China’s EV war: Tesla faces a rival with a record 621-mile range as NIO’s ET7 electric car raises the ante in world’s largest market

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The Standard Edition of NIO’s ET7 electric car, with a price tag of 448,000 yuan (US$69,184) before subsidy, has a range of 500 kilometres using a 70 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery pack

The Premier Edition can go as far as 700km on a 100 kWh battery while the Extended Edition has a stated range of 1,000km using a 150 kWh battery

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Daniel Ren

Published: 1:25pm, 10 Jan 2021Updated: 3:31pm, 26 Jan 2021

NIO has launched a mass production electric car with what could be the world’s farthest driving range, as it ups the ante with Tesla for customers in the largest market for new-energy vehicles on the planet.

The Standard Edition of NIO’s ET7 electric car, with a price tag of 448,000 yuan (US$69,184) before subsidy, has a driving range of 500 kilometres using a 70 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery pack, or about 7 per cent farther than Tesla’s Shanghai-made Model 3, which sells for 249,000 yuan after subsidy.

The Premier Edition of the ET7 can go as far as 700km on a 100 kWh battery for a 536,000 yuan price tag while the Extended Edition has a stated range of 1,000km on a single charge, using a 150 kWh battery, the carmaker said. The price of the Extended Edition is not immediately available.

“We will continuously invest in products and technologies, and speed up the development of our service network, thereby bringing a better experience of smart electric vehicles to users,” NIO founder and chief executive William Li Bin said during a launch ceremony at the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu on Saturday night.

NIO's chief executive William Li Bin unveils the ET7 all-electric ET7 sedan at the carmaker's global launch ceremony at the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu on January 9, 2021. Photo: Daniel Ren

Competition is heating up in China’s electric vehicle market as almost 200 carmakers and internet start-ups jostle for supremacy in an industry where one in every five cars will be powered by a non-fossil fuel source by 2025. China, the world’s largest market for all vehicles since 2009, also has the most number of electric cars on the nation’s roads.