What It Was Like Road-Tripping China’s $11,000 ‘Firefly’ Electric Car

In China there’s a cool new electric hatchback called the Firefly. It’s rear-wheel drive, makes 143 hp, and will go 261-miles on a charge. In China, it costs 79.800 yuan or $11K. Yes, that’s 11.000 USD. I had a chance to test the dirt-cheap little machine; here’s what I thought.

Firefly kindly provided a car for me for a full day, dropping the vehicle off and picking it up at my doorstep in Beijing, where I was on vacation.

I planned an interesting test route for the day, with mountains and highways, city traffic, and robots. Beijing is flanked by mountains to the North, where the Great Wall is, and also to the West, where we went. My wife and kids went along for a real-deal-with-it family test trip.

What is Firefly?

Firefly is a Chinese EV brand. The owner is NIO Inc., a company that also runs the NIO and Onvo brands. NIO Inc. founded Firefly in late 2024, so this is a new brand, and it’s aimed at young folks & families — think China’s Scion, in a way. The brand’s motto is “Freedom to glow.” The first Firefly is called…Firefly. It launched in China in April, selling 9978 units so far. 

First Impressions

Getting in and out is easy. When you park the car, the front seats automatically slide backwards for an easy exit. They remain in this position until you start the car.

The view to the outside is great since the Firefly has large windows and the seats are high. I like high seats in family cars; if I want to sit low, I’d buy an old MG. The C-pillar is a little wide, but that’s not really a problem. The 13.2-inch 2.5K infotainment screen is fast, and the graphics and colors are hip. The operating system is Aster OS, developed exclusively for Firefly. NIO and Onvo have different operating systems. The menu structure is easy to understand, and every function is available within about 3 clicks. 

I like the steering wheel: two spokes, with a thick, real-leather rim and a flat bottom and top. It looks cool and it works well. The 6-inch instrument panel is bolted onto the steering wheel column, so it is always perfectly visible. The air vents are nicely integrated into the dashboard. 

The key situation is a bit annoying. The Firefly has an NFC/RFID key card with keyless entry and keyless start. But when you try to put the shifter in D, it won’t go. First, the keycard has to be in a precise position on the wireless charging pad. If you don’t do that – and if the card is just a little out of place – it won’t go. When the key is in the right location, you can finally shift to D and go — oddly complicated, and when the key card is on the pad, you can’t use it to charge your phone.

[Ed Note: First, this key-card thing is similar to other cars like the Tesla Cybertruck. Second, how is it that Tycho isn’t mentioning that purple/tan two-tone interior! It’s amazing! -DT]

Lots of Space

For such a small car, it has a lot of space. Loads of headroom. The floor is completely flat, so it’s easy to get around. The kids were impressed, too; they said it offered way more space in the back than our Jeep Renegade in China or our Volvo V40 in the Netherlands. They also liked the large windows and the tiny but bright pop-out reading lights.

Lumo listens

Say “Hi Lumo” and the digital assistant comes to life. She has a smooth and soothing voice. It made me calm and relaxed. Lumo can do easy stuff like adjust the temperature and windows. She can also answer questions about the weather, navigation, and traffic. Lumo has a built-in LLM called Lumo GPT. Its development is ongoing, with OTA updates. Firefly says it’ll have an “Encyclopedia of knowledge.” 

Lumo can listen to four different voices. My wife asked Lumo to lower the fan speed, and my kids asked Lumo to raise it. Lumo did what was asked, so the fan speed went up and down and up and down. Perhaps the front seats should have a priority position of sorts? I’m not sure how other cars arrange this, but anyway, we had good fun.

Notably, the Firefly has a 14-speaker 640W Dolby Atmos stereo system, which is way more powerful than anything else in the segment. The Firefly has permanent 5G, and the infotainment system comes pre-loaded with every popular Chinese music app. Boom boom!

Ford Thunderbird

My first order of business was to find an old Ford Thunderbird. I am very into car-spotting in China, and a friend of mine heard from a friend of his that an old ‘bird was hiding somewhere in a residential compound. Happily, said compound was halfway between my place and the mountains. The compound was huge, so it took me a while to get around.

