Car stuff (public number: chedongxi)
Author | Haohan
Edited by | Xiaohan
Weilai has a new car! This time it's the ET5, which starts at 328,000.
Just this evening, NIO held the 2021 NIO DAY event in Suzhou, releasing its fifth production model and second sedan, the ET5.
The car has a handsome appearance that is extremely in line with the aesthetics of young people, a CLTC endurance of 4.3 seconds of zero hundred acceleration, 550 to 1000 kilometers, lidar, full-scene L2 autonomous driving capabilities covering high speeds and cities, and immersive enhancement and virtual reality experience through customized AR/VR glasses.
▲NIO ET5
Most importantly, it is the cheapest product in NIO's models on sale!
If the whole vehicle is purchased, the naked car will be sold for 328,000 yuan. Taking the battery rental model is only 258,000 yuan, and you can still enjoy the services such as power exchange and charging that Weilai is proud of.
In recent years, NIO has become a well-known smart electric vehicle brand in domestic first- and second-tier cities. Its ace model ES6 can sell thousands of units per month with a starting price of up to 350,000, which is an eye-catching performance, which also shows that the brand has been recognized by some consumers.
In the view of the car, the ET5 will directly compete with the Tesla Model 3 and Xiaopeng P7 high-end models after the listing, but with excellent parameters (such as the farthest 1000 km endurance), handsome shape and point-to-point L2, AR/VR and other intelligent selling points, the model will most likely become a blockbuster product, pulling the overall sales of Weilai to a new level.
For the smart electric vehicle market in 2022, NIO ET5 is bound to be an important presence.
▲Comparison of WEILAI ET5, Model 3 high-performance version, and Xiaopeng P7
First, the price of 328,000 Weilai ET5 is coming
With a body size of 4790/1960/1499mm and a wheelbase of 2888mm, the NIO ET5 is positioned as a mid-size sports coupe. From the appearance point of view, the design style of weilai ET5 is very close to that of Weilai ET7, but its overall size is one size smaller than that of Weilai ET7, and the wind resistance coefficient of the car is only 0.24.
Nio ET5 has a total of 9 colors for consumers to choose from, including 3 very young exclusive colors, namely mirror air powder, cloud first yellow and aerospace blue, and the color of the show car unveiled this time is cloud first yellow and space blue.
▲All colors of NIO ET5
Pulling the car door, the NIO ET5 uses frameless doors that match its coupe positioning, and is equipped with an electric suction door and an electric telescopic handle function, which is in line with the latest Mercedes-Benz S-Class at this point. Inside the car, the interior style of the NIO ET5 and NIO ET7 is also very close.
Weilai ET5 is equipped with two screens, namely a 10.2-inch HDR instrument panel, and an AMOLED central control screen with a resolution of 1728 * 1888, and the car is equipped with 5G module, UWB module, WIFI-6, Bluetooth 5.2 and other configurations, which also provide a guarantee for the communication capabilities of the vehicle.
▲The interior design of NIO ET5
In terms of power, WEILAI ET5 adopts four-wheel drive, the front axle is equipped with a 150kW induction motor, the rear axle is equipped with a 210kW permanent magnet motor, the maximum power of the vehicle reaches 360kW (about 480 horsepower), and the maximum torque is 700N·m, which also makes the 100 km acceleration time of the NIO ET5 reach 4.3 seconds.
▲Weilai ET5 comes standard with intelligent four-wheel drive
In terms of vehicle chassis, the front and rear suspension of THE NIO ET5 are five-link structure, the height of the vehicle's center of gravity is 482.6mm, and with the ultra-wide wheelbase of 1685 mm, the maneuverability of the NIO ET5 is guaranteed.
▲Weilai ET5 adopts five-link suspension before and after
In terms of battery capacity, NIO ET5 will be equipped with 75kWh, 100kWh, 150kWh three capacity battery packs, CLTC mileage will exceed 550 kilometers, 700 kilometers and 1000 kilometers respectively.
▲Some vehicle parameters of NIO ET5
Before the official release of ET5, Ma Lin, senior director of WEILAI Communications, sent a circle of friends to warm up for this year's NIO Day and new car releases, and added a hashtag of 5 greater than 3 to the copy, which means that AFTER the launch of THE NIO ET5, it will directly compete with Tesla Model 3 and the new BMW i3 (pure electric version 3 series) that will be listed.
▲Screenshot of Ma Lin's circle of friends, senior director of WEILAI Communication
After introducing the parameters of the vehicle, Li Bin announced the price range of the NIO ET5. Among them, the version equipped with a 75kWh battery is priced at 328,000 yuan before subsidy, and the version equipped with a 100kWh battery is priced at 386,000 yuan before subsidy, while if the user chooses to use NIO's battery rental plan, the two vehicles are both 258,000 yuan, while the monthly battery supply is 980 yuan and 1480 yuan, respectively.
From the perspective of price, the average price of the NIO ET5 is more expensive than the Tesla Model 3 high-performance version and the BMW 3 series (fuel version), but it can be counted in a price range, and whether the WEILAI ET5 has competed with the Model 3 high-performance version and the future pure electric version of the three series, it will not be known until the car is listed in September next year.
