The NIO Niu Wu at Shanghai Xinguang Taikoo Hui will close on the 31st of this month; executives previously said, “When some automakers leave malls, it’s more a financial decision.”

Recently, a blogger posted on social media claiming that NIO House (hereinafter referred to as “Niu Wu”) at the Shanghai Xinguang Taikoo Hui will officially close on August 31.
Under the relevant search entries, other netizens also shared their check-in experiences.
According to a report by Jiemian News, on November 25, 2017, NIO set up its first Niu Wu at No. 1 Dong Chang’an Avenue in Beijing. However, the Niu Wu at Shanghai Xinguang Taikoo Hui was actually the first center planned by Li Bin to open. The Xinguang Taikoo Hui Niu Wu selected its location in January 2017 and officially opened on May 26, 2018.
According to the definition of Niu Wu on NIO’s official website, “from the day it was established, it has been our way of creating a life-style community for users to share joy and grow together.”
Niuwu is positioned to provide users with a “third space” that combines functions such as showrooms, offices, leisure, and socializing. This space includes shared offices, a reading area, a specialty drinks bar, and other functional zones, complementing the NIO Space, which focuses on sales.
NIO’s official website shows that there are currently 167 Niuwu locations worldwide.
Although some NIO owners expressed reluctance to part with the Tai Koo Hui Niuwu, which has been around for eight years, some netizens believed this is one of NIO’s measures to reduce costs.
According to Blue Whale News, in May 2025, the Niuwu at Zhenhua Plaza in Hohhot closed.
In September 2025, NIO closed two Niuwu locations in Guangzhou—Zhujiang New Town and Meihua Garden. The Niuwu at LeFeng in Guangzhou was adjusted to become an NIO Space.
The Niuwu in Guangzhou’s Zhujiang New Town is NIO’s first NIO Center in South China and also NIO’s fourth NIO Center nationwide. In a post on NIO’s official WeChat account in January 2018, NIO stated that the opening of this NIO Center marked NIO’s entry into the South China region.
In September 2025, the Niuwu store in Jinan’s Kuanghouli closed.
According to a report by Xin Huanghe, industry insiders analyze that the core reason behind the closure of NIO Centers is that they “figured out the economic numbers.” As a high-end lifestyle space built by NIO, “Niuwu” not only needs to shoulder the high rent in major commercial districts, but also must invest in manpower and supplies to maintain diversified services such as shared offices and a specialty drinks bar, resulting in persistently high operating costs. At the same time, in the initial planning, some areas were covered too densely. Data shows that the annual operating cost of Niuwu stores in first-tier cities exceeds 20 million RMB, which is three times that of traditional 4S dealerships.
In August this year, in an interview with Blue Whale News, Wang Tai, General Manager of NIO’s Guangzhou regional company, said:
“When some automakers withdraw from malls, I think it’s mostly because people make choices based on financial considerations, since mall costs are usually higher. But once the car brand enters a period of clarification, consumers’ choices of brands may gradually return to the logic of the past 20 years in the auto industry: think of the brand first, then think of the function.”
“So NIO still decides its channel layout based on its own positioning and industry development. We are not particularly fixated on whether to withdraw from malls or enter 4S stores. We are not overly constrained by the commercial choice itself; we make decisions according to our own logic and development stage.”
On April 11, at the High-Level Forum on Intelligent Electric Vehicle Development, Li Bin, Chairman and CEO of NIO, said that the intelligent electric vehicle industry as a whole is currently developing well, but while it is expanding rapidly, profit pressures are becoming a common challenge.
Li Bin pointed out that “not increasing revenue or profits despite increasing volume” is one of the prominent contradictions in the industry today. Beyond market competition, the governance efforts aimed at “putting an end to pointless internal competition” are gradually showing results, which is positively significant for restoring industry order.
(Compiled by Observer.com based on Blue Whale News, Jiemian News, and Xin Huanghe)