, showrooms will be opened soon, and the launch of Nio ES7 will not be far away.

(File photo shows a street in Shanghai.)

Shanghai will lift restrictions on residents' travel from June 1, essentially lifting the lockdown that has lasted for two months, earlier than originally expected.

From 00:00 on June 1, Shanghai residents will be able to freely enter and exit their neighborhoods, and public transportation operations and vehicle movement will resume in an orderly manner, a press release issued by the city government today said.

Except for high-risk areas for Covid and quarantine areas, district officials, community officials and property managers are not allowed to restrict residents' movement for any reason, according to the press release.

All ground buses and rail transportation in Shanghai will resume basic operations, and ferries on the Huangpu River will resume operations in an orderly manner.

The electronic pass system for vehicles implemented during the lockdown will be canceled, and cruising cabs and ride-hailing vehicles will resume normal operations.

Private cars and business vehicles will be able to travel normally except for the high-risk areas and quarantine areas, according to the release.

This is about half a month ahead of Shanghai's original planned schedule for lifting the lockdown.

At a May 16 briefing, local officials said Shanghai's next Covid prevention and control will be divided into three phases, with the goal of fully restoring normal life and company production from June 1 to mid-to-late June.

Shanghai began a phased lockdown on March 28, when residents were restricted from traveling and production by car companies including Tesla and SAIC was suspended for more than a month.

The city has allowed hundreds of so-called key companies to resume production in a closed-loop state through a whitelist management system since late April.

On May 29, local officials announced that from June 1, Shanghai will eliminate the whitelist. This means that local businesses will no longer need to apply to the government if they want to resume operations.

With the restoration of life order, the production capacity of Tesla's Shanghai plant is expected to quickly return to normal levels, and the showrooms of car companies, including Nio (NYSE: NIO, HKG: 9866, SGX: Nio), will soon open normally.

For Nio, the lifting of the Shanghai lockdown also means that the unveiling of its new SUV ES7 is not far away.

Nio originally planned to launch the ES7 in April, and with the outbreak of the Covid outbreak in Shanghai, the company's co-founder and president Qin Lihong said on March 30 that the model was expected to be unveiled by the end of May.

On May 23, Nio announced in an article on its app that it would participate in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area International Auto Show (Auto Shenzhen 2022), which has officially opened on May 28 and will run until June 5.

In the comments section of the article, a large number of users asked when the ES7 would be unveiled, and Qin said at the time that Nio would hold the ES7 launch as soon as the lockdown in Shanghai was lifted.