NIO Day 2021 Review and Analysis
NIO is among my favourite EV Brands for a lot of reasons, including their technology leadership but also the philosophy and the atmosphere around their way of life. Each year, they organise the NIO Day which is somehow equivalent to the Tesla Day. This article presents my own review and analysis of the NIO Day 2021 presented on Dec, 18th 2021.
During the NIO Day 2020, NIO presented a new Luxury Sedan (the NIO ET7) in which they embedded a lot of high Tech features from the Battery Technology to a very advanced ADAS system. If the ET7 was due in 2021, it has been slightly delayed but delivery should start in Q1 2022. The NIO Day 2021 concentrated around a new mid-side sporty car called the NIO ET5. This article summarises what was presented by Mr William Li, the CEO of NIO in Suzhou.
The NIO Brand and Culture
NIO is one of the famous Electric Vehicle Brands known by EV enthusiasts and often seen as the Chinese Tesla. Nevertheless, western people usually have a limited understanding of the NIO brand mainly because they know little about the Chinese modern Culture. NIO is really one of my favourite EV brands because it is much more than just an Electric car company; it embeds a lot of values, important for modern Chinese people:
The idea to belong to a community built around NIO users sharing the same philosophy, creating charity group, social media, business support for NIO users, etc.
The highest available technology for infotainment, home cinema and way to live so your car is a good place to spend time with your family and your friends
The most advanced showcase for Electronics, computer power, ADAS system and generally high technology demonstrating China leadership in these fields
A new way to conciliate high technology and respectful interaction with the nature. This include usage of renewable material, development of EV to reduce CO2 footprint, etc.
Screenshots extracted from the NIO Day 2021. Left: Mr William Li, CEO of NIO; Right: NIO talking about its engagement for Nature protection.Images extracted from the NIO Day 2021 Presentation.
NIO wants to be close to its users. This starts with Mr William Li who never wears a suit to present but usually prefers Chinese Modern Business Casual style. The NIO Day, as usual, presented several stories of users who accomplished benevola, charity and other actions demonstrating that NIO culture is about caring and helping each others. NIO has even created what they call the “NIO Users Trust” regrouping various action groups supporting different actions such as Education, Communication, Exhibition, Design. NIO also has its own Textile brand, for example.
To understand the NIO brand, you have to see beyond the EV car maker and see NIO has a sort of Social Media in which NIO supports their users but also the users help each other (some selected sentences from Mr William Li during the presentation: “NIO will continue to invest resources to support the user partner plan”, '‘business endorsed by NIO”, etc.).
NIO is also defending the Nature and pushing for the safeguard of the environment as a major company value. They have created the “Clean Parks” and emphasis to “support more nature reserves with smart EVs”
2021 Results and 2022 Ambitions
NIO is now a well-established brand in the EV and High Tech Vehicle segment. They have succeeded at demonstrating their strong technological leadership would it be in Formula E or by producing one of the best Electric Supercar, which has been for some time the fastest EV on the Nurburgring.
NIO home DC Chargers (11 kW and 7kW). Image extracted from the NIO Day 2021 Presentation.
In Europe, NIO is usually known as the company “trying to develop Battery Swapping”. A lot of western e-mobility “experts” do not believe in this technology and so in NIO. But NIO Technology is not uniquely based on Swapping! NIO strategy relies on 4 charging systems that complement each other: (1) home chargers (7kW and 11 kW DC chargers); (2) destination chargers which is what western OEMs just call “chargers”; (3) superchargers very similarly to Tesla’s strategy; (4) and at the end of this deployment strategy the famous Swapping station that allows to completely put in place a fully-charged Battery in only a few minutes (<3 min). It is worth noticing that the Battery Swapping is also a way to allow customers to change Battery Capacity so they can upgrade their vehicle depending on their usage and budget.
NIO is active in each of this charging infrastructure with the ambition to make EV usage a commodity. Some numbers to put this in perspective;
NIO users have already covered more than 3.6 billion km with NIO EVs;
NIO has installed 94,000 home chargers, 3348 public destination-chargers and 3136 superchargers in China;
As of end of 2021, NIO has installed 733 Swapping Stations.
Please note that the NIO Superchargers are opened to any other EV brands as part of the Chinese national strategy to spread EV usage over the country. Of course, the reciprocal applies and NIO cars can use other superchargers.
