicle and battery having different lifespans, etc.

Q2: At this point in time, how do you view the market prospects for powertrain forms such as BEV/EREV/PHEV/ICE?

Li Bin: The latest market data in this industry shows ICE vehicles dropped by over 40%. The whole market is challenging, but relatively speaking, BEV is still growing. Shen Fei just spoke about our user sources. BBA, joint venture ICE share, NIO system user repurchase share, together add up to about 85%. That means new purchases are relatively few. The whole market has entered an existing stock era. Many families have more than one car. True new purchases have become fewer, most are trade-ins.

From a user perspective, in previous years because infrastructure was not developed enough, charging and swapping conditions were not that good. At that time, choosing EREV or PHEV was reasonable. Today I believe users starting to choose BEV or smart EVs, I think this is a matter of things developing naturally.

This is why everyone sees that although the total car market volume decreased by about 20% year-on-year for January-May this year, BEV overall is still growing. Especially in May, ICE dropped by 40%, but BEV is still growing, deeply reflecting the car market has entered an existing stock era. Incremental purchase, repurchase, trade-in have become mainstream. Under this situation, the smart EV BEV technical route, I believe will definitely get more user choices.

Q3: How do you view the competition pressure in the second half of the year?

Li Bin: I think the pressure is okay, because every car of ours has strong competitiveness. Like Onvo L60 was released in 2024, today it still has very strong competitiveness. We still have confidence in the leadership of technology. These cars we recently released, I believe within a relatively long time, they will still have very strong competitiveness.

Like our ET7 released in 2022, today our smart driving is still continuously improving, still very competitive. Its hardware capabilities haven't been fully explored. In technology layout we have always been slightly ahead. We are still very confident in the competitiveness of future products in the market. Do we worry that if no new cars in second half orders will be bad? No. For us, it instead allows us to sell cars down-to-earth, serve users down-to-earth. Firefly is a good example. Firefly order wait cycle has become longer again. More than a year since launch, some small iterations in between, not particularly big iterations, but now Firefly orders again need to wait a month.

Q4: The cave smart driving effect of Onvo L60 is very explosive, how does it compare to Tesla FSD level currently?

Li Bin: I haven't experienced the latest version of Tesla FSD yet. If officially released I will go experience and learn from them. Of course Tesla's smart driving, including its model and computing power in many aspects are definitely very leading, many things worthy of our learning. But we NIO from self-developed chips to sensors, to the whole world model + reinforcement learning route, I believe everyone has seen our capabilities. Yesterday through the very narrow cave traversal let everyone see we possess such capabilities. Of course subsequently there are still many tasks to do. Like this year we will also increase investment in computing power, train the data in our data closed loop, continuously improve our entire smart driving experience ceiling. We are still very confident in our continuous progress subsequently.

Of course smart driving now indeed fully reflects each company's comprehensive technical capabilities. This chase and catch situation is also good. Hope everyone also experiences it. Also experience our new Onvo L60 smart driving, including NIO smart driving. I believe compared to peers, we are still very confident its experience is very good.

Q5: Currently automotive-grade memory prices are rising significantly, how much impact has this had on overall vehicle cost?

Li Bin: This round of price hikes has a big impact. Taking Onvo as an example, cost per car rose by over 10,000 yuan. If calculated to final selling price including tax increases etc., the impact on selling price is around 15,000. This includes non-chip parts. Like battery raw material lithium price also rose a lot. So this year indeed cost pressure is very big.

Q6: Where do Onvo users come from respectively?

Li Bin: Now coming from BBA, and traditional luxury brand users account for about 35% of our users. Joint venture ICE vehicle users account for 30%. Also previous new energy vehicle repurchases, especially early BEV repurchases, also include EREV trade-ins, about 10%. Others come from other sources, also including some new purchases and other users.

Q1 Onvo average selling price is 240,000 yuan, slightly higher than some traditional luxury brands. So Onvo is indeed a high-quality brand for families. If everyone looks, yesterday new Onvo L60 main selling version Max+ starting price is 202,800 yuan. Looked at last night's order situation, over 90% are our Max+ and Ultra+, over 90% chose our Coconut+, Shenji NX9031+ LiDAR versions. Onvo as layout for 200,000-300,000 yuan interval products, brand positioning is still quite fitting for our target users and their consumption trends.

