Chinese electric-vehicle maker Nio used its annual tech day in late September to lay out a sweeping self-development strategy, unveiling its first in-house lidar control chip, a vehicle-wide operating system and a detailed plan to bring its assisted-driving system to urban roads. The event, covered by Chinese outlet Pacific Auto, was framed around Nio's push to control more of its technology stack rather than relying on suppliers.
Self-developed chip and operating system
Nio introduced the Yang Jian lidar main control chip, named after the three-eyed god from Chinese mythology, which the company says is the industry's first mass-produced self-developed lidar processor. The eight-core 64-bit chip includes an eight-channel 9-bit analog-to-digital converter with a sampling rate of 1 GHz, and is designed to cut lidar power consumption by 50% while improving data processing speed. According to Pacific Auto, the chip also reduces costs by several hundred yuan per unit, supporting Nio's goal of lowering production expenses while boosting performance.
The company also unveiled TianShu SkyOS, which it calls the first vehicle-wide operating system developed and released by an automaker for intelligent EVs. The system covers vehicle control, assisted driving, the cockpit and mobile connectivity, built on a "1+4+N" architecture that includes a hypervisor, multiple operating system layers and self-developed middleware. Nio said full production of SkyOS will arrive with its NT3 platform models.
Urban NOP+ rollout and phone integration
Nio announced that its enhanced assisted-driving system, NOP+, will expand from highways into cities, offering point-to-point navigation assistance. Unlike rivals that open the feature city by city, Nio is taking a route-based approach: it plans to cover 60,000 km of urban routes by the fourth quarter of 2023, 200,000 km by the first quarter of 2024 and 400,000 km by the second quarter of 2024. Users can submit requests for specific routes, which Nio will verify before activation using its NAD swarm intelligence system, which it says has a distributed computing power of 38,100 POPS.
The tech day also saw the launch of the Nio Phone, priced at 6,499 yuan (about $915) for the performance edition, 6,899 yuan (about $972) for the flagship edition and 7,499 yuan (about $1,056) for the EPedition - all Chinese guide prices before taxes and incentives. The phone features a 6.81-inch 2K curved display, a 5,200 mAh battery with 66W wired and 50W wireless charging, and a dedicated Nio Link button for 30 car-related functions. It uses ultra-wideband technology to replace the car key, with unlock capability for up to 48 hours without power.
Beyond the phone, Nio introduced NIO Link, a panoramic connectivity system that links the car with phones and third-party devices, and announced an app store for its cockpit with more than 40 applications, including Xiaohongshu. The company also revealed a cross-domain computing cluster called ADAM CCC, which shares computing power between assisted driving, cockpit and vehicle control systems.
Looking ahead, Nio reiterated plans to build 4,000 battery swap stations globally by 2025, covering 90% of China's "battery-district" housing, and said AI will assist 80% of its manufacturing decisions by that year. The company's full-stack self-development strategy spans 12 areas, including chips, batteries, electric drives, operating systems and artificial intelligence, according to Pacific Auto.