Australia has one of the most severe climates in the world, which is why car company’s like to use us for testing. Theory is, if it works in Australia (and on our terrible roads), it’ll basically work anywhere.
This unreleased EV was spotted by @DavidCaoEV, in full camouflage wrap in regional Victoria in the town of Mildura. After some back and forward on Twitter, it was correctly identified as the Chinese-built Nio ES6 (namely thanks to the wheels. Check out the image below (flipped to match the photo above).
The Nio ES6 is an SUV with a 510km range, and powers from 0-100km/hr in just 4.7 seconds. The car is expected to be released in China in the 4th quarter of 2019, at hopefully Australia on a similar timeframe.
The car features a top speed of 200km/hr and will come with 2 variants. The standard model offers dual high efficiency 160kW electric motors (front and rear). However if you opt for the performance model, the Nio ES6 uses a 160kW high efficiency motor at the front and 240kW high performance motor at the back.
David also snapped a couple of other closeups.
The inside of the Nio ES6 also looks pretty spectacular, with a Tesla-style vertically mounted touchscreen, but there’s also a crazy AI robot / driver monitoring system.
Of course to be taken seriously, you need to have an autonomous driving system and of course the Nio has that, with NioPilot featuring 12 ultrasonic radars, 4x 360 cameras to get a complete view of the surroundings, 5 millimeter wave radars and a trifocal camera. This camera, radar and sensor array combines to enable highway autopilot, traffic jam pilot and for the car to park itself.
Personally I’m incredibly keen to see what the Chinese brands can offer the Australian market, particularly in terms of technology vs price pressure on overseas brands. Obviously they’re at a considerable geological advantage, with shipping costs far less than US-built vehicles.
When do we expect it to be on sale in Australia?
How much forced labor goes into building these cars?
Sitting here in Australia, I don’t typically make accusations about things I have no evidence of.
None unless you count the robots. China car manufacturing is the most robot intensive in the world.