Nio

Range anxiety is one of the biggest reasons why people are skeptical to switch to EVs. The skepticism will most likely die down when two criteria are fulfilled – the day EVs take the same time as refueling an internal combustion-engined car and offer a similar range between recharges, and when you can find a charging station just as easily you find a gas station today. While the latter is not that big a problem in developed countries, the first one still is.

While top EV makers like Tesla are working towards hitting that sweet spot, Chinese manufacturer Nio has already come up with a solution – battery swap tech. It has been a roaring success for the automaker as it recently announced that its customers in China completed 4 million battery swaps! Is this the future?

In the first quarter of 2020, Chinese EV automaker Nio had almost gotten knocked out of the auto scene. But, thanks to an investment of $1 billion from the local government, Nio managed to get a second lease on life. It revealed the updated version of its electric, the ES8, and there’s no looking back ever since. Nio is growing leaps and bounds and the launch of its latest EV is a testimony to that.

The new electric sedan is called ET7. It will be offered with three different battery sizes, with the biggest of them all claiming to deliver 620 miles on a single charge! With pretty decent performance figures and tech features, can the ET7 take on the Tesla Model S successfully?

2020 certainly did not start well for any of us and Nio resonates with us. Chinese startup Nio, commonly referred to as the Chinese Tesla, has been through a roller coaster ride. This year, the company found itself on the verge of getting kicked into the history books due to a variety of reasons that include recalls, layoffs, and the pandemic, of course. However, the company has weathered the storm and finally started delivering the updated ES8 electric SUV. Does this mean good times have begun for Nio? Well, it’s too soon to say.

Heavily based on the ES6, NIO’s new SUV-coupé is for the boxier ES6 what the BMW X6 is to the X5, the Mercedes-Benz GLE Coupe to the GLE, the Porsche Cayenne Coupe to the Cayenne, you get the gist. Or, in NIO’s own words, a ‘young, dynamic and progressive’ car.

Marketing and PR blabber aside, the EC6 is nothing more than the sloped-roof, less-headroom-in-the-rear-seat, hunchback-y version of the ES6. Unveiled during the ‘Believe in Better NIO Day 2019’ event in front of a large audience, the EC6 gets NIO’s latest offering in the battery pack department, namely a 100-kWh liquid-cooled thermostatic unit. Join us as we take an in-depth look at the NIO EC6 SUV-coupé.

Starting its operations in 2014, Chinese car company Nio already reached the spotlight of the car industry. At the2019 Shanghai Auto Show, it revealed the elegant sedan-coupe called the ET Preview Concept, but you may have heard about it after the Nio EP9 set a Nurburgring lap record for electric cars. While the Nio only sells one electric SUV in China (more than 10,000 of them are on the roads), the ET Preview Concept is a rather surprising proposition for the future. In Shanghai, almost everyone revealed some sort of electric SUV, but Nio went with a fastback sedan. It is the one to compete with the likes of the Tesla Model S and the new Polestar 2. I will go on a limb here and say that it looks better than any one of them.

Odds are you remember the Nio name from the EP9 performance machine that dropped late in 2017. Now, Nio is offering up the ES6, a follow-up to the Chinese-based EV producer’s larger ES8 SUV, framing it as a smaller five-door packed with an impressive EV powertrain, a sumptuous interior, and sharp exterior styling, not to mention a host of advanced tech features to soothe and entertain its passengers.

Founded in 2014 in Shanghai, China, Nio has quickly grown to become a major industry player, establishing itself as a force to be reckoned with in the world of electric vehicles and self-driving technology. Boasting over 2,000 employees spread out over 13 locations globally, Nio is known for creations like Eve, a forward-thinking autonomous concept, and the ES8, a seven-passenger high-performance all-electric SUV, as well as its involvement in the Formula E championship with powertrain support for the Nio 003 race car. However, the start-up is best known for this – the EP9, a high-performance all-electric speed machine aimed squarely at all things quick and internal combustion-propelled. Inspired by the FIA’s Le Mans Prototype regulations, the Nio EP9 is street legal, but has made a name for itself setting some very impressive records on the track, including a sprint around the Nurburgring’s north loop in just 6 minutes, 45 seconds, a run around the Circuit Paul Ricard in 1 minute 52.78 seconds, and a lap of the Circuit of the Americas in 2 minutes 1.11 seconds. Granted, these records were done on track-only slick tires, but it’s impressive stuff all the same.

