There are many new car-making forces in China, but do you know who has the largest number of models?
The answer is NIO!
It currently has a total of 8 models on sale, covering multiple market segments such as B-segment cars, mid-size SUVs, mid-size and large-sized sedans, and medium-to-large SUVs.
But it seems that Li Bin feels that this is not enough, as a high-end brand, how can there be no large sedan (D-class car)?
On December 23, NIO's flagship sedan ET9 was officially released, with pre-sales** of up to 800,000 yuan, and deliveries are expected to start in the first quarter of 2025.
Prior to this, D-class cars were forbidden areas for the vast majority of domestic manufacturers, and only the "national car" Hongqi had a precedent for building D-class sedans.
So, what kind of strength does NIO ET9 have?Why did NIO take this step?Today, let's talk about it through the following 3 questions!
1. What kind of car is NIO ET9?
The intuitive impression of the D-class sedan is that it is large, and it has a kind of impact when you look at it.
On this point, NIO ET9 has its own understanding.
The body length of the NIO ET9 has reached 5325mm, and the wheelbase has reached 3250mm, which is relatively close to Mercedes-Benz S-Class, Audi A8, BMW 7 Series and other models.
The difference is that the NIO ET9 adopts a 4-seat layout, which highlights the word "executive", which is a model that needs to be equipped with a dedicated driver to show its majesty.
Here's one more point: If you look carefully at the side view of the comparison between the ET9 and the BBA flagship, you will find that the distance between the body of the ET9 and the ground is significantly larger, according to the official data of NIO, the ET9 uses the highest ground clearance in the same class200mm, needless to say, I believe many people can also know: this is a value higher than the ground clearance of many SUV models.
This also makes the height of the NIO ET9, which is a pure electric sedan, higher than the three flagship flagships of BBA, and from a numerical point of view, the maximum difference is 134mm.
For example, NIO's 46105 battery cell is 25mm larger than Tesla's 4680 cell in terms of height in terms of sizeOf course, it may also be related to the chassis space required for the ET9's components, including technologies such as the fully drive-by-wire intelligent chassis.
Of course, this is an executive-level sedan after all, and if it has worse comfort than an SUV, it is obviously a bit of a cart before the horse, so the NIO ET9 design has the longest suspension travel of 220mm in the same class, and it can drop 50mm in 1 second at the earliest.
In terms of appearance, Weilai ET9 does not seem to be so amazing, it adopts a family-oriented design approach, and it is not possible to see the identity of Hongqi L5 "Golden Sunflower" from the appearance, which has a certain relationship with the short history of Weilai.
However, the wide body and domineering front of the NIO ET9 still have a strong visual impact. However, these are not enough to be called a D-class sedan, and NIO ET9 still integrates a lot of black technology.
2. What are the black technologies of NIO ET9?
The D-Class is regarded as the flagship of various brands, which has to do with their high price tag, wide body, and top-notch comfort.
Of course, the most important thing is that they are the carriers of the latest technology of the manufacturer.
The NIO ET9 is also in this line.
The NIO ET9 features the industry's first Mirco LED headlights paired with the AQULIA 2The 0 Super Sensing System provides lane light blanket and lane marking, its low beam illuminates the width of three lanes, and can achieve glare-free high beam lighting.
As a calm and atmospheric executive-class sedan, the NIO ET9 does not provide those more fancy headlight interaction functions.
The doors of the NIO ET9 can sense passengers approaching the vehicle body through millimeter-wave radar, so as to achieve touch-free entry and exitWhen the user approaches the vehicle, there will be a welcome light blanket on both sides of the vehicle, which is a sense of ritual that high-end users care about.
In addition, its front trunk is also contact-free, in fact, the front trunk is open no matter how it opens, but if you stand there it can be opened automatically, there is a strong sense of technology and ritual, this kind of detail experience, often "expensive" **.
The NIO ET9 is equipped with 265 40 R23-inch tires with a tire diameter of 790mm.