Finally, I found the Thunderbird on the edge of a large parking lot, largely overgrown with weeds and covered in dirt. This ‘bird won’t fly anymore. It is a 10th-generation Ford Thunderbird LX, made between 1989 and 1997, painted in Pacific Green Metallic with leather seats and wood trim. It is rare in China, because Ford never sold it here. 

Yongding Tower

With the abandoned Ford wreckage out of the way, I pointed the Firefly’s nose straight towards our second goal of the day, the Yongding Tower in the far west of Beijing’s Fengtai District, just on the edge of town and mountain. The Yongding Tower is an impressive structure, styled like an old pagoda, but it isn’t very old. The tower was completed in 2013 for the 9th China International Garden Expo. The tower is 69.7 meters high (over 200 feet), with a concrete base and a wooden structure.

From the tower, visitors can check out the Yongding River, which has been pretty wild in recent months with rising water levels and accelerated water flow speed. Earlier this week, the local government warned residents to stay away from the river’s shore.

The tower is in a small park with this statue.

Design of the Firefly

The Firefly is a great-looking car with a square, almost-boxy design. Firefly’s A-B pillars are black, with a black roof. There’s a “hoop” around the C-pillar that flows into the roofline. The main features are the “trio lightsm” which extend to a black oval shape. The oval theme comes back in the interior design.

NIO designed the Firefly at its Global Design Center in Ismaning, near Munich, Germany. The design boss is Kris Tomasson. Firefly’s exterior design is by Bobby Ma, a Chinese designer who previously worked for Xpeng and Volvo Cars. The interior was drawn up by Matthew Croft, a British designer who worked for McLaren and Yamaha. 

The available colors are all a tad soft. That’s trendy in China. Personally, I’d love to see a Firefly in bright red or dark green. The car I drove comes in an exterior color called Leisurely Rice, and its interior combines Warm Rice with Pleasant Purple.

At launch, the lights were the most controversial part of the car’s design, with lots of love and hate. I wasn’t sure either, at first. Then, once I saw the lights in action, I was a fan.  The Chinese name is 萤火虫, Yínghuchóng, Firefly.

Interior

The interior’s basic design is minimalist, but at the same time, a lot is going on. That’s mainly because Firefly uses a whole lot of different materials and textures. The door handles are in silver. The dash and seats are in two shades of purple. The bins are yellow. The dash top and pillars are black. The speakers are gray. Wha! [Ed Note: Wha indeed! This is awesome! -DT].

Practical Business

The Firefly is about the size of a Volkswagen Polo, at 157 inches long, with a 103-inch wheelbase and a 3,290-pound curb weight. There’s lots of storage space: big door bins, another bin under the armrest, a compartment under the front-passenger seat, and another one under the rear bench. The trunk’s capacity is 11.8 cubic feet or 44.2 with the bench down. The frunk adds another 3.2 cubic feet.

Gushancun Scenic Area

Time to get into the mountains! China is loaded with scenic areas; many aren’t very scenic at all, but there’s always something going on. The Gushancun Scenic Area is about 30 minutes northwest of the Yongding Tower. The road was brilliant, twisty, and narrow, mostly running alongside the river. Highlights of the Gushancun Scenic Area are small hilltop temples and old bridges crossing tiny rivers. I also found a great spot for photos; it was a bridge over a river with high peaks in the background. There was a little town too, with friendly folks, and I bought some local cookies. 

(A Lonking ZL50B loader (specs), manufactured in the late 2000s).

Driving the Firefly on a Mountain Road

The Firefly is a rear-wheel drive car; the output of the electric motor is 143 hp and 146 ft-lbs. With a 3290-pound curb weight, it isn’t very heavy. The steering is light but sharp, and the accelerator pedal response is EV-instant. That made for a great ride in the mountains; it braked well and was quick out of the corners, overtaking trucks with ease. It was good fun. Luckily enough, it was Monday, so there wasn’t much tourism traffic to deal with. 

The chassis comes with MacPherson front suspension and multi-link independent rear suspension. When going downhill, it harvested energy with its regenerative braking system. It has ventilated brake discs up front and solid discs at the rear.  The official 0-62 mph time is 8.1 seconds, but it seemed faster. The top speed is limited to 150 km/h (93 mph). Chinese EV brands rarely advertise with the fun bit of electric driving. Instead, the emphasis is mainly on space and AI matters. 