So then – what makes this thing tick? Is it just an overblown blender, or is there more to it? Read on for the details.

Continue reading to learn more about the NextEV Nio EP9.

High-performance electric cars may have seemed impossible two decades ago, but the technology has evolved so dramatically that some EVs are actually quicker than conventional vehicles. And, while the Tesla Model S is kicking some serious supercar butt from 0 to 60 mph, NextEV’s Nio EP9 has just set a new lap recordat the Nurburgring. I know it’s yesterday’s news, but the company has finally released the official video.

In case you’ve been living under a rock recently, the Nio EP9 first lapped the ’Ring in 2016, when it crossed the finish line in 7:05.12 minute. It’s definitely a solid performance for an EV, but the Chinese firm didn’t stop there and returned in 2017 with a blistering 6:45.90-minute lap. Not only 20 ticks quicker than the previous benchmark, but also a new record for the German track. And, as if that wasn’t impressive enough, the Nio EP9 just shattered the 6:48-minute record that the Radical SR8LM was holding since 2009!

It’s also worth mentioning that the EV is six seconds quicker than the Lamborghini Huracan Performance and 11 seconds quicker than the Porsche 918 Spyder. Do you still want V-8, V-10, or V-12 gasoline engines under the hood of your supercar?

Needless to say, this is a massive achievement for the automotive industry, but especially for the EV market, which proves that electric motors are the future on the race track too. And the fact that the Nio EP9 is built by a relatively new company makes it that much more spectacular.

In case people start getting confused which startup automaker is building which performance electric car, I’d like all of you to put you attention on NextEV and its Nio EP9 electric hypercar. The car’s specs alone are worth headlines since it packs 1,341 horsepower and a staggering 4,671 pound-feet of torque, but the Nio EP9 didn’t make today’s headlines because of that. It made the headlines because it used all of that power to record a 7:05.12-minute lap time around the Nurburgring, becoming the fastest ever electric car to navigate around the 12.9-mile race track.

To put that in perspective, the Nio EP9’s lap time puts it fifth overall among street-legal, production cars, outpacing the Nissan GT-R Nismo by over three seconds. To be clear though, the EP9 is not yet an actual production car so the GTR’s lap time of 7:08.69 can still sit pretty in that fifth place spot. But rest assured, the pace that the EP9 exhibited as it ran roughshod over the ‘Ring points to what the hypercar is fully capable of when it’s unleashed with no restrictions.

At the very least, it’s slowly piling up record lap times in some of the world’s most famous racing tracks, including the Paul Ricard circuit in Marseille, France, where it set a lap time of 1:52.78, a record for an electric car at the world famous circuit.

Beyond it’s obnoxiously high output — it technically generates 1 megawatt of power, same as the Koenigsegg One:1 — the EP9 can also generate a mind-boggling 17,701 pound-feet of torque of downforce when it’s doing 149 mph, which, according to NextEV, is two times the amount of downforce generated by a Formula One race car. All together, the electric hypercar is capable of sprinting from 0 to 62 mph in just 2.7 seconds and 0 to 124 mph in just 7.1 seconds, to go with a top speed of 195 mph. The last figure is a bit of letdown compared to some of today’s supercars, but considering everything else that it can do, I doubt people will be upset that it can’t break 200 mph, especially when they realize just how legitimately scary that feeling would be for a car that can pull out that much torque out of its four electric motors.

Continue after the jump to read the full story.