Richard Hammond Drives the NIO ES9 in Shanghai. The Suspension Is the Story.

At a secret proving ground in Shanghai, Richard Hammond sat behind the wheel of the NIO ES9 and went around a slalom course at 75 km/h with almost no steering input. The car weighed nearly three tons. The ride felt, by his account, like flying. The ES9 is NIO's latest luxury SUV, built around the same SkyRide active hydraulic suspension system that impressed reviewers in the ET9 flagship sedan, but taken a generation further. Where most active suspension systems use a single central pump to distribute hydraulic pressure to each corner, the ES9 places small individual pumps directly at each wheel. The difference matters: there's no lag from fluid traveling through a central manifold, so the system can react faster to what the wheel is actually encountering in real time.

The wheel-mounted pump architecture is the kind of engineering detail that separates a real advancement from a marketing claim. Luxury vehicles from Rolls-Royce, Mercedes, and Porsche have used active suspension for years, but most centralize hydraulic control for simplicity and cost. Moving the pumps to the corners adds mechanical complexity and, critically, unsprung mass at each wheel, which is normally a handling liability. NIO's bet is that the reaction speed advantage outweighs that tradeoff for a comfort-focused SUV. On the Belgian paving section of the proving ground, Hammond said the only way you knew you were on cobblestones was the sound. For a vehicle in this class competing with the likes of the Range Rover and the Mercedes EQS SUV, that is a meaningful claim. NIO has also built a crowdsourced pothole database: when four or more NIO vehicles encounter the same road defect, that location is logged and shared across the entire fleet. Cars approaching a known pothole prepare the suspension before they reach it, then cancel the entry if later vehicles confirm the road has been repaired.

Hammond also drove the ES9's steer-by-wire system, which NIO says is the first certified steer-by-wire implementation in China. The steering input required at 75 km/h around the proving ground corners was notably small. Elsewhere in the car: a claimed range of around 600 km, camera-monitored adaptive air conditioning that tracks sunlight position and adjusts the nearest vent, a foot massage function in the rear seats, and fold-down airline-style tables with a triangulating support brace Hammond specifically called out as evidence of genuine engineering thought rather than feature padding. The ES9 is currently a China-market vehicle. Whether it comes to Europe is still being assessed; Hammond and the interviewer both noted it would struggle on UK B-roads purely due to its size.

Bottom line: The NIO ES9 is the kind of car that changes what you think Chinese EVs are capable of. The pothole database and wheel-mounted suspension pumps are not features bolted on to impress at a motor show; they're the result of solving a real problem with a better approach. If this car reaches Europe at a price below the equivalent Range Rover or Mercedes, it will be a serious competitive problem for both brands.