Quick Read
Nio (NIO) delivered 87,071 vehicles, up 40.8%, with $3.06B revenue (+16.7%) and a $488.9M net loss. Li Auto (LI) delivered 93,211 units, down 39%, revenue fell 36.2% to $3.96B, with 16.3% gross margin. Nio pursues volume growth through multi-brand expansion while Li Auto rebuilds around BEV technology and autonomous driving after moving away from extended-range vehicles.
Nio (NYSE: NIO) and Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI) both just reported Q3 2025 earnings, and the results could not look more different. Nio is accelerating with a multi-brand push driving volume up sharply. Li Auto is shrinking through a deliberate transition away from the extended-range vehicles that made it famous. Same market, opposite trajectories.
Volume Surge Meets Volume Collapse
Nio delivered 87,071 vehicles in Q3, up 40.8% year over year, powered by three brands. The premium NIO badge moved 36,928 units, mass-market ONVO contributed 37,656, and the newly launched FIREFLY added 12,487. CEO William Bin Li called out the ONVO L90 as the top-selling large BEV SUV for three consecutive months.
Li Auto delivered 93,211 units, down 39% year over year. A recall on the Li MEGA MPV dragged gross margin down by roughly 4.3 percentage points, turning what would have been a 20%-plus margin quarter into a 16.3% reported gross margin. Revenue fell 36.2% to $3.96 billion. The numbers look bad, but context matters.
Metric
Nio Q3 2025
Li Auto Q3 2025
Revenue
$3.06B (+16.7% YoY)
$3.96B (-36.2% YoY)
Deliveries
87,071 (+40.8%)
93,211 (-39.0%)
Gross Margin
13.9%
16.3% (adj. 20.4%)
Net Loss
-$488.9M
-$90.3M
Cash
$5.1B
$7.39B
One Is Spreading Out. The Other Is Rebuilding From the Core.
Nio’s strategy is horizontal expansion: three brands, three price tiers, one battery-swap infrastructure underneath all of it. The risk is execution complexity. Running three brands while burning nearly $489 million in a single quarter demands capital discipline. Nio’s Q4 guidance calls for 120,000 to 125,000 deliveries, up 65% to 72% year over year, which would be a new quarterly record. The ambition is real. So is the cash burn.
Li Auto is going vertical on technology. The VLA Driver autonomous driving model hit a 91% monthly usage rate in October, a strong adoption figure for any in-car AI system. Combined orders for the Li i8 and Li i6 BEV SUVs exceeded 100,000. Li Auto is betting that when this BEV transition completes, it emerges with better technology and stronger margins than rivals who never had the EREV foundation to fund the pivot.
What the Next Two Quarters Will Reveal
For Nio, the Q4 delivery ramp is the key story. Can supply chain partners support 120,000-plus units while maintaining the 13.9% gross margin gross margin Nio just achieved, its highest in three years? Any slippage on either front resets the narrative fast.
For Li Auto, BEV order conversion rates are what matter. Orders exceeding 100,000 combined is encouraging, but Q4 guidance still calls for 100,000 to 110,000 deliveries, down 31% to 37% year over year. The transition pain is not over.
Two Very Different Bets
Nio at $4.94 per share is a volume story with a liquidity asterisk. Li Auto at $17.83 is a transition story with a stronger cash cushion and a real AI differentiation angle. Li Auto’s $7.39 billion cash position and improving BEV pipeline provide a larger financial buffer as the BEV transition continues through 2026. Both companies face meaningful execution risk in the quarters ahead.
