An $85k Chinese EV - NIO ES9 Review

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Hello, and welcome to the Telescope.

[00:00:01]Every week we'll bring you a fresh insight from the biggest car market in the world. We started filming this video at 7:30 in the morning because we wanted to show you the very rare showing of Rizhao Jinshan. That is the very first shine of morning light on the snow peak behind us. It was there when I first got up, but by the time we arrived, it's like that again.

[00:00:24]Anyway, I told you it's rare. Today we get to drive the NIO ES9. I know the wind noise must be very strong, but we are about 2,800 m up in altitude, and this is just the weather it is. So, you'll have to just put up with it.

[00:00:39]It's about to go on sale with a sticker price of roughly $85,000.

[00:00:43]When Chinese car gets to this kind of price, it packs all the tech you can think of. To put this car into perspective, I know it's huge, but it's still slightly smaller than the Cadillac Escalade, the fully electric Escalade. I know Cadillac claims that magnetic ride control, MRC, has an active damping system, but really it's still a super enhanced continuous variable damper. It's still reacting to bumps on the road, where this can actively provide extra support. It's like leveling out the road surface in real time on the fly. The electric Porsche Cayenne does have the active suspension, and I believe it's a lot more handling focused than this car. However, it's nowhere near as nice as this is on the inside, and it doesn't have anywhere near the kind of ADAS performance that this car has. I know that's partially down to the much more conservative um EU regulation on ADAS systems, and we are hearing Porsche is potentially teaming up with a local ADAS supplier to provide a China-specific urban ADAS solution. However, all of that is in the future. Mind you, that Porsche Cayenne Turbo is nearly double the price of this car in China, and it is much more powerful, but I doubt people are going to say, "I think 707 horsepower with this ES8 is not powerful enough, and they need that additional 400 horsepower from the Cayenne." As for all of the other cars, they're not even in this conversation on the day of filming, that is April the 9th, 2026. This new ES8 is the most technologically advanced electric vehicle.

[00:02:30]No, scratch that.

[00:02:32]The most technologically advanced car with any kind of propulsion in the world. And if you count this car's saloon brother, that is the ET9, then NIO has been in this position for 1 year already. I said in the ET9 review that most people could only realize in hindsight, you see now 1 year later, I bet most people are still new to this idea that a Chinese car, a car from Shanghai, could be in this position.

[00:02:59]I've already done a static review of this car, but the comfort every time sitting here is just This is my phone being the teleprompter, and look at this amazing table in this perfect location. And this glass can dim like this, step-by-step.

[00:03:15]And of course, this car has the physical sun blinds.

[00:03:19]And the glass can cancel out just like that.

[00:03:23]But I think you can still probably tell I'm slightly too young to enjoy all of the comfort feature of this car. So, here in this dynamic review, I'm here to tell you that this car, despite being nearly 5.4 m long, when it's on the move, drives like a Porsche Macan. A lot of it is down to the rear wheel steering and the steer-by-wire. This is this car from lock to lock.

[00:03:48]The steering ratio of this car at low speed could be as fast as one to six.

[00:03:54]And this car at low speed could even be perceived as too agile, you know, with the rear steering, especially for the second and third row passengers. The way this car generating yaw at low speed for the second third row passenger could be a surprise. And therefore, I think NIO could introduce a chauffeur mode where the rear wheel steering kicks in a lot less. It's fine if you only have passengers sitting in the front, but because this car has such a focus on the second row, I think a chauffeur mode with less rear wheel steering intervention at low speed could be very welcome. And you know, it's a professional driver's job.

[00:04:34]They're paid to turn around a massive vehicle like this in a tight space. They could turn around a truck if necessary.

[00:04:41]They can do a three-point turn, five-point turn, but that less intervention from the rear wheel steering does provide less surprise to the bosses or the distinguished VIPs sitting in the second row. And then it's the active suspension. If you have no idea what it does, then you probably think all roads are paved really smooth and all cars should be like this in the first place, but of course that's not the case. We are more or less in the same spot um where we shot the iCar V27 review back in January. And I remember the roads are not this smooth. This is what the active suspension is doing in real time. You can see sometimes it's absorbing energy, sometimes it's it's putting out energy. That's when the suspension is filling out all of the drops on the road, and that's the key difference between this fully active suspension and the so-called active damping system on the Cadillac um Escalade. The Cadillac system could only react to the bump when the car is already dropped into that bump and managed the reaction, where this car could provide support when you've dropped into that bump and prop the car up, or if enough people have driven past a particular bump on the road, it can register that precise location and lift the wheel up over that bump so that you don't drop into that bump at all. About things I don't like, this steering wheel. I've said in the static review and I'll say it again, just because it has steer-by-wire, doesn't mean it cannot have a round steering wheel. You know, because of all of the yoke steering wheel already on the market, when people see this, they won't think, "Oh, this car has a really interesting steering system." They will just think, "This is really weird." Or you can go even more extreme and introduce the butterfly-shaped steering wheel like the Lexus RX that has the steer-by-wire, and also like the Formula 1 cars in the early 2000s. You know, in that case, when people see this steering wheel, they will immediately realize this has a really advanced steering wheel unlike any other cars on the road. Well, now this is This is quite weird. And this car's NVH is arguably too good. You know, when you step into a room that's really well done, really soundproof, and all like a recording studio, that feels too quiet, and your ear is sort of feeling a negative pressure, and you could even feel depressed if you're in that kind of environment for a really long time.

[00:07:19]This car is getting there.

[00:07:21]I think it must have something to do with the active noise cancellation. The noise build-up is no longer linear with the increase of speed.

[00:07:30]I've spoken with some people I knew, and they say there might be something they can do about this. You know, because this noise cancellation is done through the speakers in the headrest, they could potentially turn down the noise cancellation just for the driver so that all of the passengers in the car still feels just as quiet, but the driver gets the expected kind of noise level or the predicted kind of noise level. We are at that point where we need to make this car's NVH worse to make this overall a better car.

[00:08:03]Yeah, we're at that point already. As for the spec to buy, in my opinion, the active suspension is a must-have. You could buy the entry spec, which is on the same kind of reactive suspension as the Cadillac Escalade, but in that case, I suggest you take a serious look at the ES8, the smaller brother of this car, and save yourself 100,000 RMB. The true essence of this ES9 could only be appreciated with the active suspension.

[00:08:31]With this, you can repave the road surface on the fly and no longer need to rely on local councils to fix the potholes. With this, it can lift this wheel up in the precise location so that you don't drop into that hole at all.

[00:08:46]That is all from the telescope.

[00:08:48]Actually, we've already finished filming and it's nearly midday, but the mountain has decided to partially reveal itself.

[00:08:55]It's still not quite the uh the peak is still behind the clouds, but it's better than previous. And I know this is not quite U Tao Jing Shan. That needs the very first ray of the morning lights to cast a kind of a golden glow on the snows at the peak, but yeah, a lot better than previously. That is all from the telescope today. If you've enjoyed this video, keep watching, keep subscribing. More videos coming along very soon.