NIO Swapping performance. Images extracted from the NIO Day 2021 Presentation.
I know that a lot of people do not believe in Swappable Batteries. But I would like to highlight the impressive speed at which NIO has deployed their Swapping Stations in China. If you compare to the NIO Day 2020, one year ago, NIO had 177 Swapping stations and had performed about 1.5 million Battery-swaps. Their target for 2021 was to install at least 500 new Power Swapping Stations, which they did (+556). The consequence is a strong growth in Battery swap events. From 1.5 million last year, NIO announced that they have passed 5,5 million swaps in total, which means 4 million swaps in the year. During the presentation, Mr William Li said that currently there is one NIO Swap each 4,2 seconds!
In 2022, NIO will even accelerate the progression of their Swapping Stations. They have recently signed a strategic collaboration with Shell to jointly construct and operate Battery Swapping facilities. This is a complement with their other collaborations with Sinopec and PetroChina.
Before the end of 2022, NIO’s objective is 1300 Powertrain Swapping Stations as well as 6000 Superchargers in China.
NIO also clearly steps up its ambitions to develop outside of China. After exploring the Norwegian market (the most advanced EV market worldwide) in 2021 with their ES8, NIO ambition is to start sales in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark in 2022 and in 25 other countries by 2025.
About the NIO ET7 (a top-premium luxury Sedan) presented last year, Mr William Li reassured his customers that the first delivery will start end of March 2022.
New NIO ET5, EV PowerTrain and Engineering
The key moment of the NIO Day 2021 was the presentation of the New NIO ET5, a mid-size smart Electric Sedan. Following the general trend of the NIO Portfolio, it combines the must-have of EV technologies and ADAS with the best of the High Tech and infotainment in a modern Chinese style.
Details of the NIO ET5 Design: IllumiBlade (top) and Progressive Spoiler (bottom); Images extracted from the NIO Day 2021 Presentation.
In my opinion, the car is super cool! It succeeds in integrating High Tech elements in an original design. One example to illustrate what I mean is the integration of the “IllumiBlade” which gives a sporty feature in a smooth design. The car offers a very large Glass Roof with a 99.9% UV protection (in China, skin wealth and purity is important).
I also love the choice of colours including the customisation for the interior. I personally follow the Chinese fashion relatively closely and I can tell you the choice of colours is the result of following latest trends.
Some of the colours available for the New NIO ET5, from left to right: “First Light Kiss”, “Sunbath Yellow”, “Airspace Blue”. Image extracted from the NIO Day 2021 Presentation.
The technical presentation of the ET5 was much more concentrated on the Electronics and the infotainment rather than other vehicle features, but NIO presented some interesting Engineering details. As usual with NIO, Mr WIlliam Li insisted on the Powertrain, The ET5 uses 2 electric motors: 150 kW induction eMotor on the front and a 210 kW PM eMotor at the rear. Similarly to the NIO ET7, it uses SiC (Silicon Carbide) power inverter (OROVEL Card EV34) which is the main trend for premium vehicles (a trend introduced by Tesla).
NIO ET5 Dual Motor integrated drivetrain, Courtesy NIO.
The ET5 Drag Coefficient is 0.24 (which is OK for a new EV but far away from a Lucid Air for example). The range of the car is very similar to the ET7 with 3 battery options: (1) 75 kWh providing 550 km of range; (2) 100 kWh leading to 700 km; and (3) 150 kWh giving up to 1000 km of range.
There were not much details shared about the Battery as the Battery system will be similar to the ET7. Remember that all vehicles in the NIO Portfolio share the same base design to be all compatible with the Swappable strategy.
NIO ET5 EV Platform and Battery integration, Courtesy NIO.
Mr William Li emphasised the ET5 sporty characteristics including the drivability with a perfect handling balance. To reach such an objective, NIO worked on several technical aspects:
NIO has developed in-house high-performance 4-piston fixed callipers and insisted on the additional safety it provides (100 km/h to 0 km/h in 33.9m braking distance) to their sporty car. For reference, the recent VW ID.3 uses Rear Drums). Beyond braking performances, I personally love its colourful design that gives a sport character to the global vehicle.