To the Robots!

We then turned the wheel again, this time to the Tongzhou District in eastern Beijing to visit a new Robo Mall. The mall is in Beijing E-Town, a large high-tech development area that doubles as a geofenced test area for autonomous vehicles. The route took us over long stretches of highway, mainly on the Fifth Ring Road. The highway ride is typical EV: comfortable, quiet inside, and easy to drive. It has three modes: Comfort, Sport, and Eco. I tried them all out, but I didn’t feel much difference, so I left it in comfort for the rest of the day. 

The area is a robot development base, with startups and established robotmakers living side by side in gleaming new buildings. Local governments set up these development areas, offering incentives like cheap land and low taxes. The problem is that every city in China has like a million development areas for all sorts of stuff, so many are half empty. Not this one, though. At the Robo Mall, various companies showed off their latest products. It was a little meh, and the demos were tightly controlled. The coolest things were a robo barmaid and an AI Chess Robot playing Chinese Chess. 

Driving & Parking Autonomously with the Firefly

China does not allow fully autonomous vehicles yet, so by law, you have to keep your hands on the wheel. Every minute, the system beeps, you have to hold the wheel for a few seconds, and repeat. The Firefly has L2 ADAS with a Horizon Robotics 128 TOPS chipset, 10 cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars, and one millimeter-wave radar.

The 360-degree camera is amazing for the segment. It allows you to view the car from every side. The imagery is crystal clear. The forward-facing cam sits a little low, however. When you are parked behind a tall SUV, you see everything under its bumper.

Parking can be stressful in Beijing. Lots of cars, scooters, and people. That’s why automatic parking is so popular here. Almost every new car, even cheap ones, has some kind of autopark functionality. The Firefly has fully automatic parking. Click the screen, and it finds the right spot and parks. You just sit there and watch. You can also get out of the car, and let it do its thing.

Driving in slow and moderate traffic goes very well. Click the pilot button on the steering wheel, and the autopilot is immediately engaged. Perfect for traffic jams. We had a big jam on the 3rd Ring Road, about 5 km long. The autopilot got us through without any hiccups.

It does highway entry too, accelerating and merging with traffic. When it looks for a good sport to merge, it sometimes hesitates, braking too hard, and then accelerating even harder. But in the end, every time, it got us safely onto the highway.

Firefly also overtakes automatically. Whenever it is going to overtake, it shows a message in the instrument panel, saying: “Execute takeover of slower traffic.” It switches on the indicator, speeds up, overtakes, and goes back to the original lane – without any human interference.

Self-driving too fast

But it had some problems too. When driving on quiet roads, the car would accelerate way over the maximum speed to catch up with the car ahead. When it got close enough, it would slow down again. Two weirds: the driver’s display showed the top speed, and the actual speed, so it knew what it was doing. Even weirder: the infotainment system warned us about going too fast. But the car drove itself, so it was warning itself, I guess. It might have been a setting, but even so, I don’t think it’s right that the car can drive over the maximum speed in autopilot mode. The fastest it went was 92, twelve km too fast. That lasted only a few seconds before it slowed down to 88, as shown in the photo.

The strangest error happened when the car announced it would execute a “takeover of a slower vehicle via the right lane.” This is allowed in China, so, so far, so good. But the right lane was an exit lane. The car missed that when it planned its move. When the car realized its mistake, it aborted the takeover. However, by that time, the exit line was separated from the main road by a solid white line. The car saw that, hesitated for a moment, and… took the exit. But we didn’t need to get off there; the system had to reroute, which added 12 minutes to our trip.

Range & Charging: Battery Swaps Technology!

The Firefly has a 42 kWh LFP battery manufactured by Sunwoda, with an energy density of 134.1 Wh/kg and a consumption of 10.9 kWh/100 kilometers (62 miles). When I got the car, it was 94% charged with an indicated range of 245 miles. Firefly claims a CLTC range of 261 miles. During my trip, I scored an average consumption of 11.4 kWh/100 kilometers. 

