Nio Firefly review

Chinese EV specialist heads to the UK with an eye-catching supermini to rival the Renault 5

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What if Honda had stuck with the Honda E? It was a delightful piece of design and was great to drive, but it needed a bigger battery and a lower price. We will never know for sure, because the E is dead and buried, but the Nio Firefly might be a decent consolation prize.

This supermini is made by Nio, but Firefly is its own brand. There’s no model name, like when BMW relaunched the Mini: it’s simply the Firefly. It has been sold in Europe for a few months and is now confirmed to be coming to the UK in 2026.

And to my eyes, at least, it looks really cool. There’s a definite E vibe, but the triple lights on either side of the front and rear and the relatively big-wheeled stance mean that it’s distinctive and original enough to be its own thing.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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The technical run-down also reminds a little of both the E and the Mini. Nio wanted this to be a no-compromise upmarket small car for Europe, so it has not only multi-link rear suspension (which the Mini Cooper E and Renault 5 also have) but also rear-wheel drive.

Otherwise, it’s typically Chinese in that there’s very little technical detail available, although the fundamentals are pretty standard. 

The battery is a 41.2kWh LFP unit, which is on the small side, even for a car of this type. On the plus side, claimed rapid charging is decent, at 100kW. Unlike the bigger Nios, the Firefly won’t be able to have its battery swapped in minutes, but then it isn’t meant as a continent-crosser, and you could be waiting a long time for that infrastructure to be built in the UK anyway.

INTERIOR

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The exterior’s cheery design extends inside to a certain extent, with some playful colours and fabrics, although fundamentally the typical Chinese minimalism dominates. There’s not much to it other than a massive touchscreen, acres of beige and a steering wheel that’s an idiotic shape.

The seats are comfortable, though, with good support despite limited adjustment. Adults can just about sit in the back and there’s both a 348-litre boot and a 65-litre frunk. None of those things can be said of the Mini or the 5. Both of those are slightly smaller cars overall, it must be said.

I’d need to spend longer with the car for a full verdict, but the touchscreen interface seemed much better than in most Chinese cars as well. The cheery colours and bold graphics give it a visual identity of its own, as well as a sense of hierarchy to the menus. The home screen is well thought out, with customisable multi-functional tiles for things like navigation and media.

Where it still falls hard on its face is that you still need to press eleventy thousand different widgets to turn off all the bings and bongs. A ‘button’ marked ‘Mute driver assistance’ was promising but didn’t seem to do anything.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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With 141bhp, the Firefly is no performance car, but it feels peppy enough. There’s a range of regenerative braking settings, and most of them are nicely progressive, so it’s an easy car to drive smoothly.

I really enjoyed having rear-wheel drive in such a compact car, not because of any sideways antics but because it’s rare to find this kind of balance in this kind of car. In the Mini and the 5, you always expect to be fighting the steering a bit, but in the Firefly it’s nicely uncorrupted. While there isn’t much feel, there’s natural weighting and progression, and the car drives positively out of the corner on the power. You can get into a flow with it that’s particularly enjoyable.

At the top of the menu screen for the adaptive cruise control, there’s a graphic that shows the car being undertaken while it's slowing down for a car hogging the middle lane. This neatly exemplifies how ACC is turning our motorways into a lane-discipline-free hellscape.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

There are some rough edges, of course. The steering is a little bit twitchy around the straightahead and the stupid shape of the wheel doesn’t help anything. The Giti tyres that were on our test car had adequate grip in the dry but were of the squealing kind. And the ride isn't stellar either, getting quite busy over both small and large imperfections.

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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Over the course of my little sortie in it, the Firefly returned a very efficient 4.4mpkWh according to the trip computer, which stretches that slightly too-small battery to a usable range of 180 miles.

Even so, it really ought to have closer to 55kWh and 240 miles to be a realistic do-everything car, particularly when you consider the price.

It’s much to early for UK prices, but in the Netherlands it costs €30,000, or £26,400, with is bang on long-range 5 or Cooper SE money.

VERDICT

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The Chinese cars we’ve rated highly so far, such as the MG S5 EV and BYD Dolphin Surf, have been very worthy things that do a sensible job, sensibly, for sensible money. It’s rare to find a sense of joy and personality. The Firefly actually has that, both in its design and the way it drives.

Plenty of room of improvement too: is a round steering wheel and some buttons really too much to ask? But let’s focus on the joy for now and look forward to its arrival in the UK in right-hand-drive form.

Illya Verpraet

Illya Verpraet Road Tester Autocar
Title: Road Tester

As a road tester, Illya drives everything from superminis to supercars, and writes reviews and comparison tests, while also managing the magazine’s Drives section. Much of his time is spent wrangling the data logger and wielding the tape measure to gather the data for Autocar’s in-depth instrumented road tests.

He loves cars that are fun and usable on the road – whether piston-powered or electric – or just cars that are very fit for purpose. When not in test cars, he drives an R53-generation Mini Cooper S.