Is the Nio ET9 China’s S-Class Rivaling Sport-Utility Sedan?

MotorTrend

We drive Nio's high-riding

Transcript

00:00I'm Frank Marcus with Motor Trend and I've come to Shanghai, China to answer the question,

00:11has China finally built a legitimate Maybach contender? Now the car in question is this

00:16Neo ET9. You just look at it, it's a big giant luxury car. Long, it's almost as long as a Maybach.

00:24It's definitely longer than an S-Class or a 7 Series and the difference with the Maybach is

00:29mostly in the back. The center where the customers ride is equally big. This is an

00:34electric car which means that the powertrain is all out of the way. It's

00:38all-wheel drive, a lot of other little fun things. You'll notice the little Neo

00:41emblems are right side up just like on a Rolls-Royce. They stay that way as you

00:45drive down the road. Now Americans can be forgiven for not knowing about any

00:50Chinese brands. We're doing our level best to keep them out of the US. Neo was

00:55founded in November of 2014. So 11 years later they're swinging for the Maybach.

01:02That's pretty impressive. They are on a prestige level in China, kind of in the

01:08Mercedes-Audi area. But actually I like to think of them as it's kind of like

01:14China's Tesla. They, first of all, all electric cars now. They build their own

01:20motors like Tesla did. They have 10 or 11,000 engineers working for Neo, 70% of

01:29which are in software. Very much like Tesla. These guys were using four NVIDIA

01:36chips to run all of the ADAS systems. They decided those burned a lot of wattage and

01:42cut down the range. So they designed their own chip, also like Tesla. Design-wise the

01:47Neo ET9 is very un-Maybach. It's a very modern sporty looking front end with

01:53daytime running lights down here. Matrix LED lights here which can draw things on

01:58the road. They can put a crosswalk and they can show you which way to go. As we

02:03walk around the car, obviously it's got this very different kind of a hatchback

02:08profile, although it's not a hatchback. It has a normal trunk. It has a really long

02:12rear door. That really speaks to luxury. So you come back around here and I

02:17personally find a little bit of first-generation Panamera. We come back and

02:22we close with a big cross car light beam and naturally there's welcome lighting

02:27and exit lighting and so forth. There is, like I say, a trunk, not a hatchback. A big

02:32roomy trunk in there. Luxury cars need a long front hood and with an electric one, why

02:37not put a giant trunk in here. Naturally the Neo ET9 has four electric doors but

02:43this one is smart enough that if I'm walking up from the front of the car, it

02:47waits till I get by and then it opens the door automatically. I don't know that

02:51anyone else does that. If I walk up from the back, it opens before I get there.

02:55That's the kind of smart little ideas that they've worked out throughout this

02:58whole car. So the Neo ET9 has the size, the gravitas, the tech, and the features to

03:05dice with Maybach. Now all I got to do is go out and drive and see if it competes in

03:09the real world.

03:14We're taking a moment to enjoy the sound system here. This sound system is quite a

03:22bit of the story here. I think it's 35 speakers. They call it 8.2.4.8 which

03:29means 8 channels and 2 subwoofers and 4 surround sound upper speakers for the

03:38Dolby Atmos and 8 headrest speakers. The seat is incredibly comfortable. It's a 14

03:46layer seat front and rear. It's got this amazing massage program that can be

03:53programmed to do Chinese massage, Thai massage, Swedish massage, hot stone

03:59massage. It is very quiet in here partly because of all the flush glass and the

04:05low drag coefficient and so forth and also perhaps because the speakers are

04:11canceling out some noise. This is the first car to employ the new clear motion

04:18suspension system which Neo is calling Skyride and it is an active suspension.

