The Neo ES9 is a new luxury SUV made by a Chinese company called Neo. It's meant to be a top-of-the-line model, even better than their previous ES8 model.
An SUV is a type of car that is bigger and higher off the ground than regular cars. They usually have more space inside and can be used for different types of driving, like on rough roads.
The Nio ES8 is a fancy electric SUV from China that can carry a lot of people and has cool tech features. It's important because it shows how electric cars are becoming more popular and offers a stylish option for those looking to go green.
A LiDAR sensor is a device that helps cars understand their surroundings by using laser light to measure distances. It's important for features that help with driving safely and autonomously.
ADAS means Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. These are features in cars that help drivers by making driving safer and easier, like helping to keep the car in its lane or automatically braking if something is in the way.
This is a type of car system that uses two electric motors to power all four wheels. It helps the car grip the road better and can make it faster and more stable when driving.
Term
kW
kW stands for kilowatt, which is a way to measure how much power something uses or produces. In cars, it tells you how strong the electric motors are.
CATL is a big company that makes batteries for electric cars. They are one of the largest battery makers in the world and supply many car manufacturers.
kWh stands for kilowatt-hour, which tells you how much energy a battery can hold. A bigger number means the battery can power the car for a longer time before needing to be recharged.
A battery-swapping network is a system where you can quickly change your empty battery for a fully charged one at special stations. This makes it faster and easier to keep driving without waiting for the battery to charge.
A volt system shows how much electrical power the car's components use. Higher voltage means the car can be more efficient and perform better, especially if it's electric.
The Tesla Model 3 is a popular electric car that can drive long distances on a single charge. It's known for being fast and having a simple, modern design inside.
Plug-in hybrids are cars that can use both gas and electricity. You can charge them at home, and they can drive longer distances on electric power alone than regular hybrids.
Fast charging means you can charge an electric car's battery much faster than normal. This helps you get back on the road quickly when you need to recharge.
Energy density is how much energy a battery can hold in a certain amount of space. If a battery has high energy density, it can make an electric car go further before needing a charge.
An LCD instrument cluster is a screen in the car that shows you important information like how fast you're going and how much gas you have. It's a modern version of the old-fashioned dials.
An augmented reality head-up display is a screen that shows important information on your windshield, so you don't have to look down at your dashboard while driving. It helps you keep your eyes on the road while still seeing things like your speed or directions.
A range extended engine is a small gas engine that helps charge the battery of an electric car when it runs low. It doesn't directly power the wheels but gives you extra driving distance before you need to recharge.
C-rate tells you how fast a battery can be charged or used. For example, if a battery has a C-rate of 1, it means it can be charged in one hour.
LIVE
The holidays are expensive.
You're paying for gifts, travel, decorations, food,
and before you know it, you've blown way past
what you were planning to spend.
Don't start the new year off with bad money vibes.
Download rocket money to stay on top of your finances.
The app pulls your income, expenses,
and upcoming charges into one place
so you can get the clearest picture of your money.
It shows how much to set aside for bills
and how much is safe to spend for the month
so you can spend with confidence.
No guesswork needed.
Get alerts before bills hit.
Track budgets and see every subscription you're paying for.
Rocket money also finds extra ways to save you money
by cancelling subscriptions you're not using
and negotiating lower bills for you.
On average, rocket money users can save up to $740 a year
when using all of the app's premium features.
Start the year off right by taking control of your finances.
Go to rocketmoney.com slash cancel to get started.
That's rocketmoney.com slash cancel.
The holidays are expensive.
You're paying for gifts, travel, decorations, food,
and before you know it,
you've blown way past what you were planning to spend.
Don't start the new year off with bad money vibes.
Download rocket money to stay on top of your finances.
The app pulls your income, expenses,
and upcoming charges into one place
so you can get the clearest picture of your money.
It shows how much to set aside for bills
and how much is safe to spend for the month
so you can save up to $740 a year.
This is a good time to spend with confidence.
No guesswork needed.
Get alerts before bills hit.
Track budgets and see every subscription you're paying for.
Rocket money also finds extra ways to save you money
by canceling subscriptions you're not using
and negotiating lower bills for you.
On average, rocket money users can save up to $740 a year
when using all of the app's premium features.
Start the year off right by taking control of your finances.
Go to rocketmoney.com slash cancel to get started.
That's rocketmoney.com slash cancel.
Rocketmoney.com slash cancel.
Welcome back to the podcast.
Today, Neo's new flagship.
