- chinese ev maker nio unveiled its first sedan, the et7, expanding its lineup to four vehicles.
- the et7 offers buyers several battery and charging options, including 70.0 and 100.0-kwh batteries and a forthcoming 150.0-kwh battery. drivers can also opt into nio's battery swapping service.
- the et7 also offers nio's latest autonomous technology and features a lidar system. it isn't yet clear what nio's autonomous system is capable of.
nio, a china-based electric-vehicle maker, unveiled its fourth production vehicle and first sedan, the et7, over the weekend at an event it called nio day. the company has made a name for itself in its home market through impressive technology, and the et7, which the company claims will offer a solid-state 150.0-kwh battery by 2022, follows suit.
the et7's standard 70.0-kwh battery offers a range of more than 310 miles, according to nio. a 100.0-kwh battery with up to 435 miles of range is also offered; a solid-state battery, which won't become available in china until next year, will give drivers a range of more than 620 miles. the largest battery in the et7 would easily best the longest-range battery tesla offers, which comes on the model s and rings in at 402 epa-rated miles.
way back in 2018, nio discussed plans to eventually enter the u.s. market with a possible electric crossover. but the company has not provided any details or an estimated timeline for when that might happen.
starting at around $69,000 for the 70.0-kwh option, the et7 and the model s will battle for the same buyers. that said, the price drops to around $58,000 if the buyer opts for nio’s battery as a service (baas) subscription, which allows drivers to swap their batteries at nio power swap stations in china for a fee of around $150 a month. the power swap stations are nio’s answer to the time-consuming process of charging an electric vehicle. the et7 features motors at front and rear with a combined output of 643 horsepower and 627 pound-feet of torque. the sedan is claimed to accelerate to 62 mph in a swift 3.9 seconds.
the nio et7 is a luxury sedan with a simple yet attractive design. the look is sleek and clean with sharp in front accentuated by the narrow headlights. the gentle slope of the roofline meets a slim taillight that runs the width of the vehicle.
inside, the et7 features a 12.8-inch infotainment screen and a digital gauge cluster, and it drops the air-vent design seen in nio’s other vehicles to adopt a look more akin to that of the tesla model 3. buttons are few and far between, and the steering wheel has a two-spoke design like that in new genesis vehicles.
nio claims the et7 is an autonomous vehicle, but it's unclear what the advanced driver-assist system in the et7 is capable of in terms of driver intervention and monitoring. we know that the system does have 11 8-megapixel cameras and what nio calls "ultra-long-range high-resolution lidar," along with five radar and 12 ultrasonic sensors, among other technologies.