NIO reveals progress on autonomous driving chips, in-car OS, and AI assistant

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NIO on July 26 gave updates on some of its most important technological developments, including the world’s first five-nanometer chip for automated driving, its in-house developed operating system for vehicles, and a voice assistant powered by its large language model.

Why it matters: NIO’s fullest disclosure yet of its technological roadmap reflects how the Chinese electric vehicle maker spends its research and development money, and how it has made a strategic bet on artificial intelligence, hoping to redesign all aspects of its vehicles including self-driving and the so-called digital cockpit.

Details: Speaking at the firm’s annual Tech Day event in Shanghai, NIO founder and chief executive William Li unveiled new details of what he called the world’s first five-nanometer (5nm) processor for autonomous driving, said to offer cameras with top-notch image signal processing (ISP) functions.

The Shenji NX9031 system on chip (SoC) delivers high pixel throughputs of 6.25 Gigapixels per second, which NIO said makes it capable of capturing pictures with higher quality resolution in minimally lit environments, compared with flagship offerings from leading chipmakers.
Li confirmed that the company had completed the tape-out for its self-designed autonomous driving semiconductor, which marks the end of the design phase and the beginning of production, without revealing which company has been contracted to produce it.
Meanwhile, NIO is on track to release its advanced driver assistance system, the Navigate on Pilot Plus (NOP+) 2.0, in the second half of the year. The Shanghai-headquartered EV maker is one of the Chinese players looking to harness the power of AI to provide cars with point-to-point navigation on Chinese highways, city streets, and parking spaces in a race led by Tesla.
NIO also announced the launch of its proprietary operating system, the Sky OS, with which the company said it would have central control of all vehicle domains, allowing it to provide more advanced user experiences. An alternative to the open-sourced Linux OS and Blackberry’s QNX, the Sky OS forms the basis of the entire car all the way from vehicle control through to intelligent driving and infotainment, NIO said.
This will enable a NIO vehicle to have a used battery pack exchanged for a new one fully automatically at one of the company’s nationwide recharging facilities, allowing the user to leave the car to get a coffee, according to vice president Wang Qiyan.
The Chinese EV maker will also release its Banyan 3.0 in-car user interface through over-the-air updates in late August, featuring an enhanced version of its NOMI conversational assistant, powered by generative AI large language models (LLMs), for more human-like voice interactions. NIO owners will be able to request a chauffeur to drive them via voice commands, the company said.

Context: Only a few global chip powerhouses, such as Qualcomm and Ambarella, have announced the production of their chips using a 5nm process node with manufacturing partners such as Samsung. Tesla reportedly plans to produce its next-generation full self-driving (FSD) computer on 4/5nm processes with TSMC.

NIO previously implied that its sophisticated chip could handle more than 1,000 trillion operations per second (TOPS), comparable to the combined total of four NVIDIA DRIVE Orin chips on 7nm, and is scheduled for mass delivery with the company’s ET9 executive sedan in early 2025.
NIO’s research and development expenditures grew 23.9% annually to RMB 13.4 billion ($1.89 billion) last year. CEO Li told the event that the company has more than 11,000 R&D personnel, adding that its years-long efforts on in-house chip development will be “of great significance” to the industry of self-driving cars (our translation).