Xiaomi upgraded the Su7 and BYD plans long-range hybrids.
Plus, stay tuned.
Later in the show, I'll tell you why the new X-Pung P7 Plus
stands a good chance of being a global success story.
Welcome to AV News China,
the podcast dedicated to the world's largest EV market.
Each day, I bring you the latest headlines, insights,
and analysis from the heart of China's booming EV industry
and decode how fast-moving developments in the east
are shaping the global EV landscape.
Neo is preparing a giant new flagship.
If you park a Rolls-Royce Color Man in a standard parking bay,
the British barge will test the painted white lines.
It's not built to just carry passengers
but to occupy territory.
Yet, next to Neo's latest creation,
even the Rolls risks feeling a little bit modest.
Neo is preparing a new range-topping ES9
for China's top-end segment.
The models appeared in the Ministry of Industry
and Information Technology filings.
It's a formality that usually signals that a launch is close.
Neo builds it as the flagship of its SUV lineup,
and the ES9 unsurprisingly sits above the ES8.
ES9 sticks to Neo's current design language.
The front carries a closed grille,
slender split headlamps and a tall upright nose
that does nothing to disguise its bulk.
At the rear, a full-width light bar sits above
the stacked taillights to underline the car's presence.
On the roof, Neo keeps its three-pronged layout,
a LiDAR sensor in the middle
with high-def cameras on either side.
Together, they form a sensor suite
intended to mark the ES9 out
as a high-end platform for ADAS-assisted driving.
Hardware, in the other words,
that looks to me ready for more software in the future.
The vehicle is vast, even by full-size standards.
It is 5.365 metres long,
2.03 metres wide
and 1.9 metres high,
wheelbase of 3.25 metres.
Those dimensions edge past the ES8,
an even nudge ahead of a Rolls-Royce colour man,
as I mentioned, an advantage in a market
that does not treat size as a minor virtue.
Power, well, that comes from a dual-motor all-wheel-drive system.
180 kW at the front,
340 at the back combined,
almost 700 horsepower.
The battery, in case you're wondering,
well, that's supplied by CATL.
Probably a 102 kWh pack
tied into Neo's three-minute battery-swapping network.
That keeps the ES9 compatible
with the firm's existing battery-swapping network.
For the premium buyers
that Neo thinks would purchase this vehicle,
those three-minute stops on a long trip
may matter just as much
as its sheer size.
Let's talk Xiaomi,
opening pre-sales for a refreshed Su7,
raising performance,
safety and driver assistance
and raising prices with them.
The three updated variants
are listed from
230,000 yuan,
that's $32,800,
up to 310,000 yuan,
that is 44,000 US dollars.
Those are pre-sale prices
and they normally come down
when vehicles arrive.
That's just the way that China tends to do it.
However, that is
10 to 14,000 yuan
more than the cars that it replaces.
This is a significant upgrade
and a big price bump as well.
Existing Su7 buyers
that had pre-ordered and are waiting for delivery
can actually switch to the new version
for a couple of days till midnight January 10th
while keeping their purchase tax subsidy
and the place in the queue.
The changes
may seem modest on the surface
but run pretty deep.
Xiaomi's refreshed the trim,
retuned suspension,
added an embedded anti-roll cage
across the range, airbags go from 7 to 9,
there's now backup power supply
for every door lock that would keep them working
in the event of a power failure
or a crash.
Drive resistance hardware is now standard
rather than an upgrade.
The old entry level rear wheel drive long range
lacked LiDAR
and used a weaker platform.
Now every Su7 gets LiDAR
and Xiaomi's Drive Resistance
small blue light indicator.
Compute, the power,
is set at 700 trillion
operations per second across the board
up from 508.
Xiaomi's also nudged the output
and charging both higher.
Standard and pro trims go from
300 to 320 horsepower
dual motor goes to 700 horsepower
the standard and pro go from a 400 volt
to an 800 volt system.
The max trim is almost a 900 volt architecture
which Xiaomi says adds
160 kilometers of range
in 15 minutes.
The updated Su7 offers more power,
more sensors, more airbags than before
but in April the new buyers
will decide whether those gains
justify those big prices
that creep ever closer
to the big competitor
the Tesla Model 3.
It's still cheaper but not by as much as it used to be.
Now BYD
will launch long range versions of its
four mass market plug-in hybrids this month.
A move intended to sharpen its appeal
as competition in China
continues to be cutthroat.