As a former R&D personnel of a car company, I couldn't help but check the parameters, and sure enough, the tires of ET9 and the three flagships of BBA are two levels larger.
Big tires are obviously a favorite choice for designers, the bigger, the better, which is why many designers can create particularly beautiful hand-drawn sketches with just a few strokes just by using two extraordinarily large wheels and a particularly low-lying body
And if you look at the comparison chart of the four cars above, you will obviously find that the ET9 is a cut above the momentum from the side of the entire body. Of course, the price behind it may be that the entire engineering team of ET9 has been working day and night to make this large tire engineering feasible while looking good.
One detail worth mentioning is that the height ratio of the wheels of the ET9 to the whole vehicle is about 1:2, which is also a design technique that many luxury ultra-luxury brands like to use.
It's a bit off-topic to talk, let's pull it back and continue to talk about the black technology of NIO ET9 this time.
It is worth mentioning here that NIO ET9 is the industry's first full-focal segment AR head-up display system, which can basically realize the display needs of all scenes. At the same time, it is also equipped with Tianshu Sky OS operating system and ** supercomputing platform ADAM 20, the performance in fluency, data privacy, OTA upgrades, etc. is better.
In terms of intelligent driving, NIO's ET9 self-developed image signal processor ISP, inference acceleration unit NPU, and Gigabit Ethernet ring network are also equipped with a gigabit Ethernet ring network, which exceeds the mainstream level of the industry in terms of perception accuracy and algorithm performance.
At the same time, NIO ET9 also adopts the industry's first watchtower sensor layout, equipped with NIO's self-developed Yang Jian chip, with high-strength body and front and rear integrated large castings, and designs seven redundancy in driving, braking, steering, perception, computing, communication, power distribution, etc., to solve the safety problems that high-end users care about.
In terms of comfort, NIO ET9 is equipped with Tianxing active suspension, which is the world's first suspension system that fully integrates solenoid valve body and shock absorbers, and integrates the three core hardware of steer-by-wire, rear-wheel steering and full active suspension on the ET9, which can greatly reduce the vibration during driving.
By the way, steer-by-wire is just released at the regulatory level by GB 17675-2021 and will be implemented from January 1, 2023. In other words, the NIO ET9 is the first Chinese brand steer-by-wire model after the regulations are relaxed, and the last model to be equipped with steer-by-wire is the Tesla Cybertruck.
In terms of the three-electric system, NIO ET9 is equipped with the first global 900V high-voltage system in China, integrating NIO's self-developed 1200V silicon carbide power module and 46150 large cylindrical battery, with a peak charging power of up to 600kW.
3. Why does NIO want to push ET9?
The pre-sale price of NIO ET9 reached 800,000 yuan, which raised the upper limit of the entire brand a lot.
This approach seems to be a bit different from NIO's previous strategy, which first opened the scene in 2016 with a high-flying electric supercar, the EP9, and then launched a series of subsequent family cars.
Judging from the current situation, Li Bin's primary purpose in building a high-end model like ET9 is to consolidate its high-end positioning.
From an objective point of view, NIO's current sales have not met its expectations, but the high-end positioning cannot be abandoned.
Since it is a high-end brand that is benchmarked against Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi, the D-class sedan is indispensable.
Of course, if you want to maintain high-end positioning, only high-end ** and luxury services are obviously not enough.
Therefore, based on ET9, NIO came up with a complete set of core technologies to match the price of up to 800,000 yuan.
Therefore, like Mercedes-Benz S-Class and other models, sales volume is not an assessment indicator of NIO ET9, but it is a carrier of high-end technology, proving that NIO is indeed capable of building high-end models.
Wrapping up
At present, NIO, whether it is independent research and development in chips, mobile phones, autonomous driving and other fields, or refined user services, or the construction of expensive battery swap stations, are all carried out around high-end positioning. On the topic of high-end positioning, NIO can only advance and not retreat, and if it persists, it will see the light of day, and there is no turning back!
NIO ET9