Shanghai-based EV manufacturer Nio is gearing up to unveil its first-ever production sedan model, teasing the car with a tantalizing new image of the side profile, the car's shape mostly obscured by shadow, and a date: January 9, 2021. That's when the new sedan will officially be revealed to the world, at the company's annual Nio Day presentation.

The pure-electric sedan segment has seen more than its fair of activity in recent years, with most models either struggling to launch or failing to have much of an impact, but don't rule out Nio's new electric sedan just yet. At 150 kWh, the model's battery pack could be the largest ever fitted to a production EV when it launches.

For context, that's 50 percent more capacity than even the Tesla Model S Long Range Plus, meaning Nio's new model could conceivably overtake that car as the longest-range production electric sedan in the world, provided it has enough efficiency. That's a real possibility, given the company's experience in the pure-electric Formula E racing series and the powertrain learnings it ought to have acquired.

But it's not just an all-new production sedan that Nio will present on Saturday; the Chinese EV manufacturer is also promising to unveil a second-generation version of its battery-swap station, where owners can go to have their depleted EV battery packs swapped with fully charged, ready-to-go ones, and "other core technologies."

Nio currently has a total of four EV models on the market: the mid-size EC6 and ES6 crossovers, the full-size ES8 crossover, and the EP9 supercar. None of these models are offered in the US market, but Nio, which has been publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange since September 2018, does plan to penetrate the American EV market. That said, no definitive timeline has yet been announced, and whether Nio's new long-range sedan will be sold here or not is unknown.