The Nio EL6 is one of a wave of new electric cars from China. Currently, the brand's European presence extends to Germany, Holland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, and it has pledged to expand into other parts of Europe in due course. At present, it hasn’t been officially confirmed whether that will include the UK, but considering we were flown to Germany to meet the Managing Director of Nio UK, and drive the new EL6, Nio's arrival in the UK is surely more a a case of ‘when’ than ‘if’.
The EL6 is a midsize electric SUV that Nio hopes will steal sales from cars such as the BMW iX3 and iX, Tesla Model Y and Model X, and Audi Q8 E-Tron. That’s pretty accomplished company to be mixing in, so how will the Chinese brand stand out? Well, as we’ll discover, Nio has one or two tricks up its sleeve, and is quietly confident in making a splash.
Nio EL6 review:
- What is the Nio EL6?
- Nio EL6 Interior
- Space and Practicality
- Equipment and Technology
- Battery Swap
- Charging and Range
- Power and Performance
- Ride and Handling
- Buying and Owning
- Verdict
What is the Nio EL6?
The EL6 itself is a large five-seat family SUV with a purely electric powertrain, and so will be going up against premium electric SUV rivals such as the Audi Q6 E-Tron and Audi Q8 E-Tron, the BMW iX3 and iX, the Mercedes EQC and the Polestar 3.
At first glance, the EL6’s styling is nothing that’s going to have jaws dropping to the pavement as it rolls quietly by, but it is nevertheless a largely attractive and cohesively styled car. The narrow headlight motifs that sit on the grille-free front end look clean and sophisticated, while down the sides of the car, the big alloy wheels fill their arches effortlessly, and the tapering roofline drops away towards the back of the car to give a reasonably slinky silhouette. Meanwhile, a short rear overhang and rear lights with a connecting strip make the car’s rear haunches appear compact and neat.
That’s not to say that it’s completely free of oddness, though. Look just above the windscreen, and you’ll notice three odd humps in the roof of the car, one small one on either side and a bigger, squarer one in the middle. These house the various sensors and cameras needed to enable the car’s autonomous driving functionality. In other cars we’ve come across that have this technology, these sensors are hidden away far more discreetly, but the EL6 seems to wear them like some sort of brash statement of technological magnificence.
Nio EL6 Interior
Many folk in the know consider Nio to be like a Chinese equivalent of Tesla, and nowhere is this comparison more evident than with the touchscreen infotainment system. Not only is it portrait-orientated like a Tesla’s, and not only is it roughly the same size, but the graphics, the operating system and the menu layouts are almost a carbon copy, right down to the way that the main ventilation controls and other shortcuts for commonly used functions are lined up along the bottom of the screen.
Like with a Tesla, this does result in very little in the way of physical buttons or switches; there are only three buttons to be found on the dashboard, and literally everything else controlled via the touchscreen (you even adjust the position of your steering column and door mirrors through it!). This will be great for those who love a minimalist aesthetic, but not so great for those who like to be able to adjust their air-con settings without using a screen.
That said, while the system can be a little bamboozling to use at first due to the sheer amount of functionality it has to take care of, once you get a bit of practice it’s actually an impressively intuitive system to navigate. Meanwhile, the graphics are sharp, the transitions are crisp and the screen has good sensitivity, so the system does feel quite slick. Your ears might prick up when we mention that no Apple CarPlay or Android Auto is provided, and there are currently no plans to add it, as Nio reckons some of the functions and services provided by its own native system can’t be supported. Make of that what you will.
The digital driver’s display behind the steering wheel - again, very Tesla-like - continues the feeling of technological swishness, and there’s a head-up display, too.
What’s not so Tesla-like, however, is the quality inside the EL6, and in a very good way. The materials and the way they’re assembled are a real cut above those of the American firm, giving a genuinely high-end feel. We wouldn't go quite so far as to say that it’s a match for the best German brands on quality, but it certainly doesn’t feel out of place in their company, and that’s praise indeed. The interior looks pretty funky, too. There are four interior themes to choose from - the all-black one is a bit monotonous and dreary, but avoid that, and you get a really pleasant mixture of colours, trims and finishes that feel modern, attractive and classy.
Space and Practicality
Not only is the interior stylish and sophisticated, it’s also spacious, and this is no great surprise when the EL6 is such a big car. At 4.8 metres long, it sits slap-bang in the middle of a BMW X3 and X5 for size, and it’s a wide car, too, at over two metres across.
Even with a tall driver and passenger installed up front, the rear seats provide absolutely loads of legroom, and headroom is generous as well, so even tall passengers get to stretch out comfortably. The wide cabin also makes life relatively comfortable when carrying three people back there, and the wide middle seat has a flat floor in front of it, so ending up in the central pew won’t feel like too much of a short straw.
