Fast-growing Chinese EV maker NIO has launched a mid-size car that boasts a “digital cockpit” that it hopes will compete with Tesla’s market-leading Model 3, reports the South China Morning Post. The Shanghai-based carmaker also announced its plans to be present in 25 countries and regions by 2025. After beginning sales in Norway earlier this year, it plans to expand in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark in 2022.
The ET5, priced from RMB 328,000 ($51,448) before subsidy, is expected to roll off the production line in September 2022. The car comes with PanoCinema, a panoramic and immersive digital cockpit boasting augmented reality and virtual reality technologies, said William Li, co-founder and chief executive of NIO.
“With PanoCinema, a huge screen is not necessarily needed [in a smart EV],” he told a crowd of nearly 10,000 people who attended the annual NIO Day event in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou, on Saturday evening.
