NIO’s compact SUV gets top design honors.
The NIO ES6 has been awarded the top mark for vehicle design in the 2020 Automotive Brand Contest. The ES6 took first place in the exterior premium brand category.
This isn’t the first time the Chinese automaker has been honored at Automotive Brand Contest. Back in 2017, NIO won in the categories “Concepts”, “Brand Design” and “Digital” for the fully-autonomous concept car dubbed “EVE”.
NIO Concept EVE, autonomous vision car of the future
However, this was the first time NIO has left the Automotive Brand Contest with an award for an actual production vehicle, making the victory even more appreciated.
After we already won prizes with NIO “EVE”, this important award is now the first for a series-production vehicle from NIO. The fact that the jury awarded our production-ready work top marks means a lot to us. It confirms once again that we are on the right track with our guideline ‘Driven by Design’. – NIO’s Vice President of Design, Kris Tomasson
We had the opportunity to drive a NIO ES6 in Beijing last December and to experience NIO’s battery swap stations. Battery swap service comes free with NIO’s vehicles and changes the battery with a fully-charged one in 5 to 6 minutes, provided there isn’t another vehicle ahead of you when you arrive at the battery swap station.
NIO encourages customers to make a reservation so they can avoid customers waiting for other vehicles to be serviced. At the time, NIO had approximately 125 battery swap locations, but that number has most likely increased since our visit 5 months ago.
In order to more easily accommodate NIO’s different vehicle offerings at the battery swap stations, the battery packs for all NIO’s cars are all the same physical size and have the same connectors for electronics and liquid cooling. While they are the same physical size, they do come in different sizes as far as energy storage. There’s a 70 kWh pack, an 84 kWh pack and soon there will be a 100 kWh one as well.
There’s no charge to swap your pack for a fully-charged one that’s the same size as yours, but if you want a larger-capacity pack, you pay a daily rental fee until you return it. Therefore, ES6 or ES8 owners that paid for the 70 kWh battery pack can rent a 100 kWh pack for a few days if they were going on a long road trip.
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