“For sure, Tesla is our rival.”
Chinese electric-vehicle startup NIO may familiar to some after its 1000kW EP9 beat the Porsche 918 Spyder’s Nurburgring lap record by a staggering 20-seconds, but ballistic performance cars (naturally) won’t be its mainstay. It took performance-focused observers breaths away when it set that scorching lap time at the Green Hell, but now it aims to give some breaths back with its newly-launched ES8 SUV.
The ES8 is a seven-seater “high performance” luxury SUV, which on paper, puts it in direct contention with cars like Tesla’s Model X. It’s a made-to-order, highly-customisable product that features a unique artificial intelligence system, advanced driver assistance systems, and a 480kW/840Nm all-wheel drive powertrain.
Oh, and you can swap out dead batteries for fully-charged ones in 3-minutes.
The NIO ES8 uses “the highest amount of aluminium for any mass production car,” with both its body and chassis made out of the stuff. And while its exterior design might not be to all tastes, the cabin looks and feels bang on par with today’s premium segment, with a portrait-oriented central infotainment screen, fully-digital instrumentation, Nappa leather, “lounge seats” up front, as well as a built-in HEPA filter (critical for the Chinese market).
The NIO ES8 sees motivation from a 70kWh battery pack, which gives it a range of about 355km on a full charge. With two motors (one on each axle) and all-wheel drive, the ES8 can hit 100km/h from rest in just 4.4-seconds. Interestingly, the NIO ES8 comes with a unique battery-swap system that allows batteries to be replaced in about 3-minutes. This would allow for cars with flat batteries to regain full driving range in roughly the same amount of time as it would take to refuel an internal combustion car.
Of course, the batteries aren’t going to be sold at a local convenience store and replaceable by any numpty with a spanner. NIO will be rolling out ‘Power Swap Stations’ in the near future, and aims to have over 1,100 of such Stations in service at its peak. Should you not need the full 355km range through, NIO will also offer some 1,200 ‘Power Mobile’ vehicles that will allow your NIO to be charged up with 100km of range in just 10-minutes. The Power Mobile solution means that charging comes to you, and not the other way around.
As is almost mandatory for anyone trying to break into this segment, the NIO ES8 will pack strong semi-autonomous driving capability, under the NIO Pilot umbrella. NIO Pilot utilises some 23-sensors to feed data to its control centre within the car, allowing the ES8 to handle itself in most driving situations with minimal driver input. As such, the car comes with autonomous emergency braking, traffic-jam assistance, and highway assistance as standard, along with things like traffic-sign recognition, blind-spot monitoring, and lane-departure warning.
Making the whole thing that much more approachable is a system called ‘NOMI,’ which is in essence an artificial-intelligence feature that is “fun, expressive, and intuitive that can listen, talk, and assist drivers along the way.” How exactly NOMI will be helpful in daily life remains to be seen (we mean this genuinely, not cynically), though we assume it ought to work similarly to Apple’s Siri.
Prices will start at a shade under $89,000 (or 448,000 Chinese yuan), with prices rising all the way up to about $108,000 for one of 10,000 ‘Founders Edition’ models (taking notice yet, Tesla). NIO has also offered a way to knock some 100,000-yuan off the pricetag (or a whisker under $20k) by offering a battery-leasing scheme, equivalent to $252/month.
Stay tuned to CarShowroom as we bring you more updates as they come.
