NIO Launches Third Brand, Firefly Butterfly, at "NIO Day 2024"

On December 21, NIO held its annual "NIO Day 2024" event, marking the official launch of its third brand, Firefly Butterfly. Scheduled to begin production imminently, the Firefly Butterfly is still shrouded in secrecy, leaving enthusiasts speculating on its design for now.

While details are likely to differ from the speculative renders shared by the automotive media outlets, we can expect something remarkable and futuristic when unveiled officially at a later event.

In an interview conducted earlier this year, Lee Bin mentioned that "self-luminescent" embodies the brand's spirit – an intelligent electric luxury compact vehicle brand. The Firefly Butterfly logo represents a flying light insect dancing in mid-air – full of energy, playful, agile, and full-fledged. As its global mark, firefly butterfly will be positioned to expand globally with Europe/South America/East Asia being targeted with differing sales strategies across each region.

"From left-to-right steering wheel alone, powertrain and the configuration will also have some differences in different regions," said an official from NIO. "It's worth noticing that as compared to Levedo and Oura, the new brand for ourselves has a distinct personality - 'I love myself'."

Following their unique value proposition, levo car is still focusing on electric motor technology; love car also uses advanced semi-active suspension system in recent years; new firefly butterfly targets on the young who would make choices about individuality and self-expression. According to insiders of NIO, with such a color palette available for Firefly cars - perhaps similar with what MINI and smart brands enjoy, it could bring more possibilities.

While official prices still unclear due to a new battery leasing service released recently by company, sources point towards pricing between 15ousandRMB/10 thousand yuan, or even better compared to the latest news about smart pure electric vehicle.

"We can call it 'less-MINI but more-smart than MINI'. That's from the car-size, interaction technology and overall driving experience. I truly believe there are many surprises waiting in store," said the NIO president during a recent press meeting.

In addition, as firefly butterfly becomes an entity of itself from levo, swapping battery will become much easier due to dedicated charging station designed just for it; this could take place within 10-15 minute swap. For long-distance travels and highway drives, however, we must still have the power and energy. Given that, there is a need for greater emphasis on energy storage.

"We can safely say Firefly Butterfly are created particularly with urban use in our sights - and so as such, electric capacities of those cars should be much smaller. Compared to Oura's battery capacity currently, they'd be less efficient. As long-time NIO official believes that each battery SKU introduced into existing service system might really impact charging station efficiency entirely," said the same executive.

The latest news from levo also revealed that firefly butterfly now launched a brand new mobile app for car user experience – not just a simple registration and notification platform but sharing community & interactive sharing features as well.

Furthermore, NIO has set an ambition to create its own sales distribution network which can be implemented by their new firefly Butterfly after they have been put on sales starting from mid of 2025.