Second, the vehicle has 33 sensing hardware, using NVIDIA Orin chip
The NIO ET5 is equipped with the NIO supersensitive system Aquila, which has a total of 33 perception hardware, including an ultra-long-range lidar, 7 8-megapixel HD cameras, 4 3-megapixel high-sensitivity surround view cameras, five millimeter-wave radar, and 12 ultrasonic sensors.
▲The perception hardware configuration of THE NIO ET5
It is worth mentioning that the 4 high-sensitivity surround view cameras equipped with the NIO ET5 use the industry's first Sony's latest generation of 3 million pixel high-sensitivity surround view cameras, which perform better in low light and can better support 360 panoramic images and other functions.
▲Sony's 3-megapixel high-sensitivity surround view camera
In addition, Li Bin did not introduce the specific parameters of other automatic driving perception hardware, it can be guessed that the lidar and 8 million pixel camera on the WEILAI ET5 may be consistent with the WEILAI ET7 released last year, which is the same as an equivalent 300-line,
The maximum detection distance is 500 meters, the detection angle reaches 120 degrees of lidar, and has a dynamic focus function, which can better identify people and vehicles.
▲ "Watchtower" type lidar
Like the ET7, THE LIDAR of the NIO ET5 is also installed on the top of the car, which can better eliminate blind spots and have more field of view.
On the autopilot chip, NIO ET5, like NIO ET7, is equipped with NIO's ADAM supercomputing platform, which uses 4 Nvidia Drive Orin chips, with 48 CPU cores, 256 matrix computing units, 8096 floating-point computing units, a total of 68 billion transistors, so that the car's computing power reached 1016TOPS, and the computing power is four times that of Tesla's FSD chips.
▲NIO ADAM supercomputing platform
These four chips include both the main computer chip, the redundant chip, and a chip responsible for group intelligence and personality training, that is to say, with the blessing of this chip, Weilai's automatic driving will become more in line with the user's car habits.
With such powerful perception and computing power, NIO ET5 comes standard with 19 assisted driving functions such as lane keeping and intelligent adaptive cruise.
In the future, ET5 will gradually realize the point-to-point automatic driving function of high-speed, urban area, parking, power exchange and other scenarios. The full function of NAD will adopt the service subscription model of "monthly activation and monthly payment", that is, ADaaS, and the service fee is 680 yuan per month.
▲The 19 assisted driving functions of the NIO ET5 are standard
Third, Li Bin instructed more clothes Alan Walker participated in the online performance
This year's NIO Day was held in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, this year's NIO Day logo is also very Suzhou garden style, from the first NIO Day in 2017, NIO Day has accompanied NIO riders across the country through the fifth year.
▲2021NIO Day
Suzhou at the end of December, the evening temperature has dropped to about 5 degrees, due to the recent domestic epidemic distribution, in order to meet the requirements of epidemic prevention, the event venue can not open air conditioning and heating, the audience in the venue are wearing thick down jackets, outside the venue, Weilai also provides free "hot wine" for all audiences to avoid the cold, and reminds everyone to drink and not drive.
Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile, also wrote a welcome letter by hand before the event, saying that because the air conditioner could not be turned on in the venue, he instructed everyone to wear more clothes.
▲ Li Bin's handwritten letter
The annual NIO Day is a new product launch for Weilai, but it is essentially more like a user carnival. Two days before the event, many Weilai riders from all over the country drove their own Weilai cars to Suzhou to participate in this activity, and at the scene, Weilai also provided many Weilai mobile charging vehicles for these drivers who drove to participate in the event.
▲Weilai charging car outside the venue
It is worth mentioning that this NIO Day also invited the famous European music producer Alan Walker to participate in the online performance, and unveiled his new single "Hello World" created for Weilai, which is very electronic.
At the beginning of the press conference, Li Bin, founder of WEILAI Automobile, introduced the current charging and replacing service network of WEILAI. Up to now, WEILAI has a total of 733 substations across the country, providing users with more than 5.5 million power replacement services, and on average, one Weilai car owner has completed the power replacement every 4.2 seconds.
In 2022, NIO will continue to lay out a charging and swapping service network, with more than 1,300 substations, 6,000 supercharge piles, 10,000 destination charging piles nationwide, and more than 30 destination charging routes such as the Silk Road and Xishuangbanna Rainforest.
▲There are a total of 733 substations in the country
In addition, NIO announced the official launch of the ecological co-construction program Clean Parks, which supports the use of smart electric vehicles in natural protected areas around the world, the construction of clean energy infrastructure, and the protection of the integrity of the ecosystem.
At this press conference, Li Bin also announced the new progress of NIO ET7, which said that the preparation for the mass production of NIO ET7 is progressing smoothly, ET7 will start delivery on March 28 next year, and call ET7 not white!
Conclusion: WEILAI enters the mid-range pure electricity market
Overall, although the NIO ET5 released this time has no technical breakthroughs and does not bring new features, THE NIO ET5 is more like a miniature version or short-axis version of THERA ET7. However, the NIO ET5 has become the lowest starting price of all NIO models, which also proves that NIO will enter the mid-end pure electric market to compete.
Previously, the sub-brands with lower positioning claimed by Weilai did not appear at this NIO Day, so it is estimated that Weilai will have new actions in 2022.