The EC7 is a totally re-designed car. There is not a single body panel that's shared with the ES7.
This is a guest post by Haoran Zhou, previously a member of Nio's PR team in China. The content was originally published as a video on his YouTube channel Telescope望远镜.
Hello and Welcome to the Telescope. Every week we bring you fresh insight from the biggest car market in the world.
Today's cars are the EC7 and the ES8 Gen2 that were just got revealed on Nio Day 2022. But the timeline of this video is a bit... complicated.
We shot the two cars on December 17th under embargo, and I shot this piece to camera on Dec 23rd. And if nobody breaks the embargo, you should be watching this video after Dec 25th 4 pm China time.
So at the time of filming, we have not departed for Nio Day yet. And I will be going there in the orange ET7 behind me.
Anyway, we will start with the EC7.
The EC7 is a further iteration of the Coupe SUV than the EC6. It's got the same wheelbase and a lot of the same equipment level as the ES7 or the EL7 in Europe, hence it a 7 not a six.
However, unlike EC6 where only the B-pillar rearward got modified. Yes, that's true. It was an embarrassing moment to be honest because we were told to avoid any comparison between the EC6 and the ES6. But then the designer in the workshop segment just went:" We only changed the car from B-Pillar rearward." And we were like... WHAT?
Anyway this EC7 is a totally re-designed car. As far as I can see there is not a single body panel that's shared with the ES7. It has so much more shape in its body. And a big contributing factor is the lengthened rear overhang.
One of the challenges with a coupe SUV is always how do you make the car feel like a coupe with such a tall body. On the side, you have the sloping roofline but at the rear, it is still very tall.
So what Nio did on the EC7 is to lengthen the rear overhang. It has three benefits: firstly, it fully stretches the roof line to be even more slopping. Secondly, the visual focal point gets drawn down. Thirdly as a side benefit, rear visibility also gets improved, which was a weak point on the EC6.
But you cannot just lengthen it without constraints, you need to carefully balance the friendly size of the vehicle. And all things considered, I think the EC7 is an absolute triumph in design, to the point if someone chooses the EC7 over the regular boxy ES7, I can now understand them.
And I really didn't get why people buy the EC6 over the ES6. Because this is now a bespoke coupe SUV, the way it should be.
It's got an active rear wing, and I got the impression this will be the key differentiating factor of the EC coupe SUV line. It can auto-deploy into the low drag position at 80 kph, and into the downforce position at 140 kph.
At v-max which is 200 kph in this, it can generate 63 kg of downforce. When you consider downforce goes up by the square of the speed, actually means the innocent-looking EC7 has more downforce at 200kph than a very acclaimed high-performance SUV. I am talking about Lotus.
On the interior, the differences are in the details and I am sorry I am not a huge interior fan and my English is not good enough to give you all the beautiful descriptive language.
Although I did write some of the press materials on EC7, but that's in Chinese! It's a further step compared to the ES7 and really Nio has never, ever messed up the interior, so this part is safe. We don't need to worry about it.
Move on to the ES8, now, this is important.
If you don't know already, the original ES8 is Nio's first production car. Still to this day, it is an icon and a lot of Nio top-level executive company car. So the importance of the 2nd gen ES8 is, I cannot over-emphasize it.
It's gotten bigger. Now at 5.1 meters long and the wheelbase is 60 mm longer than gen1. But we were not allowed to sit in the car because we shot the car before Nio Day and those are the cars you saw on stage yesterday.
So I cannot tell you how much bigger it is from the inside. However, the first gen ES8 does not lack space in the 2nd row but in the third row. So the extra 60 mm is very welcome for people who constantly use the 3rd row.
The whole car definitely has the most presence. There is more volume in the bonnet and there are lots of equipment that's exclusive to the ES8 like: dual chamber air spring, which generally gives you a bigger scope of body control.
Comfort mode is even softer but not floaty, sport mode is even harder but not crashy. The only dedicated 2nd row seats with optional central island, which for business users could make more sense.
The only 2230w sound system and the only five-zone climate control which... I am always suspicious on how effective that multi-zone climate system is if the zones are more than... 2. Because there is no physical barrier between each zone right! Anway it's the ES8 so it needs to have all the best of everything, I get it.
OK, that is a first look into the EC7 and the ES8 Gen2. Apologies if this video is shorter than usual because I have been hit by a popular disease and slowly recovering. If I recover fast enough, then I will jump into the ET7 behind me to attend Nio Day. We should get a media test drive of these two cars fairly early next year.
That is all from this episode of the Telescope, if you enjoy this video, keep watching, keep subscribing, more videos coming along very soon.
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