What progress has NIO ET7 made in the most insightful test drive on the Internet?

Preface

During my business trip in Shanghai, I had a week-long experience with the ET7. During this time, I drove from Shanghai to Hangzhou, then from Hangzhou to Ningbo via the Hangzhou Bay Bridge before returning to Shanghai. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, I also made a round trip from Dianshan Lake to Zhujiajiao, with a total mileage of nearly 500 kilometers.

In-Depth Experience

As a car enthusiast and investor in the intelligent EV industry chain since 2016, I have personally purchased several EVs, including the NIO ES8 Founder’s Edition, the LI ONE, the Tesla Model 3 LR, and the Model Y LR. At the end of the year, I plan to buy the L9, and all these new energy vehicles have accumulated more than 50,000 kilometers of driving experience.

Design and Workmanship

The overall design of the ET7 is excellent. I particularly like the rear and side profile of the car (ignoring the LIDAR on the forehead).

As for the interior design, except for the disappointment of the vertical single screen + instrument panel + cylindrical gearshift lever inherited from the previous generation, there are no obvious shortcomings.

Regarding the gearshift lever, on the one hand, I think Tesla’s stalk shift lever is the most convenient (manual shift lever is handy on the center console in the manual transmission era, but automatic transmissions don’t require frequent operation). On the other hand, I find that the center console gearshift lever occupies too much space (especially when you need to place two mobile phones, I think it’s also important to have a place for the front passenger to put their phone).

Of course, there are a few minor shortcomings in the details:

  • The inner window edge and the outer window edge are not aligned, which is a bit puzzling as I believe the ET7 is the only model that has this issue.
  • The button and damping feel of the center console armrest cover are very cheap, which does not match the price of the ET7.

Energy Consumption and Range

The energy consumption of the ET7 is very impressive. On the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, the energy consumption even dropped to 14.2 kWh/100 kilometers. Throughout the week, the energy consumption remained at 16-18 kWh/100 kilometers.

NIO has finally taken energy consumption seriously, which is commendable. Back then, when I drove my ES8 from Beijing to Wutai Mountain, the energy consumption reached 34 kWh/100 kilometers. I had to stop at three charging stations before arriving at the mountain in the late evening. The experience was quite frustrating. When I went to Taiyuan, I just stayed in Shijiazhuang for the night.

The reduction in energy consumption directly led to a real range of over 400 kilometers for the ET7. I only charged the car once during my week-long experience, but there was no concern about the range throughout the journey. This also confirms an investment judgment I made back then – “if the real-world range exceeds 350 kilometers, users won’t care about the battery size anymore.”

Although a full gasoline tank can sometimes reach 800 kilometers on the fuel gauge, the actual daily driving range is only slightly over 400 kilometers. When buying a car, few people pay attention to the fuel tank capacity, right?

Power and HandlingI prefer using sport mode for all driving, and set the energy regeneration to the highest gear when in the city. The NT2.0 chassis tuning of ET7 finally resolved the loose feeling from the ES8, making cruising within traffic effortless. The softness of ES8 made me nervous even when changing lanes on Beijing ring road, and I wouldn’t feel stable when driving above 100km/h on a highway.

Comfort

Noise level is much better compared to the ES8. To be more specific, on the ES8 founder version, it was impossible to make a phone call in the car when traveling over 80 km/h due to extreme noise; but on ET7, even when traveling at 120 km/h, there’s no such problem.

As for design, as a non-frame car door, it’s already better than the Model 3 and Model Y.

However, I want to point out something about the comfort of ET7 that others might not talk about: the accelerator pedal is tiny, even though it’s still a floor pedal design.

Under current pedal feedback pressure, I don’t know of any regulation or quality standard, but the small pedal exerts high pressure on a localized area of the foot. It caused some pain on my right foot during a long drive from Hangzhou, passing through Ningbo, to Shanghai.

Talking about navigation, there are lots of complaints.

NIO’s navigation really embodies the brand’s principle of always giving users the choice. It recalculates and displays a new route at every intersection, even when no alternative route is more optimal than the current one, based on recommended dimensions such as distance, red lights, and tolls.

For drivers with average navigational sense or unfamiliarity with the road conditions, it’s a disaster. At every intersection, they would have frustration, wondering about their location or if they made a wrong turn or which lane to take.

Autonomous Driving

I haven’t experienced much with autonomous driving since I prefer driving myself. I haven’t had to rely on autonomous driving for conserving energy yet.

Saving the driver’s energy is what I consider to be the current greatest value of autonomous driving, just like how the automobile of century ago, Otto gasoline engine + tank, saved human energy for travel.

During the 2020 Spring Festival, I drove the LI ONE from Beijing to Fujian and back. In March, I drove through the night from Beijing to Shanghai and back, covering a one-day trip of 1,200 km with the help of autonomous driving.

However, I noticed a change in the engineering implementation of the steering wheel control with NT2.0 in a small amount of usage.

When I experienced the ES8 and the LI ONE with an autonomous driving company engineer previously, the difference in the steering wheel’s rotational feeling when turning was significantly different between the two vehicles. The ES8 had a clear serrated feeling, as if it would suddenly swerve to the side and made people feel very unconfident, while the ET7 no longer has that strange feeling.

However, there is one design of NIO’s autonomous driving that I personally don’t like, and that’s the start button on the steering wheel.I think the design of this button is too simple and direct. As a brand new system function of intelligent cars, automatic driving requires a lot of user training and has a high cognitive threshold. I think an independent right-hand dial can not only reduce the risk of accidentally activating functions during daily driving and consider families with multiple users and cars, but also force drivers to maintain a feeling of tension in hand control during startup and shutdown.

Other aspects

I did encounter some bugs. For example:

①Pannel keys flashing and drifting. When opening the air conditioning interface on the central control screen, it often crashes and needs to be pressed again. When opening, due to slow rendering, the images of the seat and air conditioning/massage function keys will appear dislocated at the interface. It is said to be an issue with the new upgraded version, which I happened to be the first to use. I hope it can be resolved by upgrading in the future.

②Dashboard position is too high. If the steering wheel height is adjusted to a position that does not affect the line of sight of the bonnet, or a lower position for the convenience of the co-driver, the steering wheel will block most of the information on the dashboard. Of course, this is a problem that all cars are prone to. The HUD can solve this problem very well.

③Electronic switch of the car door. The location and size of the design are obviously considered from the point of view of convenience. Passengers can open the door by grabbing the door panel slot.

However, there was a bit of unexpected trouble during driving. When I relaxed my left hand on the door panel, the panel showed “the door has been unlocked” just because I hit my thigh on the panel due to large bumps on the road! Of course, I did not continue the dangerous test on the elevated road, but I specially tried it in a static state. I found that in the D gear state, the electric lock can be opened by pressing it twice, and the gear position will not automatically jump to the P gear! I think this is definitely a safety design bug, and I hope NIO can fix it as soon as possible.

Summary

Overall, I am very pleased to see the huge progress of NIO from the ES8 to the ET7, especially in energy consumption and handling, and finally becoming an electric product with a solid foundation.

I hope NIO can continue to make greater breakthroughs in intelligence and continue to lead China’s new forces to the world stage.

Ideally, we hope that other car companies, including XPeng, will also continue to work hard.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.