NIO’s flagship sedan ET9 flabbergasts former VW boss Diess

The day before Christmas, at Nio Day 2023, the Chinese premium EV maker took off the wraps of its new ‘executive flagship sedan,’ the ET9, which has to play in the highest luxury car segment like the Mercedes-Maybach or EQS, or the BMW i7.

Exactly a year later, the ET9 launches in China for 788,000 yuan, some 103,000 euros. Former VW boss Herbert Diess, a friend of NIO founder and CEO William Li, is flabbergasted after driving it over a series of speed bumps with a tower of filled champagne glasses on the hood, saying, “This is impossible.”

Sold out within a few hours

The ET9 was launched on December 21st during the Nio Day 2024 in Guangzhou. William Li said that immediately after its launch, the limited 999 ‘ET9 First Edition’ was sold out within hours. This version, which will be delivered in March, costs 818,000 yuan (€107,600) in China.

It features updated interior materials, exclusive badges, and carpet lights and comes standard with premium features like NOMI Mate 3.0 and 23-inch wheels compared to the standard ET9. Li expressed his hope to sell 1,000 ET9s a month, but Deutsche Bank analysts in China expect monthly sales of the Nio ET9 to be even 1,500 units.

The 5,3-meter-long sedan is packed with NIO’s latest technology. It sits on a new NT 3.0 platform with 925 Volt architecture and has two electric motors, 340 kW in the rear and 180 kW in the front, delivering a combined output of 520 kW (697 hp) and 700 Nm torque.

Renting the battery for 148 euros a month

The huge sedan accelerates from 0 to 100 km/hour in 4.3 seconds. This first edition comes with a 100 kWh (swappable) battery pack, promising a range of 650 km (CLTC). NIO says consumption is around 16.2 kWh/100 km, which is good for an AWD car with these performances.

Earlier, a 120 kWh battery pack with in-house developed 46105 cylindrical battery cells featuring a higher energy density of 292 Wh/kg was mentioned to become available in the future. As with all NIOs, you can buy the ET9 without the battery for 660,000 yuan (€86,800) or rent it with the Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) for 1,218 yuan (€148) per month.

But the emphasis in this 5,3-meter-long sedan – even 20 cm longer than the ET7 – is on luxury. The wheelbase of 3,250 mm allows for massive leg room, especially for the rear passengers, who get limo comfort in two separate, relaxed seats with all the comfort one could want.

The SkyRide active suspension is a technology tour de force. It allows four stacks of champagne glasses to remain steady on the hood without spilling a drip while driving over speed bumps. Former Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess was one of the guests who could try out the ‘impossible’ themselves behind the wheel with NIO boss William Li in the passenger seat.

NIO’s drive-by-wire chassis was developed by US advanced suspension start-up ClearMotion, which NIO financially backs. It can compensate for bumps in the road by adjusting the dampers up to 5 cm in just one second.

Nice gimmick: With that, the ET9 can shake off the snow on its body in winter like a Husky awakening in the snow in the morning. The NIO ET9 can lift its body 40 mm or lower it 50 mm independently on both sides, which creates the Husky-shaking effect.

In another video, William Li himself conducts a test in which his (rear) tires are blown on a spike strip at 161 km per hour without the car faltering at any time to show the stability features of this SkyRide system.