Q7: How to view the increasingly popular BYD Flash Charge? Will it impact battery swapping?

Li Bin: We are very happy to see more and more auto companies investing in charging/swapping infrastructure. Flash Charge coming out is quite good, gave good impetus to the whole industry, let more focus on infrastructure investment, no longer simply relying on public charging piles.

NIO has always done this most resolutely. Actually NIO in charging pile construction aspect is also very proactive. We have always been chargeable, swappable, upgradeable. Of course our construction thinking has differences with others. We now already have 86 charging scenic routes. Build charging piles where others are unwilling to build. Earliest Inner Mongolia highway, Jilin highway charging piles, were all built by us first. Our starting point very simple. Where our users go, if there is no infrastructure, at least need guarantee. We earliest had mobile charging vehicles. Of course now dispatch rate is lower and lower, mainly for rescue. Like Xinjiang, Tibet some very remote places still need such an emergency means.

I also want to emphasize, swap and charge are not oppositional. This point very important. We never put charge and swap in opposition. We early on had such requirement, that users no matter at home or work, as long as can install charging pile, we definitely help install it. So our user charging pile installation ratio in industry definitely is top tier, because we have our own national energy service team, pushing more efficiently. Underlying thinking also simple. Because this way experience is best. You at home able to install charging pile, charge at night, go to work day charge, that is best experience. So this is our starting point.

Our swap entire process no need to get off car, experience still better. Including swap stations indeed have some other dimension values.

First is can thoroughly solve vehicle battery different lifespan problem. Decouple car and battery. For user interests and social interests long term is beneficial. Buy a battery not only look short term experience, need see 8 years, 10 years, even 15 years. It not say reached this time car must be scrapped. So put vehicle battery different lifespan, through swap system solve. I think very important. We inside swap stations will intelligently target every battery to give best charging strategy. This for battery lifespan very important. So we through operation extend lifespan, basically every battery lifespan, through operation extend lifespan can improve see 1.5 years or more. At least improve 1.5 years. Compared to its conventional lifespan, these are very big advantages.

Second is energy attribute. Swap station itself is a natural energy storage facility. We over 3,900 swap stations, equivalent to 7GW/h energy storage. In China more and more electricity is new energy generation background its value will gradually reflect. We already have many swap stations participated in grid response. Every day do energy storage things. These as energy infrastructure efficiency is very high.

So overall, supercharge, flash charge and swap are not oppositional. Swap indeed can solve many problems flash charge cannot solve. What everyone sees now is fast is shallow fast. Fast charge thing actually to certain speed and time after, your marginal benefit is not that big. And like I said, sometimes slow is okay. Charge home slow is slow, or work building down side charge conveniently. After reach certain rate marginal benefit lowers. More important is just spoke, it for vehicle battery different lifespan solution significance. For battery lifespan, safety significance. Also energy efficiency. As distributed energy storage facility new power system part of revenue. This thing hard to use charge to solve.

Q8: How to view more and more brands releasing smart driving chips? What specific advantages do self-developed chips have?

Li Bin: If from making a smart driving chip angle speak many ways. Let others help define design, this is not any difficulty. Industry many people doing. But important is this chip not that chip. Like a car you find engineering design company to make, or through yourself full stack self-develop, this involves your enterprise own complete engineering capability. Many core parts need self-develop. Investment bigger, difficulty bigger.

NIO Shenji NX9031 team has over 600 people. From front end to back end, complete a design capability. To build this capability still very not easy. Compared to us simply define good parameters let others do method difference still very very big. Including smart driving chips also not simple compare one point. Need from 3 dimensions or 4 dimensions evaluate its performance. Inference compute power is one aspect. Second is memory bandwidth. This for supporting model size and including model running speed very important. Our memory bandwidth compared to industry actually basically is their 2 times. Third is multi-modal signal processing capability. This is a need particularly detailed do work. We in many occasions demonstrated. Yesterday for cave crossing why can have so good performance, with this also has relation.

Smart driving foundation is vision. Cannot only look good light time. Many scenes light not good. This tests you truly can good handle. Also when have chip redundancy backup, need achieve millisecond level hot switch. Two chips between chip interconnect its interface and capability very strong. Can achieve millisecond hot cut. This for future L4, L3 level smart driving very important.