Enough to make you rethink an SUV, don’t you reckon?
We’d like to say that Chinese startup Nio is throwing a major finger at other EV marques with their fleet of high-riding wagons, but they established themselves with SUVs too, in the form of the Nio ES6 and Nio ES8. But with those two cars, it felt like the company was pandering to the masses, putting their innovations into an SUV body style knowing that that would sell fastest.
With the ES6 and ES8 already on sale and bringing in significant volume for the company, Nio’s finally able to let its hair down a bit and explore more desirable options outside of the SUV bodystyle. The ET Preview is just such an exploration, being the company’s first attempt at ground-hugging 4-door. Despite the new territory, the ET Preview’s design carries a degree of aesthetic resolve from front to rear that’s really refreshing to see, and it’s certainly a form that’s far easier to lust after than Nio’s debut wagons.
The ET Preview is just a concept for now, but as the name suggests, it serves as a preview of a production model that should be on the market either in or around 2021. And it’s more than just a pretty face, with a nickel-cobalt-manganese battery pack beneath and “high-efficiency permanent magnet motors” in the front, whereas the rear gets “high-performance induction motors.” The setup puts out a rated 220kW it seems, and it can cover over 500km on a single charge according to the NEDC test cycle.
The ET Preview is aimed unashamedly at the US’ EV darling, the Tesla Model 3, and by the looks of things it has every capability to eclipse it in overlapping markets. Where Tesla continues to struggle to keep up with demand of the Model 3 (and have just complicated matters by launching the Model Y), Nio appears to be right on top of manufacturing. So when they decide to launch this thing, they’ll launch it fast, and they’ll launch it right. And that’s precisely the sort of thing that should keep Elon Musk up at night.
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