Chinese manufacturer NIO has debuted its new ET9 - a flagship electric SUV-coupe that could take on the very finest from Porsche, Audi, BMW and Tesla.
NIO is a brand to keep a very close eye on in the coming months.
While you can’t currently lease a NIO in the UK, you can get behind the wheel of one elsewhere in Europe.
Both the ET5 Touring, a rival to the BMW i5 Touring, and the EL6 (below), an SUV to compete with the Audi Q8 e-tron, are available now in Denmark, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands.
NIO, spearheaded by billionaire owner William Li, has also made no secret about its UK ambitions.
In August last year, NIO told Autocar that it hoped to arrive in Blighty by 2025 - once it had set up the infrastructure to provide customers with a network of innovative ‘Power Swap’ stations - where you can exchange a flat battery for a fully-charged one in less than five minutes.
If you think that sounds like pie in the sky thinking, it’s not - NIO has already installed 1,200 Power Swap stations (below) in China and each car it produces has battery swap capabilities.
So, while there’s no indication that this new ET9 will enjoy a British launch just yet, there will be plenty of UK motorists out there hoping that it does.
NIO describes its ET9 as a ‘smart electric executive flagship’ that’s aimed at ‘high-end business users’ and which is expected to cost around £90,000.
It gets a so-called ‘Landjet’ design, which promises the best of all worlds when it comes to cabin space, comfort, safety, and steering.
A four-seater, the ET9 features a ‘Sky Island’ and ‘Executive Bridge’ in the interior, making it sounds like a starship, and comes with a 360-degree tray table in the rear and seven electric sunshades.
A ‘SkyRide Intelligent Chassis System’ comes with steer-by-wire, rear-wheel steering, and full active suspension, and would surely make mincemeat of even the worst of the UK’s potholed roads.
NIO boasts that, no matter what’s going on under the wheels, the ET9 can ‘deliver a driving experience akin to travelling on a flat surface’.
We don’t yet know what will be powering the ET9, or what range it’ll have, but NIO says that ultra-rapid charging will be able to put 158 miles worth of charge into the battery in just five minutes.
The ET9 is also packing a ‘super computing platform’ onboard, which takes care of everything from autonomous driving to the intelligent chassis.
The electric flagship should also prove exceptionally safe. A NIO spokesperson tells us: “Designed following aviation-grade safety standards, NIO ET9 allows for safety redundancy in seven key systems of smart EV, including driving, braking, sensing, computing, communication, and power distribution, setting the global safety benchmark for executive flagships.”
It’s available for pre-order in China now.
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