04:24It has little hydraulic pumps at each corner so that when you start to hit a

04:30bump it can immediately pull the the wheel up over the bump and or press it

04:35back down on the other side. They have great video footage of driving over a

04:41little speed bumps with an array of champagne glasses on the hood that are not

04:45spilling. With all that preamble and having watched those I was expecting not

04:51to feel the road at all and that is not the case. I am aware when we hit bumps but

04:56they are very smooth. One of the other big firsts on this car is the first

05:00certified electric power steering by wire. This is a by wire steering it's a small

05:06steering wheel kind of like you have on the Cybertruck. I've driven the Cybertruck I

05:10think this one feels a little more natural. Another thing we're not in any real

05:14position to evaluate is the user interface because this one's still all in

05:19Chinese. It's going to be sold in the European market and so other languages

05:22will come. Most everything controlled by this one big screen. A menu bar across the

05:28bottom with frequently used items down there. I'm also looking at a large very

05:35bright head-up display and even that has some innovation to it instead of a plastic or

05:42glass lens on the top of the unit that's down in the dash. This one uses a

05:47sapphire lens. This car was designed to be China's answer to the Maybach and so not

05:53surprisingly it is built to Chinese preferences which is to say a little bit

05:59more ride comfort and plushness over overt sportiness which is fine and I think

06:07especially in a luxury car that that is a commendable goal. Curiously the ET9 does

06:13not offer one-pedal driving. I have also noticed that they must be paying Mercedes

06:21a royalty because I believe the feature where you get auto hold automatically

06:27when you press your foot hard on the brake I think that's a patent that's still

06:31valid at Mercedes and that's a feature I really really like and it works here. We

06:37have had a few opportunities to try out the 697 horsepower. Rear biased. There's

06:45quite a bit more power and torque in the rear than the front. Still it's a heavy car.

06:49It's much more important to be able to drive a car like this without spilling a

06:54martini sitting on the tray table in the back and so far it feels like you could

06:59probably do that. I did sample the modes. We have normal and VIP and eco and sport

07:07and sport definitely makes all of the pedal inputs a lot more aggressive and

07:13eco dulls them by a similar amount. Alright so I have just been instructed to

07:19park in front of the swapping stations. This is fully automatic steering and

07:27accelerator and brake actuation.

07:35She's just warned me that the battery swap is about to begin that there will be a

07:39little bit of noise and body undulations but don't be nervous I'm here and by the

07:43way our battery is showing 87% no one would usually swap at this point but if

07:48they did like if they got one in that was 40% or whatever they would get credit for

07:53the difference. I'm hearing what sounds like the screws probably undoing. I can

07:59feel the body going up or positioning the new battery into the lace and it has now

08:06connected the new battery which is now showing 91% and 567 kilometers of range.

08:12And what was the total elapsed time on that? Three or four minutes? Three minutes.

08:16All right we've just spent a day with the NIO ET9 and what a great introduction to

08:22the NIO brand. I still say this is China's Tesla where Tesla set up

08:28superchargers all over the US and China. These guys set up battery swapping

08:32stations. They have most of their engineering people do software just like

08:37Tesla. It's kind of the reverse at just about every other car company. The

08:41question we came here to answer is has China invented a new or better Maibach?

08:47Well in every objective manner great power, great comfort, great giant interior,

08:54soft wonderful seats, quiet, best sound system, massaging seats, you name it. All

09:00that stuff nailed. On the subjective stuff this is not the face of a traditional

09:06luxury car. We just at the end of our drive were followed by a Maibach and

09:11the rearview mirror you see that impressive grill and I think there's a

09:14lot of people in that that market that really like that sort of thing. This is

09:20very modern, very sporty. The fastback design also very sporty. I do know that

09:25at $108,000 to start and $113 as you see it here it's an amazing value and that

09:32will become even more so when all that stuff on the roof comes in and we start

09:36getting full autonomy going. So will the NIO ET9 appeal to the

09:41traditional Maibach type buyer? It's hard to say. I can tell you that as a tech

09:46forward modernist sort of person myself I would love to own one of these. Sadly

09:51that doesn't appear to be in the cards for any American anytime soon. For the full

09:56story on this and the other NIOs we'll be driving this week stop by MotorTrend.com

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