China-based EV maker Nio has registered a new sub-brand, Onvo, to expand its mass market coverage. Its first full-electric car will be named the L60 and will compete with the Tesla Model Y when it debuts. In the meantime, here are some camo-free spy photos courtesy of CnEVPost. The test vehicle has the word “Onvo” on the tailgate, a badge that looks like a stylized letter N, the L60 nameplate, and Chinese hieroglyphs that read “Ledao” – or so we are told. CnEVPost says Nio registered the Onvo and Ledao trademarks a while ago.
Apparently, this is the same brand that
Nio used to call “Alps”. At any rate, the new car seen here is running on the
latest NT 3.0 platform that debuted along with the Nio ET9 flagship saloon (it
hasn’t shipped yet). Back when Nio was still testing an early prototype rumored
to be called “Alps DOM”, unofficial sources claimed that the car would utilize
the company’s own electric motors and batteries designed in the house.
The wannabe Tesla Model Y replacement was
also rumored with a semi-autonomous driving system based on a single Nvidia
Drive Orin chip instead of the quad-chip setup used in the Nio Adam automotive
supercomputer. The one thing that the Onvo L60 seems to be missing is the
LiDAR, which is included as standard in all Nio cars running on the
current-generation NT 2.0 platform.
Nio CEO William Li said its next EV would
be cheaper than the Tesla Model Y, would charge faster and have a bigger
infotainment screen. It was slated to debut in Q2 2024, go into production in
Q3 and become available in Q4.
