The new ES6 show cars became available at nearly 300 Nio stores in 92 cities as of May 20.

(Image credit: Nio)

Nio (NYSE: NIO) has made the new ES6 show cars available in most of its stores in China, just days before the model's official launch.

The new ES6 became available in nearly 300 Nio stores in 92 cities on May 20, the electric vehicle company announced yesterday.

Those cities include both first-tier Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and smaller cities, including Zhoushan, Handan and Nanning.

Nio's showrooms include the flagship Nio Houses as well as smaller Nio Spaces, and as of April 30 they numbered 110 and 270 in China, respectively, according to data it released on May 1.

The company has four Nio Houses as well as six Nio Spaces in Europe.

Nio will hold the launch of the new ES6 on May 24 starting at 7:00 pm Beijing time (7:00 am US Eastern time on May 24), and viewers will be able to watch a live video stream on channels including the Nio App, Nio.com, and Nio Weibo.

Test drives of the new ES6 will be available on May 24, and its delivery will begin on May 25, according to information previously announced by Nio.

This will be Nio's fastest model from official launch to delivery, as its local peers, including Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI), have proven that efficient delivery is critical to success in the highly competitive Chinese EV market.

Nio launched the first-generation ES6 in December 2018 and began delivering the model in China in June 2019.

Available data for 2022 show that from January to August, 32,877 ES6 units were delivered, contributing 46 percent of Nio's total deliveries of 71,556 units for the period.

The wait for the new ES6 by potential consumers may be one of the major reasons for Nio's low deliveries in the past few months.

Nio delivered 6,658 vehicles in April, which was up 31.22 percent from 5,074 in the same month last year, but down 35.85 percent from 10,378 in March.

In April, most deliveries were attributed to the ET5 and ES7, while Nio has been upgrading its product from NT 1.0 to NT2.0, it said on May 1.

NIO pins high hopes on new ES6 with unprecedented delivery efficiency and marketing campaign