The Nio ET7 sedan. Photo courtesy Nio.

Nio Inc. – ADR (NIO) kicked off its Nio Day 2020 event in Chengdu late Saturday local time amid much fanfare. The event was attended by scores of users and Nio fans from across China, and was livestreamed. The annual event is usually held in December, but this year was held in January for unspecified reasons.

In line with reports in the run-up to the event, the company unveiled its first-ever sedan, the Nio Power Swap Station 2.0 and the 150-kilowatt-hour battery pack.

Curtains Raised On The All-New ET7 Sedan

Nio's first-ever sedan, named ET7, was launched with a tagline "Ready For Tomorrow" by the company's founder, Chairman, and CEO, William Li. Li described the car as another evolution of Nio's design DNA and a break from convention.

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ET7 boasts what Li says is the first UWB digital key, and has soft-closing doors and frameless windows. The car is 5,098 millimeters long, 1,505 millimeters high, and 1,987 millimeters wide. It has a wheelbase of 3,060 millimeters.

The interior is designed with a "second living room" concept. The car comes with Nio's in-vehicle artificial intelligence, NOMI, which provides infotainment and navigation functions. It has a 12.8-inch AMOLED central display and uses a third-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon (QCOM) automotive cockpit platform.

Some of the other features underlined by Li included dual beam LED headlights, double dash daylight running lights, integrated X-bar, 3-dimensional crystal-light heartbeat tail light, laminated all-glass roof that insulates against 99.9% of UV rays, and microline headliner.

Autonomous Driving

The ET7's Navigate On Pilot comes with NAD, or Nio Autonomous Driving, featuring the Aquila Nio Super Sensing System with ultra-long-range, high resolution LiDAR. It has an 8 megapixel camera to assist in autonomous driving, and Adam Nio, the company's mass produced mobile computing platform. Adam has four NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) Orin SoCs and boasts 1,016 TOPS in computing power.

Li claimed Adam's computing power is seven times as that of Tesla Inc. (TSLA)'s FSD. Nio is offering hardware as standard and AD as a service, allowing subscription of full functions of NAD on a monthly basis. The NAD has 19 safety and driving-assisted features that can be offered under Autonomous Driving-as-a-Service, or ADaaS.

Lower Drag, Higher Efficiency and Longer Range

On the performance front, Li said ET7 has an ultralow drag coefficient of 0.23. The second-generation, high efficiency, powertrain platform, with SiC power module improves vehicle energy efficiency.

The range of the sedan armed with a 70-kWh battery pack is over 500 kilometers, and the range improves to over 700km with a 100-kWh pack and over 1,000km with the newly-unveiled 150kWh pack. The sedan accelerates from zero to 100km/hour in only 3.9 seconds.

Pricing

The Standard Edition of ET7 with 70-kWh battery pack is priced at 448,000 yuan ($69,185) before subsidies. Under a Battery-as-a-Service scheme, the price is 378,000 yuan ($58,375) and a 980-yuan ($140) monthly subscription.

For a Standard Edition sedan with a 100kWh-pack, the pricing is 506,000 yuan, while under the BaaS plan, the price is 378,000 yuan plus a monthly subscription fee of 1,480 yuan. The ET7 premium edition with a 100kWh-pack is priced at 526,000 yuan ($78,140). Under the BaaS option, it is 398,000 yuan ($61,460), plus a 1,480-yuan ($230) monthly subscription fee.

The NAD full package monthly subscription fee is 680 yuan ($105) per month. Pre-orders for the ET7 begin immediately through the Nio app, Li said.

Li also announced some incentives, such as for a 5,000-yuan ($772) deposit, a 10,000-yuan ($1,545) deduction is given on the pricing. Existing Nio customers ordering ET7 get a 7,000-yuan ($1,081) discount and 30,000 Nio points. For customers owning ES8 Founders' Edition who order ET7, a discount of 10,000 yuan ($1,545) and Nio 50,000 points are awarded.

Deliveries of the vehicle will begin in the first quarter of 2022.

Power Swap Station 2.0 

Nio's next-gen power swap station can accommodate 13 batteries, boosting capacity by three times, with a daily capacity of up to 312 swaps, Li said in his address. It facilitates automatic parking of cars into the station, with one tab on the central display. Nio said it sees its 500 power swap stations as being operable by the end of 2021.

New Battery Pack

Nio also announced the 150kWh solid state battery technology, which increases energy density by 50% and has in-situ solidification of hybrid electrolyte, inorganic pre-lithium Si/C composite anode, and nano coating nickel-ultrarich cathode.

This enhances the range for the new ES8 vehicles to 850km, for the ES6 vehicles to 900km, and for the EC6 vehicles to 910km. Every user can opt to upgrade to the new battery pack, Li said.