Right at the beginning to September, NIO invited some journalists and potential customers to get a first look at and experience the European version of the company’s flagship vehicle, the ES8. Personally, before “experiencing” the car, I did not expect it to be so good. I have already published an in-depth article review of the ES8, and today I’m publishing the video review.
When it comes to how amazing this car is, seeing is believing, and the best evidence of that was our CEO Zachary Shahan’s response to the video today. When I reminded him that I did not originally expect this car to be this good, he said, “I was not expecting it, even after your article. Some things have to be seen.”
At the same time as the above video review, we are also publishing a complete walkthrough of the NIO user interface in English and a closer look at the NOMI assistant. From climate control & music to every last screen of the settings, this UI is very well made, like you would expect in a Tesla. In fact, in some ways, it goes a few steps beyond Tesla.
Charging Speed
One of the biggest additions we made to our video review is some more information about charging speed. At fast chargers, the NIO ES8 with its CCS port can reach up to 90 kW. In our article review, there were a bunch of people in the comment section complaining that this is a letdown, which is in fact ridiculous. This max power is even slightly above the peak charging rate of a shared Tesla V2 supercharger stall, which is just 75 kW. Cars that charge at speeds below 60 kW, those are problematic, yet even then we have a journalist at CleanTechnica, Maarten Vinkhuizen, who makes road trips across Europe in his Renault Zoe on a regular basis. Saying that 90 kW is bad is basically saying that EVs like the Hyundai Kona EV and the Ford Mustang Mach-E are bad as well, which I can tell you from personal experience is not the case at all.
While NIO has not yet announced exact plans for the rollout of battery swapping stations throughout Europe, they plan to have a sizeable network by the year 2025. So far, they are starting out by launching in Norway, and the moment that the first customers get their vehicles, this little country will already have 4 swapping stations in Oslo, Norway. Another 4 will be added throughout the country sometime next year. A battery swap takes a mere 3 minutes, which basically equals a charging speed of 10,000 km/h.
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