Last week, the national tour of the NIO ET5 came to Guangzhou, and I happened to run into it on Friday when I went to the NIO House in Guangzhou. At that time, I posted photos in the owner group, and many car owners wanted to go over on the weekend to see it. I didn't think about it, but it was later said that because of the epidemic, the only exhibition car on Friday night was pulled away, and many people didn't see it in the weekend, which was a pity.
Speaking of the ET5 car, I have already made a video on Nio Day in Suzhou a month ago and introduced it. On NIO Day, NIO actually arranged for the head of the ET5 model and the development engineer to meet with the media, and they also shared a lot of stories about the development process of the ET5. In my video, there are many interesting development stories that I don't have the space to expand on. Even because the shooting time was very tight at that time, I didn't even take a few more photos. This time I remembered this in the cow house, and I quickly took a few more photos to tell you more about the car.
In the communication process at that time, the development engineers have always stressed to us: Since the ET5 has achieved this size, the positioning must be biased towards movement, so the front and rear axles of this car achieve a weight distribution of 50:50, which is the goal set at the beginning of development.
In addition, in order to ensure the sporty performance, the ET5 must also occupy space and use the suspension form of the front and rear five links. Here I want to expand on this: according to my experience in trying to drive a variety of electric vehicles in recent years, because the weight of electric vehicles is much heavier than that of similarly sized fuel vehicles, so if the front suspension is also used with a more conventional McPherson suspension, the body dynamic performance will not be too good, because every time you accelerate, brake, and corner, the McPherson suspension is difficult to give the heavy body better support, then the body dynamics will be "chaotic". Coupled with the acceleration ability of the electric car, the ride will not be too comfortable.
Therefore, leaving aside the control of what not, even if it is considered daily driving, at this stage of technical conditions, electric vehicles are best to be suspended in the form of double wishbones and multi-link rods. Judging from the current models on the market, the watershed of the product is indeed very obvious: mcPherson's front suspension is mostly an electric vehicle product that pays attention to economy and transportation; and the models that use double wishbones or five-link front suspension are obviously from a newer and higher development platform, and generally have more powerful power.
Last time in Suzhou and this time in Guangzhou, the ET5 show car is the color of aerospace blue, I don't know if it is the same. The Pirelli P-ZERO tires equipped with the show car, I personally guess, are only to show the temporary installation, and the final mass production version of the tire estimation engineer is still in the process of urgent calibration. At present, There are only three tire suppliers in Weilai: Hankook, Ma brand, and Pirelli, and from the performance of several SUV products, the products of these three tire suppliers are still very reliable, and the calibration of Weilai is also doing well. After the ET5 is officially launched, we will analyze in detail its several different rims and tire combinations, and what performance differences will be made.
In terms of braking, this time the ET5 uses a four-piston caliper developed by Weizu. On NIO Day, the media will also surely ask: "Why not use Brembo?" ”。 The engineer's answer is that the self-developed products can be better targeted and adjusted, and the later upgrade and improvement can be more timely. When hearing this answer, my first reaction is the current Brembo brake is a strange problem that many users react to, I don't know if this is also the reason why Weilai changed the supplier (Weilai comes from the research caliper, but it is certainly handed over to the OEM supplier to produce, but who is this supplier at present, Weilai has not said).
The front face of the ET5, because the model positioning is more youthful, is also designed to be more aggressive. The design of this Shark Nose shark nose is indeed more forward-looking than the big brother ET7. Weilai engineers said that the biggest challenge of this design is to pass the rigorous pedestrian protection test in Europe and the United States. This NIO Day, NIO has released a vision, by 2025 to sell products to more than 50 countries and regions around the world, ET5 is undoubtedly one of the core models of NIO's global strategy, safety design must be forward-looking.
As for the rear of the ET5, many people say it looks good. Including this time in the cow house, I also saw many people standing at the back of the car for a long time to admire. The rear of the ET5, because it has a very multi-layered design, it must also be a key part of the game between the design and manufacturing teams when it is developed. Cars are like this, the design team always wants to give what they think is the most beautiful solution, and the production department will definitely want to remove a lot of complex designs because of cost, manufacturing difficulty, and so on. The rear of the ET5 mass production version can present this state, and the design team of Weilai should already be very satisfied, right?
The rear of the ET5 adopts a beautiful slipback design, and many people will also ask such a question: Why not make the hatchback tailgate directly? Isn't that much more practical? I remember on NIO Day, the engineers pointed out that the real car explained to us: if the hatchback tailgate is made, then the reargate hinge must be placed very front, which will affect the head space of the rear seat, and after weighing, they still gave up the hatchback tailgate design.
Finally, I would like to talk about a "detail" that many people have not noticed: although ET5, like all the big brothers, insists on the use of dual motors and four-wheel drive solutions, it is the induction motor on the front wheel, the permanent magnet motor on the rear wheel, this collocation scheme is the first time in Weilai's model. On NIO Day, engineers also made it clear that ET5 will be mainly wheel-driven after the daily meeting, which is different from the current SUV products.
It can be said that Weilai attaches great importance to handling on the ET5 car this time, from design to hardware to tuning. I am also very, very much looking forward to being able to drive this car as soon as possible and see what kind of vitality experience this Weilai, which represents the youngest image, can give me.