Nio’s Firefly gets more power

It is not yet known whether the 120 kW model will replace the current version or whether it will be a second model variant. The only thing that is clear is that Nio has registered a new variant with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) for approval. And inclusion in the vehicle catalogue is usually one of the last hurdles before the sales launch.

The 120 kW electric motor is the only obvious change. The unit, designated TZ160S012, is still an in-house development and comes from Nio’s motor division XPT. It is not yet known how the additional range will affect acceleration and range – this data does not have to be specified in the MIIT catalogue. The battery is still an LFP battery from Sunwoda – probably the 42.1 kWh version.

The performance of the four-metre-long electric small car was not really a point of criticism in our test report, and its fuel consumption was also impressive. In the summer, we were able to test one of the first Fireflies in European customer hands for a few days. You can read our impressions in our test report.

In October, Nio delivered 5,912 Fireflies, primarily in China. It was the third record month in a row for the premium small car brand. Nio also increased its overall sales to 40,397 vehicles. In addition to the nearly 6,000 Firefly models, there were also over 17,000 units of each of the Nio brand and the mid-range Onvo brand.

As reported by CarNewsChina, Nio CEO William Li recently confirmed at a customer event that future Firefly models will have a significantly larger battery. However, contrary to earlier statements, these will probably not be compatible with CATL’s battery swapping system in China: the CATL system uses an air-cooled battery, which is not compatible with Firefly’s liquid-cooled batteries.

cnevpost.com, carnewschina.com

This article was first published by Sebastian Schaal for electrive’s German edition.