This newspaper (chinatimesnet.CN) reporters Liu Kai and Yu Jianping report from Xi'an.
NIO's cohesion and appeal have always been a leader in the automotive industry.
A few days ago, NIO held its annual NIO Day, and in terms of scale, more than 10,000 users came to Xi'an to participate, and more than 400,000 people **went up**. Up to now, no car company has been able to reach such a scale.
At this NIO Day, NIO showcased its R&D achievements in chassis, battery, battery swapping, chips, and intelligent driving, and launched its first executive flagship sedan, ET9, making up for the gap in domestic pure electric executive flagship models. It is worth mentioning that the pre-sale of ET9** reached 800,000 yuan. It can be seen from this that although NIO is not having a good time this year, the heart of hitting the high-end has never been broken.
Hit the high-end market
After the electrification market reaches a certain scale, car companies have also begun to look for new breakthroughs in order to gain more market increments, and impacting the "high-end" has also become the choice of many car companies. For example, Haobo SSR, Yangwang U8, Mengshi 917 and other models, the price has reached about one million.
In this context, NIO has also launched a high-end product, ET9. Unlike other brands that have hit the high-end, NIO has positioned its products as executive-level models. The reporter learned that in NIO's planning, ET9 benchmark products include Mercedes-Benz Mai**, BMW 7 Series, Porsche Panamella, etc. Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of NIO, said: "The ET9 should be the first car for the entire Chinese auto company to truly enter the core fortress of the BBA-based international brand. This time, NIO is a very organized and step-by-step upward climb with technology as the foundation and the real pace of product launch. ”
Judging from the configuration, super 53 meters long, 3A wheelbase of 25 meters, an original four-seat layout, 23-inch alloy wheels, and an innovative "Sky Island" and "Executive Bridge" design. The NIO ET9 can compete with luxury brand models such as BBA. Li Bin, Founder, Chairman and CEO of NIO, said: "As the original intelligent electric executive flagship of the Chinese brand, the ET9 fully demonstrates NIO's R&D strength and achievements, brings the executive flagship sedan into the era of intelligent electric vehicles, and represents NIO's determination, confidence and enterprising spirit to continue to impact the high-end market. NIO will continue to provide users with high-quality products and services through technological innovation. ”
Earlier, in the eyes of the industry, NIO has always emphasized service, and the technical aspect may not be the point to get started. However, from Tech Day to NIO Day, NIO is sending a signal that NIO is not only a service-oriented company, but also a technology company. At NIO Day, NIO focused on the Shenji NX9031 intelligent driving chip, the global 900V high-voltage architecture, the Tianxing intelligent chassis, and the flagship-level safety system, most of which are embodied in the NIO ET9. According to Li Bin, ET9 contains 17 world premiere technologies, 52 leading technologies in the same class, and has applied for 525 patents.
The reporter learned that Shenji NX9031 is the industry's first intelligent driving chip manufactured using 5nm automotive technology, which has more than 50 billion transistors. In addition, the Shenji chip can also dynamically wake up each subsystem in microseconds, with the strongest safety redundancy capabilities, to bring users a safe and efficient intelligent driving experience.
In addition, the ET9 is also equipped with the "Skyride chassis system", which integrates the three core hardware systems of steer-by-wire, rear-wheel steering and fully active suspension, and is currently the world's only fully intelligent chassis system by wire. At the NIO Day site, NIO demonstrated a section of the ET9 test car with a champagne tower on top. The ET9 has a four-tiered champagne tower on top of the front canopy, smoothly passing over the undulating road, and the champagne tower has not been tipped over, nor has the champagne been poured. In this regard, some netizens said: "One word, 'stable', two words, 'very stable'." ”
In Li Bin's view, ET9 is not only the crystallization of NIO's technological innovation, but also the epitome of China's smart electric vehicle industry in the process of moving from a large automobile country to an automobile power. "I think it is not only the achievement of NIO as a company, but also a small milestone in the process of participating in the global smart electric vehicle competition for the entire smart electric vehicle industry. Li Bin said.
