The ET7 starts at 448,000 yuan (~ $ 69,000) as buyers opt for the standard 70 kWH battery. But if customers opt for a 980-yuan ($ 150) / month battery subscription, the starting price drops to 378,000 yuan or about $ 58,375. The 70 kwH package offers up to 500 km, while the optional new 150 kwH version, with its 360 Wh / kg energy density, will reportedly deliver ranges of more than 1000 km – it is north of 600 miles and far beyond what the Tesla Model S can provide. What’s more, Nio claims that the ET7 has a 0 to 100 kmh of 3.9 seconds with a maximum power output of 480 kW. But note that when the ET7 goes on sale in the first quarter of 2022, it will only be available with the 70 kwH and 100 kwH batteries to get started – the solid state 150 kwH version will probably only be available at the end of that year dawn.
Holding on to the ET7 will not take long. Nio announced on Saturday that it will also upgrade its battery exchange stations. Instead of waiting to fill up exhausted cells with electricity, Nio’s automated service stations will simply swap the entire pack with a new package. The company reckons that each station can accommodate up to 312 battery exchanges per day with the 13 packets each at hand. Nio hopes that 500 of these stations will be operational by the end of 2021.
Finally, Nio executives demonstrated their latest advances in ADAS technology. The company released an updated version of its Navigate on Pilot (NOP) feature during the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition 2020 in September. NOP relies on a series of 23 sensors and cameras to map the world around the vehicle up to 20 cm of the accuracy of the location, so that the car can know when it is safe to change lanes and it even automatically to do on behalf of the manager.
But it was September. On Saturday, Nio showcased its latest and greatest driver assistance technology, the Aquila Sensing feature. It uses a range of 11, 8MP high-def cameras (compare it to the 1.2 MP sensors used by Tesla) that can see another car at 680 meters and pedestrians at more than 220 meters distance. In addition, the ADAS’s ADAS also uses a 1550nm LiDAR sensor with a 500 meter range, a 5mm Wave radar array, 12 ultrasonic sensors and some high-precision positioning units to understand exactly what is there is around. All of this information is fed into an on-board processor called ADAM, which according to the company is seven times more than the raw computing power that Tesla’s FSD does. The ET7’s autonomous management functions could reach level 4 by 2022 if Nio’s plans are up and running.