Nio Firefly News

Chinese maker Nio is inching closer to launching its breakthrough EV Down Under.

Another cheap and cheerful Chinese electric car is headed our way.The Nio Firefly has been approved for sale in Australia by the federal regulator, which paves the way for the mini EV to land on our roads in the coming months.The Nio Firefly is a small hatchback measuring about four metres long, 1780mm wide and 1560mm high. This makes it slightly smaller than the BYD Dolphin and MG4 and a similar size to a Mazda2.It has cute retro styling reminiscent of the short-lived Honda e.The approval documents show two variants will be offered in Australia.Power comes from a single electric motor that makes 105kW and 200Nm, which is fed by a circa-42kWh Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) battery that provides a driving range of up to 330km via the benchmark WLTP test cycle.Its uses 14.5kWh/100km and offers 100kW DC charging for a 10 - 80 per cent charge in 29 minutes as well as either 7.0kW or 11kW AC charging with a vehicle-to-load (V2L) feature.The Firefly is also compatible with Nio’s battery swap technology. This allows owners to simply swap the battery when it has run low instead of recharging it. Nio claims this can take about five minutes, which is similar to refilling a petrol or diesel vehicle.No such battery swap stations currently exist in Australia, though.There is no word on how much it will cost or where and how it will be sold, with no news on a distributor or dealer network.In China it is priced the equivalent of about $32,000, which puts it on target to land here at less than $40,000.The writing was on the wall for the Firefly's local arrival when Nio announced it planned to expand to Europe and fellow right-hand drive markets Singapore and the UK.The right-hand drive version of the brand-new hatchback is expected to launch in October of 2025, according to overseas reports. This likely includes Australia now as the sale approval usually happens several months before cars land in showrooms.Homologation details published by the federal government hint that the Nio operation will be factory-backed with approval holders and contact details attributed to the head office in Shanghai, China.So this points to Nio following a similar route to brands such as Chery and Geely and launch via multi-franchise dealerships in capital cities.CarsGuide has contacted Nio's global operations for more Australian details, and will update the story with its response.