The new models cover two solos in the chin range
and two in the seal family.
The chin plus DMI
and the chin L DMI
and the seal O5 and the seal O6 DMI.
All four use larger battery packs
with electric only range of 210 kilometers
or 330 miles.
BYD says
this doubles the range
of rival plug-in hybrids
and allows many drivers to go for a week
on a single charge.
With a full tank though and a full battery
the cars will do 2,110 kilometers
that's 1,310 miles
fast charging to 80% in 20 minutes.
The models use high capacity
versions of the BYD
blade battery which engineers designed
for hybrid duty
to increase energy density
and have the flat cell-to-pack format
found in the range.
These variants sits in the chin
and seal series which aim
at cost-conscious buyers I would say
and also fleet operators.
BYD bets that a week of electric driving
but an overall number of
2,110 kilometers
between fill-ups
will maintain its mass-market dominance
its impressive range
the technology is sound and the price is competitive
but so is the competition.
Now China's industry ministry
has told battery makers this week
to slow their expansion
as over capacity spreads through the EV
and storage supply chains.
In a report on the 8th of January
on its WeChat account
the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology
said the sector should optimize its
capacity, reign in
cutthroat competition and accept
more supervision.
State-run China Daily
said 16 companies attended
citing unnamed sources, those present were
CATL, BYD, Gotion, Eve, Energy and more.
The warning lands
just as stationary storage demand is rising
helped by the worldwide build-out
of data centers
and the extra power load that they bring
yet the Ministry said producers
have been blindly adding
capacity, a phrase that suggests
Beijing sees more factories
than customers.
Now let's talk about how well
EV sales are doing in China. In December
retail sales of passenger
NEVs in China
were 1.387 million units in preliminary
data. That is
7% higher than a year earlier
5% above the previous month in November
demand keeps rising
into the end of the year. Despite a
slightly weaker economy
for the full year
2025, I think that puts retail
sales of EVs in China at
12.86 million
units.
That is up 18% on the previous year.
EVs gain ground
even as growth slowed
from the breakneck pace of
earlier years. Retail data
covers vehicles handed to
Chinese consumers giving a clear
review of the end market
rather than the factory gates which also includes
export. On the supply side
wholesale sales
totaled 1.55
4 million units
compared to 1.387 sold domestically.
That is up 3% still
in the same month but exports
were down a little on November.
Manufacturers cut shipments to manage
inventories after an aggressive
production push. Across the whole of last year
wholesale EV sales
in China 15.31
million.
That's the big number, that's everything. 25%
up year on year. Faster
growth in wholesale volumes than in
resale deliveries. Signals
more capacity expansion and fierce
competition amongst the car makers to
expand globally and find those other
markets. After a December
in which almost 1.4
million EVs found Chinese buyers
the real race is
not to create demand but
to survive the capacity
that the factory numbers
can produce.
Which means looking overseas
doesn't it? Right we'll talk one more story
that's CATL and then we get into
some more expunged stuff. CATL
is pushing battery swapping
from pilot stages into mass
deployment across China's
passenger and freight networks as well.
The firm wants more than 3,000 battery
swap stations for passenger vehicles
in 140 cities by the end of
this year. It aims to build
900 of its
Chiji swap stations for heavy trucks.
The plan includes a dedicated
highway corridor and a program that lets
partners build and run
its battery swapping sites under the CATL
umbrella. Over the long term
the company envisages a network reaching
30,000 locations.
For trucks the Chiji
swap stations form the backbone. CATL
wants 900 heavy-duty
swap stations by the end of this year
arranged in what it calls
5 horizontal
and a 5 vertical pattern east
west north south of the freight routes. By
2030
they want 8 horizontal 10 vertical
spanning the country. These
ambitions build on a brisk
rollout last year.
Over a thousand, that's 1,020
swap stations for passenger cars
and 305 Chiji
swap sites are currently operational
as of today.
It's a dual approach
dense urban coverage for passengers
and long-haul corridors for freight.
A big bet that battery
swapping is not just for the likes of
NEO. After years of cautious
pilots, CATL
now measures success not
in these early stages but in the thousands
of swap stations they intend to roll out
every year. We'll take a break
and come back. We'll talk about some X-Pung stuff.
Stick around, back in a moment.
Thanks for watching.
Rocket Money also finds extra
ways to save you money. By cancelling subscriptions
you're not using and negotiating lower
bills for you. On average
Rocket Money users can save up to
$740 a year when using
all of the app's premium features.
