On December 23, NIO held NIO Day 2023. At this NIO Day, NIO released a number of new products such as the flagship model ET9, the ** battery swap station, and the 640kW fully liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging pile.
ET9 is considered to be the "culmination" of NIO's self-developed technology, and it is also the flagship model of NIO's product matrix, with a pre-sale of 800,000 yuan. Compared with the existing NIO models, the NIO ET9 has a higher degree of self-development, using a number of self-developed technologies such as self-developed cylindrical batteries, self-developed intelligent driving chips, self-developed vehicle global operating systems, and self-developed global 900V high-voltage architecture.
According to Li Bin, chairman and CEO of NIO, ET9 contains 17 world-premiere technologies, 52 class-leading technologies, and has applied for 525 patents.
In terms of batteries, all NIO models currently use 75kWh ternary iron lithium standard battery packs and 100kWh ternary lithium long-range battery packs, and Li Bin recently conducted a live test of 150kWh semi-solid-state battery packs. However, the ET9 will use a new 120kWh battery pack, which is a self-developed 46105 large cylindrical battery with an energy density of 292Wh kg and a maximum charge rate of 5C. After the launch of the battery pack, the NIO brand will have 4 battery packs of different specifications.
Previously, NIO had established a battery self-development team of about 800 people and planned to build an F3 factory in Hefei to be responsible for battery production, but some insiders said that the factory project has been postponed indefinitely. Recently, Li Bin said that the initial investment in self-produced batteries is too large, and the return cycle is longIn-house R&D allows partners to manufacture, which can improve financial performance in the short term. According to some news, the company that NIO cooperates in the production of self-developed batteries is Honeycomb Energy.
Matched with the 5C rate battery is NIO's 900V global high-voltage architecture. Since the beginning of this year, the 800V high-voltage electrical architecture has become increasingly popular, with the cooperation of the high-voltage architecture, high-rate batteries and supercharging piles, the energy replenishment speed of new energy vehicles has been further accelerated, and some models have been able to achieve 10 minutes to 80%. NIO's 900V architecture further improves the vehicle system voltage, and it is reported that the maximum voltage of the vehicle under this architecture can reach 925V. With the combination of a 5C battery, a 900V electrical architecture, and NIO's 640kW fully liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging, the peak charging power reaches 600kW, which can achieve 255km of energy replenishment in 5 minutes.
In terms of intelligent driving assistance, the NIO ET9 will use a new computing power unit and a perception unit. In terms of computing power, at present, all models of NIO use 4 NVIDIA Orin chips, and the cumulative computing power has reached 1016TOPS. Li Bin said at the press conference that ET9 will use Wei's self-developed Shenji 9031 chip, and the single computing power will exceed the sum of the four chips currently applied, and ET9 will use 2 Shenji 9031 chipsThe chip performs well in running the BEV+Transformer algorithm. It is reported that the Shenji 9031 uses a 5nm process and uses a 32-core NPU (embedded neural network processor) architecture.
In addition to further improving the computing power, the NIO ET9 has further enhanced the "stacking" of sensing components, and compared with the existing models, the ET9 has added two sideways wide-angle lidars, and the front of the car has added a high-precision 4D imaging radar. However, since the beginning of this year, many car companies have begun to reduce the accumulation of computing power and perception elements of products or intelligent driving systems: the first product of Jiyue adopted a visual perception scheme when it was launched, reducing lidar;He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Motors, said that the "light radar" perception scheme will be used in the future, and two forward angle radars have been canceled on the recently launched Xpeng X9.
In terms of chassis, the ET9 will adopt NIO's full drive-by-wire chassis, with full active suspension, steer-by-wire, rear-wheel steering and other configurations.
In addition, NIO's first-class battery swap station and 640kW fully liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging pile will land faster. Among them, the battery swap station will be equipped with 23 batteries, and the single battery swap time will be shortened by 22%. In terms of intelligence, the ** battery swap station uses 4 NVIDIA Orin X chips, with a computing power of 1016TOPS, and 6 ultra-wide-angle lidars are used in perceptionThe top can also be equipped with a 60-square-meter photovoltaic power generation system to realize the integration of "photovoltaic storage, charging and replacement".**Battery swap stations will be deployed from April 2024.
Li Bin said that in 2024, NIO plans to add 1,000 battery swap stations and 20,000 charging piles. However, it should be pointed out that according to NIO's plan, the construction of battery swap stations in 2024 will focus on the shared battery swap system that serves the Alps project and partners such as Geely and Changan.
Despite a number of advanced technologies, the ET9 is currently in "** status, with deliveries scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2025." This also means that throughout 2024, there will be no new models launched for the NIO brand.