The electric vehicle market is growing at an incredible speed in countries like China, where there are already large manufacturers with more than one production model behind them. One of them is NIO, which today celebrated its NIO Day to unveil the shiny new ET7.
A sedan to overtake Tesla
NIO’s proposal has attracted a lot of attention in its presentation. To begin with, we are facing a model with lines similar to Tesla’s Model S , in whose cover letter its range of 500 km stands out above all its characteristics. That is the distance that we can reach with the most basic model with a 70 kwH battery, however, there will be an optional package that will allow us to enjoy a 150 khH battery with which to reach the supposed figure of 1,000 km .
A comprehensive fast charge
With the idea of improving charging times and guaranteeing the perfect functioning of the vehicles, NIO intends to implement a network of battery exchange stations with which they will completely replace the vehicle batteries with fully charged ones, saving a lot of charging time . According to the company, these charging stations would be capable of changing a total of 312 batteries per day, and it expects to have a total of 500 stations ready to work by the end of this year.
Smarter than Tesla?
NIO has an extremely powerful control unit with which to analyze the entire environment surrounding the vehicle, and thus be able to guarantee completely safe autonomous driving. Called ADAS, this technology is based on a large number of smart functions and sensors with which to map the entire environment, using a total of 23 sensors and 11 high-definition cameras ( 8 megapixels versus 1.2 megapixels used in Tesla), the vehicle is capable of detecting another car at 600 meters away, and pedestrians at 220 meters.
As if that were not enough, a 1,550 nm LiDAR placed on the roof of the vehicle, 12 ultrasonic sensors and a 5 mm radar array are responsible for generating a pattern around the vehicle to know at all times what is happening around us.
All this information is controlled with the help of the ADAM processor, which has seven times the power of Tesla’s FSD control unit, according to NIO. With all this technology, the vehicle would be able to offer level 4 of autonomous driving by 2022, so we would be facing a great advance in this aspect.
When will it go on sale?
Although NIO focuses on the Chinese market, the distribution of its new ET7 will be requested. The vehicle will not hit the roads until the first quarter of 2022, and will initially only be available in 70 and 100 kW versions, so the longer range version with 150 kW will not appear available until the end of 2022.
In terms of prices, the ET7 is expected to start at 448,000 yuan (about 56,000 euros at the exchange rate), however, there will be a subscription model for batteries of $ 150 per month that will allow the vehicle to be purchased at a price of 378,000 yuan (about 47,000 euros to change).