A 668-litre boot also sounds very impressive, but that’s not the full story. Open up the standard powered tailgate, and the space before you looks considerably smaller than that, because it’s rather on the shallow side. However, lift up the boot floor, which is moveable, and there’s lots more space underneath.
With the boot floor out, there’s a large load lip and a large step up to the bottom of the rear seats, so when you fold them down for maximum space, there are sizeable steps in the load floor. However, reinstalling the false floor levels these steps off perfectly. The rear seat backs are split 40/20/40, which is much more versatile that a conventional 60/40 layout. However, when folded the seat backs don’t quite lie flat, so there’s a small slope in your extended load area.
Equipment and Technology
With Nio yet to confirm it’ll sell cars in the UK, it’s no surprise that official equipment specs are some way off being confirmed.
However, we were told that Nio’s general product strategy doesn’t involve traditional trim levels, and that a single high-end version of a car is offered with everything on it. Customers are then only required to make a couple more decisions over the spec of their car, including paint colours, alloy wheel design and interior theme.
The test cars we drove in Germany were absolutely packed to the rafters with pretty much every item of luxury equipment you can think of. We’d expect the same on UK cars, partly because they’ll need all that stuff if the EL6 is going to compete with the Audis and BMWs of the world, and also because having a standard spec coming out of the factory for all markets makes the manufacturing process simpler, and therefore, cheaper.
But however rosy the ‘Equipment’ aspect looks, it’s the ‘Technology’ aspect that’s far more interesting where Nio is concerned. That’s because this company has one or two little tricks up its sleeve that genuinely set it apart from the competition.
The first of them is known as Nomi. Loot at our pictures of the interior, and you’ll notice a small robot-like head sitting on top of the dashboard: that’s Nomi. She’s (Nio insists on calling Nomi a ‘she’) dubbed as your personal assistant, and responds to voice commands to perform various different tasks: You simply say ‘Hey Nomi’ to get her attention, followed by your command.
Okay, so there’s nothing particularly new about voice control. Where Nomi differs, however, is that she turns towards you when you address her, and that she uses Artificial Intelligence to learn your preferences.
Well, in theory at least. We found during our test drive that it took several goes at ‘Hey Nomi’ - in a variety of different intonations and volumes - before she’d even register the prompt, and even once she did, she either didn’t understand the command or couldn’t carry out the request. We can only hope that the AI improves things as time goes on.
Battery Swap
The thing that really sets Nio apart from the rest of the electric car pack, however, is its battery swap service. Like with any other electric car, you’ll ordinarily slow-charge your EL6 at home, supplemented by the odd public rapid-charge when needed. With Nio, however, there’s another alternative. If your battery is running low, and you happen to be near one of the company’s battery swap stations, you can simply book a slot through your car’s infotainment system, and when you arrive, your depleted battery will be changed over for a fully charged one in less than five minutes, leaving you to go on your merry way.
Now obviously, that’s a big investment in infrastructure on Nio’s part, and it’ll be a while before that infrastructure is up and running in the UK, and at a scale that makes the service genuinely useful. Over the last couple of years, around 30 locations have been established across the five European countries mentioned, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but in China, where the brand has had more time to work on the rollout, there are around 1,700 spread across the country. And once the network is at a viable scale in the UK, this service will be an interesting prospect for many, because not only is it a way of quickly replenishing the charge in your car, it’s also an interesting solution for would-be EV drivers who don’t have the off-street parking need to allow charging at home.
Charging and Range
You choose from two battery options in your EL6. The entry-level 75kWh battery gives you an official range of up to 252 miles, while the 100kWh battery increases your potential range to 329 miles.
The 75kWh battery can rapid-charge at speeds of up to 140kW, which Nio says can get you a 10-80% top-up in around 40 minutes. The 100kWh battery, meanwhile, has a maximum charging speed of 180kW, earning you the same level of charge in 30 minutes. Hook your EL6 up to a standard 7.4kW wallbox home charger, and you’re looking at a charge time of around eight hours on the ‘smaller’ battery, and twelve hours on the ‘larger’ one.
Power and Performance
Regardless of which battery you choose, you get the same twin-motor powertrain, with a 201bhp motor on the front axle and a 282bhp motor on the rear axle. This gives you four-wheel drive most of the time, but under light acceleration loads, like when cruising on the motorway, the front motor can disengage to conserve energy.
