Nio testing ET7 on the roads in Poland before European launch

Nio’s first shipment of ET7 is already on its way to Europe with sales to begin soon in Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Quite a surprise then for two camouflaged ET7s to be spotted across the border from Germany, in the port town of Szczecin, Poland.

Poland wasn’t mentioned at all in Nio’s plans for European expansion, but it makes sense for the company to explore neighboring countries. It’s not unusual for customers in the EU to buy cars from neighboring countries such as Germany and Nio is expecting to see its cars make their way eventually to Poland, Czechia, Austria and eventually many more places.

These cars on the road in Poland don’t necessarily mean Nio is getting ready to expand its distribution network. It makes sense though, for the company to keep exploring the infrastructure and judge the response from potential customers at the same time.

Road testing such as this has very little to do with the car itself. It is more of an intelligence gathering trip, first-hand experiences by test drivers are very important. Collecting charging station information is only a small part of this exercise, test drivers will collect information about service stations, local garages capable of servicing and offering emergency help. It’s a first step in new market assessment.

At the same time it's a good opportunity for Nio to search for new locations for its battery swap stations. Nio’s German customers are very likely to make trips abroad and with the new factory in Hungary bringing the swap station manufacturing to Europe, we can expect to see these futuristic buildings popping up all over the continent.

Nio ET7 is an excellent premium electric sedan, despite its confusing liftback looks. We had a chance to test drive it and wrote about it here. To quickly recap its specifications - it is just over 5 meters long, it can be had with a 150 kWh battery giving it more than 1,000 km range. ET7 is powered by two electric motors pushing 480 kW to all of its wheels and the 850 Nm of torque can accelerate the car from 0 to 100 kph in 3.9 seconds.

NIO ET7 comes with one of the most advanced autonomous driving packages on the market with a 500 meters LiDAR and 33 sensors spread across the car. The 150kWh battery is the first solid state battery on the market and it is supposed to be available from the end of this year. The other two batteries available are 70 kWh and 100 kWh.

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