NextEV, a Chinese electric car manufacturer, has announced that they’ll enter the US market with an electric SUV and that they’re targeting the Tesla Model X.

The cars will be sold under the NIO brand, and will follow the company’s high-power fashion, as the first vehicle they unveiled, the EP9, had some 1,342 horsepower under the hood. Funny thing for a Chinese company to quote a figure of $1.2 mln to build it.

“The idea wasn’t practicality but to bust records and look fantastic,” design director David Hilton said at the EP9’s November launch. It has a top speed of 194 mph and can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 2.7 seconds. The company also claims that this is world’s fastest electric car. Well, I guess their information on competition is a bit outdated. Tesla P100D can do it in 2.4s.

The 70 kWh battery pack will carry the SUV for about 330 miles (rated on the European cycle). Jack Cheng, co-founder, said that this is better than a Tesla but cheaper.”

“It’ll be positioned at Audi and BMW but with a Toyota price,” Cheng said. U.S sales will start in late 2018 or in the beginning of 2019, he said.

The company has been founded by William Li, who earned his fortune partly through a portal that provided up-to-date prices to car dealers in China.

NextEV wants to fill in loopholes in Tesla’s defficient customer service in China. “I have a Tesla. It me took three months to install a charger at home,” he told journalists at the London launch event. The SUV will be built in China in partnership with Chinese automaker JAC Motors.

We wish NextEV good luck with their endeavor and hope they’ll be able to bring us cheap, reliable and safe electric cars.

[via autonews]

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