The amount of power served up at any given time depends on which of the various driving modes you have selected. Select the raciest of them - Sport+ - and you get the maximum of 483bhp. Unsurprisingly, this gives you that proper shove-in-the-back sensation that many premium electric cars can deliver, and that’s supported by a 0-62mph sprint time of just 4.5 seconds. The power delivery gets less savage as you scroll back through the modes, but even in the nice-and-relaxed Comfort mode, the EL6 doesn’t feel slow.
The EL6 is also exceptionally quietly. There’s very little noise from the motor as you pick up the pace, and you’ll also find that wind- and road noise are exceptionally well isolated. Indeed, even at the motorway speed limit, you’ll be able to have a whispered conversation with your passengers and not struggle to be heard.
Ride and Handling
While we spent several hours driving the EL6 in Germany, the roads we drove it on were all so immaculately surfaced that we have no way of telling how well it’ll cope with the lumps, bumps, potholes and sunken drain covers that the UK’s beleaguered road network serves up on such a regular basis.
The car comes with adaptive suspension as standard, which has three stiffness settings that vary according to the driving mode you select, or you can select a particular setting for yourself using the customisable drive mode. In truth, we could feel barely any difference between them, but again, that could well be a symptom of the road surface providing so little challenge for the suspension. In all the modes, the ride on our test route felt supple and comfortable, but we can’t promise that’ll be the case when the surface beneath the car provides a sterner test.
What we can tell you with confidence, however, is that the grip and traction levels of the car are truly mighty, giving it a very secure and stable feel. It’s not one of those cars that’s able to shrug off its considerable size and weight, but it does change direction with precision and control. The steering feels rather light and disconnected in Comfort mode, but select one of the sportier settings, and it feels rather more weighty and reassuring.
Buying and Owning
If (and for ‘if’, read ‘when’) the EL6 does go on sale in the UK, you will have several choices about how you get into one. The first is to buy the car outright, battery and all. However, taking this route will mean you don’t have access to the battery swapping service, because you can’t swap out a battery that you own for one that you don’t.
To take advantage of the battery-swap service, you have two options. You can either buy the car outright and pay Nio a monthly fee on top to lease the battery, or you can pay a much larger monthly fee for a Nio subscription, which effectively leases you both the car and the battery.
Now obviously, UK prices for all this are some way off being announced officially, but we’ve seen what customers are charged in Germany, which should provide some sort of rough indication.
Over there, buying the car outright costs €53,500 (the equivalent of about £47,000 at the time of writing), and then buying the 75kWh battery outright costs €12,000 (£10,500), while the 100kWh battery costs €21,000 (£18,400).
Now that sounds like a lot, but everything is relative. For example, let’s consider an EL6 fitted with the 75kWh battery. The eventual German price of €65,500 would equate to just over £57,000 if reflected in the UK (and admittedly, that’s a very big ‘if’ because cause there are so many variables with exchange rates, tax regulations, international laws, etc), which would compare well with the £64,000 currently charged by BMW for the entry-level iX3. Also, bear in mind that the BMW has a comparably sized battery, but is way down on power and kit compared with the Nio.
Consider an EL6 equipped with the 100kWh battery, meanwhile, and the eventual German price €74,500 would equate to around £65,000 if borne out in the UK. With the battery capacity and power output on offer from the Nio, the BMW iX xDrive50 is a far more comparable car, and one of those will set you back upwards of £102,000. Mind you, an Audi Q8 55 E-Tron is much closer on price, starting at around £79,000, but you’re looking at many thousands more for a Q8 with comparable kit.
Or, as discussed, you can buy the car and lease the battery, which costs €169 (£147) per month for the former and €289 (£252) per month for the latter. This gets you four free battery swaps per month with a small fee payable for subsequent swaps.
Admittedly, the subscription option does look rather expensive: in Germany, a three-year arrangement costs €1,179 (£1,028) per month on a 75kWh car and €1,309 (£1,141) on a 100kWh car. However, that does include unlimited battery swaps, insurance and servicing.
Verdict
Judged in isolation, the EL6 is a very credible and likeable alternative to the established German opposition, with good practicality, impressive quality, masses of tech and equipment, and a pleasing driving experience. Final UK pricing will be key, of course, and some improvements need to be made - Nomi definitely needs work, and a few of the driver assistance systems could do with finessing - but there’s plenty of time for Nio to get all that stuff right. Assuming it does, it still remains to be seen whether all those attributes will be enough to tempt customers away from the established brands, and into a relatively unknown Chinese marque.
What could help sway them, though, is Nio’s battery-swap technology, which is an undeniably interesting and appealing prospect that's totally unique in the market. Establishing the infrastructure will take a lot of time, effort and investment, but assuming Nio does eventually get the network to where it needs to be, then it’ll have a major USP over other prestige manufacturers. Once that happens, the established brands might well be having sleepless nights.