The front wheels of the Nio ET9 prototype move up and down at high frequencies, while the two water-filled glasses placed at the front of the car remain stable.
Nio (NYSE: NIO) unveiled its executive flagship sedan, the ET9, at Nio Day 2023, with the powerful chassis system SkyRide as one of its core features, and showed a video at the time demonstrating the stability of the suspension.
Now, the electric vehicle (EV) maker has released a new video that shows the chassis system's capabilities from a new angle.
Nio placed an ET9 prototype in a shallow puddle of water and had the vehicle's two front wheels move up and down at a high frequency, while two water-filled glasses placed on the hood remained stable at all times.
Below is the video, shared by Nio on Weibo, with text showing it was filmed on December 17, 2023 at the Nio F2 factory at NeoPark in Hefei, Anhui province.
At the Nio Day 2023 launch event on December 23, Nio founder, chairman, and CEO William Li showed a demo video showing an ET9 prototype with a tower of four layers of champagne placed at the front of the car going over a speed bump without spilling the champagne.
Nio calls the chassis system SkyRide, and its core includes steer-by-wire (SBW), rear-wheel steering, and fully active suspension. The ET9's capabilities, shown in these two demo videos, are a result of the model's fully active suspension.
Nio said the suspension system is the world's first integrated hydraulic fully active suspension with an active suspension electric drive unit that allows the vehicle to avoid bumps on undulating roads.
Each damper in the suspension is highly integrated with a proprietary electro-hydraulic pump that supports 50 mm of height adjustment in 1 second, and a controller with microsecond information acquisition and processing capabilities.
The suspension is powered by technology from ClearMotion, a Nio Capital-backed US-based advanced suspension startup that aims to make car rides less bumpy.
On September 8, 2022, Nio Capital announced that it led a $39 million funding round for ClearMotion.
On August 16, 2023, Nio Capital said that construction of ClearMotion's first manufacturing plant began in Changshu, Jiangsu province in eastern China and is expected to be operational in the first quarter of 2024 with product deliveries beginning in the fourth quarter.
The Nio ET9 became available for pre-order on the day of its launch, with a pre-sale price of RMB 800,000 ($111,600) and deliveries set to begin in the first quarter of 2025.
($1 = RMB 7.1682)
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