The Nio ET9 starts at RMB 660,000 under the BaaS battery rental model. Deliveries of the sedan are set to begin in March 2025.
Nio (NYSE: NIO) has officially launched the ET9, targeting the premium executive sedan market dominated by German luxury car makers Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi.
The Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker rolled out the ET9 at the Nio Day 2024 event held in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, on December 21, with a starting price of RMB 788,000 ($108,000), including the battery, slightly lower than the RMB 800,000 price tag when it went on pre-sales a year ago.
Specifically, the ET9 standard version starts at RMB 788,000 yuan. In BaaS (battery as a service) model, it starts at RMB 660,000, with a monthly battery rental fee of RMB 1,128.
Nio is also offering an initial limited edition of the ET9 with a starting price of RMB 818,000 including the battery, with only 999 units available. Under BaaS model, the limited edition starts at RMB 690,000 with a monthly battery fee of RMB 1,128.
Deliveries of the ET9 is set to begin in March 2025, with the limited-edition model being prioritized, the company said.
Nio gave the ET9 its debut at the Nio Day 2023 event a year ago and started accepting pre-orders at the time in an attempt to enter the premium executive sedan market in China dominated by German luxury carmakers.
The EV maker emphasized that the ET9 is the culmination of innovations from its 10 years of existence. As an electric executive flagship sedan, the model is also a technological flagship, it said.
The ET9 is a four-seater with very large dimensions of 5,325 mm in length, 2,017 mm in width and 1,621 mm in height, and a wheelbase of 3,250 mm.
It is the first model to feature Nio's own 5 nm process-based Shenji NX9031 autonomous driving chip. The company unveiled the chip at last year's Nio Day 2023 event and announced at a tech day event on July 27 this year that the chip saw a successful tape-out.
Nio's main-brand models currently come standard with four Nvidia Orin chips, giving the smart driving system a total computing power of 1016 TOPS. Its sub-brand Onvo's first model, the L60, uses one Nvidia Orin X chip with a computing power of 254 TOPS.
Nio has not announced the exact computing power of the Shenji NX9031 chip, but said it is equivalent to four mainstream smart driving chips. It has two Shenji NX9031 chips in the ET9.
The sedan's smart driving hardware continues to include a roof-mounted LiDAR. Additionally, Nio has added two side LiDARs to the ET9.
One of the biggest selling points of the ET9 is the SkyRide intelligent chassis system, which Nio said is the world's first integrated hydraulic fully active suspension.
The suspension system enables transient adjustment of stiffness, damping and height, resulting in better ride comfort and increased safety.
William Li, founder, chairman and CEO of Nio, presented a video at the launch event showing him driving an ET9 at 160 km/h and experiencing a tire blowout without losing control of the vehicle.
The ET9 also features steer-by-wire (SBW) technology, which allows the steering wheel and wheels to be completely decoupled, the key to higher levels of intelligent driving.
On December 9, Nio said that its SBW technology was approved for mass production by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), making the ET9 the first mass-produced model in China to be equipped with SBW technology.
The ET9 is built on a 925 V ultra-high voltage platform, resulting in better energy performance and faster charging speeds.
It carries a battery pack with a capacity of 100 kWh and a CLTC range of up to 650 kilometers.
The model uses dual electric motors with a peak power of 180 kW at the front and 340 kW at the rear. The powertrain has a maximum total power of 520 kW and a peak torque of 700 Nm, which allows the vehicle to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in 4.3 seconds.
The ET9 offers a frunk with a capacity of 105 L, the first Nio-branded model to do so.
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