It was time to fill ‘r up. With one click, the screen showed a list of NIO Power Stations in the area. A NIO Power Station combines a swapping station with several charging piles. The closest such station was at 3 km, located in a corner of a large distribution center, with all sorts of trucks and electric tricycles zooming around. 

The Firefly has battery swap technology on board, but it cannot swap with NIO Inc.’s current swap stations. That will change next year when the company’s 5th-generation swap stations come online. So, I used a charging pile.

One pile was blocked by a truck, but the other one was free. The maximum charging speed of the piles at the station was 500 kW. NIO has since launched a new 640 kW charger, but that wasn’t there yet. Operating the pile was easy: just scan a QR code, plug in the cable, and go.  

While parked, the Firefly’s front seats can fold way backwards, so you can take a nap when charging. Be careful when you have kids in the back, it doesn’t have an auto-stop, as we found out the “mama!!” way. 

Not so Fast

A 500 kW pile may sound super impressive, but the Firefly’s max charging speed is only 100 kW. When I started charging, it had 58% battery. The max speed topped out at just 57 kW, with 47 minutes to go to reach 100%. The speed then went down further to only 40 kW at 75% battery. We didn’t have time to charge any further, so off we went. I am not sure why the charging speed was this low. I was the only one at the station. We paid exactly 17.69 yuan ($2.48).

When the truck left, we were joined by a yellow NIO ET5 sedan. We went home, and that was the end of my ride with the Firefly. When I handed it over again to the friendly Firefly driver, it had 70% battery left for an indicated range of 118 miles.

Pricing: Who’s the BaaS?

Like any car from NIO Inc., Chinese consumers can either buy the Firefly outright or with BaaS (Battery as a Service), where the ownership of the battery remains with the company. Normally, BaaS includes access to NIO’s battery-swap network, but as noted earlier, that’s not available for Firefly yet. Firefly sells 2 trim levels in China: Free and Illuminated.

The monthly BaaS fee is the same for both variants. Most buyers in China go for the BaaS option, which is indeed a very good deal. Firefly offers six exterior colors, three are standard and the others cost $420 extra. 

Finding the right competitors for any NIO Inc. product is always a bit hard in China. NIO is the only car maker with a BaaS offer. When you look at the purchase price of the Firefly, its main competitors are hatchbacks like the Aion Y, the Deepal S05, the Lynk & Co Z20, and the SAIC-VW Volkswagen ID.3.

However, if the starting point is BaaS, its competitors include the BYD Dolphin, the JAC Yiwei 3, the ORA Good Cat, and the upcoming new Chery QQ3. It’s even cheaper than a Wuling Bingo! I only looked at hatchbacks for this comparison. For the same money, Chinese consumers can also choose between dozens of sedans and crossovers. Hatchbacks are actually relatively rare in China

Firefly Export

The Firefly brand is available in Europe, but only in Norway and the Netherlands. Firefly doesn’t offer BaaS in Europe. The powertrain is the same, but the trim levels differ. The base price in the Netherlands is $33K after tariffs and local taxes. That is almost twice as much as it costs in China, but still cheap compared to the local competition, which mainly comes from Hyundai-Kia, Renault, and Stellantis.

Later this year, Firefly will expand to Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Greece, Portugal, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Romania. On the other side of the world, Firefly is set to launch in left-hand driving countries like Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. 

It’s Cool, Especially For $11 Grand

The Firefly is a fine electric vehicle. It offers a lot of space, it has decent power and range, and it drives well in town, on the highway, and on mountain roads. The design works for me, I like the triple lights, but it needs a little bit more excitement, like brighter colors and sportier wheels. My kids liked the space in the back, jumping around as we went. They liked Lumo too; they even said goodbye to her when they got out. 

But the Firefly isn’t perfect. The ADAS really needs some work, and charging takes way too long. Details like the key situation may seem minor, but they’re illogical and super annoying. So, does it work as an electric family car? Yes, it sure does for day-to-day driving. We didn’t test it on a holiday, but it has loads of storage space, and China has a trillion chargers, so long cross-country vacation trips shouldn’t be a big problem for the Firefly.

So it was a cool trip in a cool, legitimately affordable car. Let’s see what’s next for Firefly.