Start the year off right by taking control
of your finances. Go to
rocketmoney.com slash cancel to get started.
That's rocketmoney.com slash cancel
rocketmoney.com
slash cancel.
The holidays are expensive.
You're paying for gifts, travel
decorations, food
and before you know it, you've blown way
past what you were planning to spend.
Don't start the new year off with bad money
vibes. Download Rocket Money
to stay on top of your finances.
The app pulls your income, expenses
and upcoming charges into one place
so you can get the clearest picture
of your money. It shows how much to set
aside for bills and how much is safe to
spend for the month so you can spend with confidence.
No guesswork needed. Get
alerts before bills hit.
Track budgets and see every subscription
you're paying for. Rocket Money
also finds extra ways to save you money
by canceling subscriptions you're not using
and negotiating lower bills for you.
On average, Rocket Money users can
save up to $740 a year
when using all of the app's premium
features. Start the year off right
by taking control of your finances.
Go to rocketmoney.com
slash cancel to get started. That's
rocketmoney.com slash cancel
Rocketmoney.com slash cancel
Xpong says the chip delivers
750 tops,
tera operations per second
of effective computing. That runs
the end-to-end driving software.
It's trained on large models.
But buyers who want more
now have to pay for a higher tier.
Two optional packages
branded Ultra SE
and Ultra Unlock More.
Ultra SE will add a second
Turing chip running Xpong's
latest VLA2 system
which the company says delivers
entry level
level 4 capabilities.
And finally, Xpong has launched
the P7 Plus.
That is a lift back. The launch
was in China after I told you recently
about
trial production getting underway in Europe.
Xpong says this will be the firm's
big global
model. Prices start at
$187,000. That's
about $26,500.
Xpong claims to export
the P7 Plus as well.
Europe is among the intended
markets. Magna Steyr
in Austria in Graz will
build the car for European buyers
though. On European soil
avoiding imports.
The P7 Plus actually gets
104 total changes.
A much tidier nose,
a single full width LED
daytime running light strip,
revised bumpers
adding about 15mm, about 0.6 inches
to the overall length. Now measuring
just over 5 meters long
and 1.5 meters high
on a 3 meter wheelbase. Quite a big vehicle.
Bystander runs on 20 inch wheels
inside an 8.8 inch
LCD instrument cluster behind
the steering wheel and a 29 inch
augmented reality head up display
projecting key data
into the driver's line of sight.
Xpong also fits upgraded seats.
A new 20 speaker audio system
and it will use a 1.5 liter
range extended engine
if you don't want the full
electric version.
So, doesn't drive the wheels
it's an e-rev that only
generates electricity for a
49.2 kilowatt hour
pack. That is
267 miles of electric
only range if you plug the thing in.
Xpong says 5C
that's a C-rate, it's a measure of
charging speed and discharging speed too.
5C fast charging
which frankly is very, very
fast in context of everything else you can get
adds 172 miles
or 277 kilometers
in 5 minutes.
A combined
range of
1,550 kilometers
or 963 miles.
And that's your podcast for today. Thanks for listening.
See you on the next one.
I didn't realize I was wasting
$415 a month
until I downloaded Rocket Money.
I thought I had my finances under control until
the app laid out all my spending and categorized it
for me. Takeout, shopping
and unused subscriptions
were quietly draining my account.
And as a result, my savings took a back seat.
But Rocket Money doesn't just tell you
what you're wasting money on. It takes action
to save you money. First, the app
looks at your income and monthly expenses
and calculates how much you can safely
spend each day to stay under budget.
Rocket Money also finds
and cancels unwanted subscriptions for you
and even negotiates better rates on your bills
so you have more money in your pocket.
On average, Rocket Money members
can save up to $740 a year
when using all the app's premium features.
Users love the app with over
186,000 5-star ratings.
It's time to simplify your finances
and take control of your money.
Go to rocketmoney.com
to get started. That's rocketmoney.com
slash cancel. Rocketmoney.com
slash cancel.
About this episode
NIO is set to launch its flagship ES9 SUV, boasting impressive dimensions and a powerful dual-motor system, while Xiaomi upgrades its Su7 with enhanced performance and safety features. BYD plans to introduce long-range hybrids, doubling the electric-only range of its models. The episode also discusses the competitive landscape of China's EV market, including sales data and battery swapping initiatives from CATL. Insights into the X-Pung P7 Plus, aimed at global markets, highlight its technological advancements and design changes.