NIO has particularly paid attention to the chassis balance with a very low center of gravity and a 50:50 weight distribution. The body is made of Ultrahigh-strength mix of steel and aluminium, similarly to the NIO ET7 (the NIO ES8 is full aluminium).
The vehicle is mounted on 5-link suspensions at the front and at the rear. The steering gear located in front of the shaft offers more possibility to support the sport driving character of the car.
The ET5 is able to switch between 8 driving modes including “sport”, “comfort”, “snow”, “sand”, etc.
Engineering details on the NIO ET5: Piston fixed-callipers(left); 5-link suspension (right). Images extracted from the NIO Day 2021 Presentation.
New NIO ET5, ADAS characteristics
The NIO ET5 ADAS system is very similar to the one used by the ET7 and detailed last year. It is based on the NIO system called NAD (NIO Autonomous Driving) which combines an advanced sensing system called AQUILA and a computational core called ADAM.
8MP Cameras are used by AQUILA. Images extracted from the NIO Day 2020.
The AQUILA system consists in many sensors measuring the vehicle environment for autonomous driving. Indeed, the ET5 is equipped with not less than:
NIO ADAM PowerElectronics. Image extracted from NIO Day 2021 Presentation.
11 x 8MP High Resolution cameras (for comparison, Tesla uses 1.2 MP technology)
1x Ultralong Range High Resolution LiDAR
5x Millimeter Wave Radars
12x Ultrasonic sensors
2x High-precision positioning units
1x V2X
1x ADMS
The data generated by all these sensors is then computed by the ADAM Super computer made of 48 CPU Cores and offering a computation capacity of 1,016 TOPS. Mr William Li details that ADAM consists in 4 NVIDIA Orin Chips, 8,096 CUDA Cores and is using more than 68 billion transistors (!). The NIO ET5 with ADAM allows for 19 ADAS features.
New NIO ET5, Infotainment and HomeCinema!
NIO always pushes the interior design and the associated electronics/comfort to the maximum. This is one of the major selling points of the brand. As usual with NIO, the interior is designed in pure simple luxurious Chinese way, using high quality fabrics (keep in mind NIO has also a fashion cloth brand). NIO puts emphasis on the usage of eco-design materials as they previously did for the ET7. It is also one of the main trends at top premium OEMs (for example Daimler presented in its Vision AVTR concept or Mazda using natural cork material in the MX-30 central console). Even some of the fabrics used in the ET5 are made from 100% of recycled PET bottles.
The interior ambiance also mixes modern High Tech element and elegance. For example, the NIO ET5 has 23 speakers but they are all integrated in such a way that they are invisible, as are the air vents. I also quite like the Curtain Ambient Lightning that gives a special ambience at night in your car.
NIO ET5 interior with NOMI personal assistant and a 12.8-inch auto-grade AMOLED center display. Image extracted from NIO Day 2021 Presentation.
nreal partnership with NIO to propose AR and VR inside the NIO ET5. Image extracted from NIO Day 2021 Presentation.
As for the infotainment, NIO keeps its cute robot personal assistant (Nomi) and a very large screen. The main innovation comes from the NIO VR Glasses that offer the user AR and VR options for immersive experience and infotainment. On this subject, NIO partnered with the Chinese augmented reality glasses maker nreal. According to NIO, the NIO VR Glasses offer a 4K Display and can be used in complement to the usual central screen display (PanoCinema). The VR glasses allow sharing immersive experience, making your own VR videos and sharing them with your friends, so that they feel like travelling with you.
As the NIO Day tickets are more and more difficult to find, Mr William Li announced that from 2022, NIO fans will also be able to follow this event from their car.
Conclusion
The NIO ES8 is now available in Norway
NIO philosophy is to perfectly marry High Technology and comfort for their users. Mr William Li often describes NIO cars as “a reassuring and joyful space” that is like a “second living room”.
The NIO ET5 is technically very advanced with a unique identity and surely not a copy of any western cars. With a pre-subsidy price of RMB 328,000 (46,000 EUR), the NIO ET5 will be a serious competitor to any luxurious sporty car in China (BMW, etc.)
NIO is certainly increasing its market share in China and with EV such as the NIO ES8 entering the European market (currently in Norway). NIO is certainly a brand to closely follow. Check the OROVEL news for any update!
Source: Live Stream (now YouTube record) from the NIO Day 2021
