NIO follows hypercar with luxurious driverless Eve

Chinese EV-maker, NIO, has followed its megaWatt EP9 hypercar with an all-new luxurious fully-autonomous, pure-electric-rival to a conventional Mercedes-Benz S-Class.

Called the Eve, NIO's latest concept reinvents a luxury sedan by incorporating just two huge sliding doors, a wide full-length panoramic roof and a shooting brake profile.

Inside the large, the EVE looks more first class lounge than car, thanks to a light light and airy cabin, face-to-face seating, a large foldout table and airline-style fold flat seats.

The spacious, minimalist interior hides a cabin brimming with new tech.

The windowless doors, for example, actually feature new 'active glass' that allows owners to switch from the outside view and project anything from a skype call to the latest movie.

The Eve's on-board assistant, Nomi, also features facial recognition technology and can even read your emotions and adjust the cabin accordingly.

Perhaps the most radical departure of NIO's Eve is the steering wheel that retracts into the dash to make more space for occupants.

That's because the Eve has been designed to be fully autonomous and is claimed to preview the car maker’s self-driving tech that will appear on a production car as soon as 2020.

It's not known how much the Chinese car maker plans to charge for a production version of the Eve.

Beneath its futuristic skin lies a pure electric powertrain thought to be based on the EP9 hypercar that last year smashed the electric-car lap record at the Nurburgring Nordschleife circuit with a time of 7 minutes 5 seconds.

With four electric motors and a megaWatt of power, the NIO EP9 hypercar could hit 100km/h in 2.7 seconds.

Just six were built.