However, ET9 is only unveiled at present, and the real delivery will not be until the first quarter of 2025, which also means that NIO will not launch new products throughout 2024. This also makes the industry worry about whether NIO's sales will continue to soar in 2024, and whether the technology that currently looks high-end will lag behind in 2025. In this regard, Li Bin said: "ET9 is the first product in China to enter the soul competition of luxury executive sedans, so we will spend more time to adjust and optimize. As for sales, Li Bin further pointed out that the 8 models currently on sale by NIO will be the main revenue in the next 1-2 years**, and these models will maintain a leading position in 2 years, and the advantages are still relatively obvious.
Replenishment remains a top priority
Although the energy replenishment system is an important reason for NIO's losses, NIO still regards it as one of its core competitiveness.
At NIO Day, NIO officially released the global 900V high-voltage architecture and 46105 large cylindrical battery. It is understood that the energy density of a single cell of 46105 large cylindrical battery reaches 292Wh kg, and the maximum charging rate reaches 5C. After the launch of the battery pack, NIO will have four battery packs of different specifications. The 5C rate battery is matched with the 900V global high-voltage architecture. It is understood that the architecture includes core electronic and electrical components such as batteries, motors, wiring harnesses, air conditioners, DC-DC, and on-board chargers. Under this architecture, it can achieve 3 minutes of fast battery replacement, and 5C flash charging can last 255 kilometers in 5 minutes.
At the same time as announcing the changes in the specifications of the next-generation battery pack, NIO officially released the first-class battery swap station and the 640kW fully liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging pile.
It is understood that the 640kW fully liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging pile released this time can reach 765A, the maximum output voltage can reach 1000V, the peak charging power can reach 640KW, and the charging power in the station can be intelligently distributed in real time.
The battery swap station has also undergone technical iteration, the number of batteries has increased to 24, the maximum service in a single day can reach 480 times, the single battery swap time is reduced by 22%, and it can support multi-brand shared battery swaps. At the same time, the fourth-generation battery swap station is equipped with a rooftop photovoltaic system, saving nearly 1. per station per year80,000 kWh.
At present, NIO is already the enterprise with the most complete charging and swapping network and the largest layout in China. In terms of charging, NIO has deployed 20,955 charging piles across the country, covering 307 cities. In terms of battery swapping, on December 22, NIO reached a plan to add 1,000 new battery swap stations in 2023, and NIO has established 2,309 battery swap stations in China. Among them, there are 745 high-speed battery swap stations, and a high-speed battery swap network of 7 vertical, 6 horizontal and 11 major urban agglomerations has been built.
Battery swapping is the best way to experience energy replenishment, and there is no one. Li Bin said that in 2024, NIO plans to add 1,000 battery swap stations and 20,000 charging piles. According to NIO's plan, the construction of battery swap stations in 2024 will focus on serving the Alps project and the shared battery swap system of partners such as Geely and Changan.
In terms of service network, as of December 23, NIO had a total of 145 NIO centers, 335 NIO spaces, 315 service centers and 62 delivery centers. On this basis, NIO will strengthen the layout of the sinking market.
Wherever Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi have 4S stores, it is worth visiting. Qin Lihong said. In his view, the sinking market is a must-do, and NIO has made some statistics, and nearly half of the sales of mainstream high-end brands such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi are contributed by third-tier cities and below. NIO did not go into the sinking market before because it was positioned as a high-end company, and it needed to do it step by step and control the pace of investment. But now that the market competitiveness is increasing, NIO must also accelerate the speed of network expansion and market sinking. At the same time, in the process of sinking, it is necessary to maintain the brand style, and fully integrate the brand style with the style that can be accepted in various places, which is also a problem faced by NIO.
Years of R&D investment have brought technology accumulation to NIO and laid the foundation for NIO's long-term development. With the blessing of technology and the concept of serving users, NIO will continue to climb, after all, the efforts may not get immediate results, but they will never be in vain.
Editor-in-charge: Li Yanan Editor-in-chief: Yu Jianping.