Nio ET7 completes winter test in NZ

The China-made Nio ET7 electric luxury sedan has been tested in New Zealand’s winter as it gears toward mass production, due to be launched in early 2022.

In July 2021, Nio spent a month testing the ET7 at the Southern Hemisphere Proving Grounds near Queenstown.

It has about 37 snow flats, ice flats, and handling tracks which helped Nio verify such features as ABS, ESC, TCS, and others to ensure stability and controllability of the ET7.

The EV has three battery options – 70kWh, 100kWh and 150kWh battery – the latter having about 965.6km range.

It will continue to go through a series of rigorous global tests, Nio says.

The Nio ET7 was unveiled in China on January 9 this year at a ‘Nio Day’ event in Chengdu, retaining many design cues of the 2019 Nio ET Preview concept car.

The ET7 has two electric motors, one in the front and rear of the car, producing a combined output of 480kW of power and 850Nm torque, accelerating from zero to 100km in 3.9 seconds.

The EV has an autonomous driving system called Aquila, which uses 33 sensors, including 11 eight-megapixel high-definition cameras and a long-distance high-definition camera, a high-resolution Lidar with a 500m range, 5mm wave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars, and two high-precision positioning units.

The Aquila autonomous driving system generates eight gigabytes of data a second which is analysed by an onboard computer called Adam.