HEFEI, CHINA – MAY 25: Chinese EV maker Nio officially launches refreshed versions of its ET5 sedan on May 25, 2025 in Hefei, Anhui Province of China. Nio officially launched the updated ET5 sedan and ET5T wagon, with an unchanged starting price but bringing multiple feature upgrades. (Photo by Zhang Dagang/VCG via Getty Images)
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From China’s electric carmaker giant BYD to startup Nio, the latest reports for August show EV demand rebounded after a slump earlier in the summer amid a fierce price war.
BYD announced it shipped 371,501 units in August, nearly 22% growth from a year ago.
Meanwhile, Nio, Leapmotor, and Xpeng set new delivery records after launching models with wallet-friendly price tags, that started deliveries from end July to end August.
Nio — which debuted a new model in August — set a new record with 31,305 shipments in the same month, exceeding the 20,000 range clocked for four straight months, with a slight decline in July.
The August spike is owed in large part to its sub-brand, Onvo, which made 16,434 deliveries in August compared to a mere 5,976 in July. That also marks Onvo’s first month of delivery in the five-digit range.
Under its family-oriented brand Onvo, the EV startup launched a new SUV model, the L90, that began its six-seater variation deliveries on Aug. 1. The seven-seater version is scheduled for deliveries in late September.
Shares of Nio also popped on the launch of its namesake brand’s SUV, the ES8 —priced from 308,800 yuan ($43,305) onwards— for pre-order with deliveries also scheduled in late September.
Similarly, Leapmotor set an all-time high record of 57,066 deliveries in August on the sales of its new model, the B01, which launched on July 24. That’s an 88% increase year over year and higher than July’s 50,129 deliveries.
The surge in Leapmotor’s sales was partly due to the success of the B01 model, that sold more than 10,000 units within the first month of its launch and the buzz garnered from a new color release of the B10 model.
The latest sales figure marks the largest jump since March this year, when deliveries of the Stellantis-backed EV maker spiked from 25,287 in February to 37,095 in March.
Similarly, Xpeng recorded a new monthly high of 37,709 deliveries in August on its new P7 model which launched sales from Aug. 28. The new model was competitively priced from 219,800 yuan onwards, making it one of the lowest priced EVs in the market.
Xiaomi maintained its delivery range in August with over 30,000 deliveries, after notching its first delivery surge since March following the rollout of the YU7 SUV in July. The EV carmaker did not report the exact numbers.
Other EV makers rebounded only slightly for the month. Following deliveries that plateaued from June to July, Geely-owned Zeekr, recorded 17,626 sales in August, a marginal climb from the 16,977 units in July.
Controversy drags sales
Meanwhile, Li Auto clocked its third continuous month of decline with 28,529 deliveries in August, down from 30,731 units in the previous month, despite launching a competitively-priced model, Li i8, on July 29.
The company came under fire in August for a video of a collision test between the Li i8 and a truck from Dongfeng Liuzhou, another automobile company, which some netizens claimed had unfair test conditions.
Though Li Auto initially defended their calculated and controversial marketing tactic, they later apologized to the truck company.
The August decline was marginal compared to the last two months, but it could signal a broader disapproval against the EV price war.
Huawei-backed Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance —which includes brands such as Aito, Chery, and Maextro— also saw lower car deliveries at 44,579 units in August, compared to 47,752 in July. The company did not attribute or break down its deliveries according to any particular brands or models.
