Driving report: Nio ET7
future promise
No ET7
© press-inform – the press office
The Chinese automotive start-up dares the tiger leap to Germany. In order for this project to succeed, the ET7 sedan should cause a stir. We tested the Nio Spearhead and found a lot of light, but also shadows.
The Nio ET7 is a handsome car. The design with the narrow LED slits at the front, the coupé-like silhouette and the narrow light strip at the rear hides the fact that the Chinese Stromer is a powerful vehicle with a length of 5.10 meters. The Chinese are not lacking in self-confidence. If you want to assert yourself in the shark tank of BMW i7 and Mercedes EQS, you have to step up your chest. The Asians make no secret of their ambitions. This is also shown by the clearly visible housing on the roof.
The supposed design flaw turns out to be a promise for the future and a sign of Nio’s diction of clearly presenting modern technology. The horns house sensors that are important for autonomous driving. The ET7 has a total of 33 sensors on board, including a LIDAR radar, eleven cameras (including seven 8 megapixel cameras), five millimeter wave radars and twelve ultrasonic sensors. Even when it comes to robotic driving, the Asians are not satisfied with half measures, in this case the highway assistant, which takes over the wheel at a maximum of 60 km/h. “We already have our sights set on the next step,” says Mirko Reuter, who used to work on autonomous driving at Audi and now holds the reins of this discipline at the Chinese start-up. The next level of automated driving has the designation UN R 157 and includes autonomous driving up to 130 km/h and automatic lane changes. Until then, you have to be satisfied with helpers such as the adaptive cruise control, the lane departure warning system or the cross traffic warning system.
Enough of the preamble. We chose a Nio ET7 with the smaller 75-kilowatt-hour battery, which Nio says gives a range of 385 to 445 km. With us, the display shows a state of charge of 88 percent and 393 kilometers. So it fits. If you opt for the 100 kWh battery, you can travel between 505 and 580 kilometers. Nio had planned to offer a solid cell battery on the ET7 by the end of the year. We check with William Li. The Nio founder confirms that in the first quarter of next year the ET7 will have a semi-solid cell battery with a capacity of 150 kilowatt hours, which contains both liquid and solid substances. That will certainly be the range champion, especially since the Nio sedan is in the top league with a value of 0.208.
Modern technology is omnipresent in the ET7. If the automatic door openers, where you only have to put your hand between the body and the extended handle, are still a funny playfulness, the Nio infotainment experts sometimes overshoot the mark in their endeavor to banish as many buttons as possible from the cockpit. Because the menus are often too nested and the fact that you can adjust the exterior mirrors and the valance with the 12.8-inch touchscreen in conjunction with steering wheel buttons takes some getting used to. It is obvious that Tesla was the inspiration for this concept, but fine-tuning is still missing. The cute spherical Tamagotchi also babbles a lot in English and raises its index finger admonishingly when the permitted speed is exceeded. If desired, the assistant is also silent.
The purged interior impresses with lots of leather. But the laws of business administration also apply in China in times of rising wages. The dashboard is slightly foamed under the decorative leather cover and then consists of hard plastic towards the windshield. There is a clearly visible rectangular crater that houses the head-up display. It does its job, but doesn’t quite reach the technical sophistication of the German competition. Augmented Reality with the flying arrows is not yet an issue.
It looks different with the chassis with the air springs and the adaptive dampers. The Nio ET7 does quite well in this discipline. Regardless of whether it is firmer (in the Sport+ driving mode) or softer (in the Comfort mode), the chassis is harmoniously tuned and copes well with all road conditions. This has a particularly positive effect on the executive chair at the rear right, where you can look forward to plenty of legroom and headroom and little vertical movement of the body. The controls don’t fare that well. It reacts quite nervously from the middle position, only to then become more indirect. As long as you swim relaxedly in traffic, it doesn’t matter.
Dynamically, ET7 has a lot to offer. It starts with the sheer power of 480 kW / 653 hp and a brute torque of 850 Newton meters, which an all-wheel drive brings to the asphalt: 180 kW / 245 hp at the front and 300 kW / 408 hp at the rear. The sedan, weighing 2,359 kilograms, is heaved from a standing start to country road speed in 3.8 seconds and has a top speed of 200 km/h. This means you can be on the move quickly even in the restrained Eco driving mode. The combination of a five-link front axle and a multi-link rear axle promises supreme agility and keeps this promise. Only when it comes to tighter corners on country roads, the weight cannot be denied and the Nio ET7 pushes friendly over the front axle. Then it also shows that the comfortable lounge chairs at the front are made more for cruising and not for fixing the driver’s upper body.
The aerodynamics have a positive impact on consumption: Nio states a window of 19.3 to 22.3 kWh/100 km, we came up with 18 during our test drive, during which we drove on the freeway for a longer period of time and also tried out the top speed. 9kWh/100km. The 75 kWh batteries can be filled with a 11 kW AC wall box or with a DC charger with a maximum of only 130 kW. That takes half an hour (10 to 80 percent). In the future, this procedure should become obsolete at Nio anyway, since the batteries can be swapped at a changing station within five minutes. However, it will still take some time before a dense network is stretched across Europe. By the end of 2023 there should be more than 120.
With the ET7, Nio remains true to its maxim “flexibility is the new premium” and relies on various subscription models. With a flexible contract, you can change the car and battery as often as you like. The monthly rate reduces as the car gets older. The duration is between one and five years. If you sign a fixed subscription contract for three years, the Nio ET7 with the 75 kWh battery costs 1,199 euros per month. The flexible variant starts at 1,549 euros, with the rate decreasing as the car ages.