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Image source: Visual China

Blue Whale News July 28 (Reporter Li Zhuoling)After the popularity of the car, whether Robotaxi will become the optimal solution for future autonomous driving has become the focus of the industry. However, at the "NIO IN 2024 Weilai Innovation Technology Day" on July 27, Li Bin, the founder of Weilai, said that he would never make Robotaxi. The real value of autonomous driving should be to free up energy and reduce accidents.

"The value of intelligent driving is not to eliminate the jobs of private car drivers and taxi drivers who work so hard today." He also does not think this is a sustainable big business.

At the same time, when asked about his view on the moat of smart driving, Li Bin said in the NIO IN group interview that the entire industry still has a long way to go in terms of competition and it is still very early. From this year's perspective, it is difficult to say who has a moat. "We are running a marathon, and the road is still long."

"Of course, I am not saying that Xiaopeng's intelligent driving experience is not good. They have done a very good job, which has also brought them a lot of good reputation. But in general, for a long time, with such fierce competition in China, such rapid technological changes, and such rapid iteration of various artificial intelligence technology routes, I think we can only go all out and do it according to the most basic logic and the most basic model that I understand." Li Bin said.

Image source: Blue Whale News

Although he is determined not to make Robotaxi, Li Bin attached great importance to AI technology during the conversation. He believes that "a successful smart electric vehicle company must be a successful AI company."

AI was a high-frequency word throughout the more than two-hour technology conference, including the first 5nm smart driving chip Shenji NX9031, the intelligent car base built for AI - SkyOS Tianshu, the whole vehicle global operating system, the first intelligent system Banyan 3 built on the underlying AI capabilities, and the first intelligent driving world model NWM.

Released the global operating system "SkyOS Tianshu"

At this year's NIO IN conference, NIO's full-vehicle operating system "SkyOS" was one of its more important projects.

From an official perspective, China has previously focused on secondary development in the field of vehicle operating systems, its core technologies are still controlled by others, and it has not formed an industrial development ecosystem.

SkyOS, as an AI-oriented vehicle-wide operating system, has a "1+4+N" architecture with 1 system virtualization platform, 4 operating system kernels, and N self-developed core middleware. It has core features such as high bandwidth, low latency, high computing power, heterogeneous hardware, and cross-domain integration.

At the same time, the operating system will connect the intelligent hardware, computing platform, communication and energy systems at the bottom layer to achieve unified management and coordination of full-domain applications such as vehicle networking, vehicle control, intelligent driving, digital cockpit, and mobile phone applications.

Li Bin revealed that the operating system is an AI-oriented automotive intelligent base that NIO has developed over four years with an investment of more than 23,000 man-months.

It is worth noting that before NIO, many companies have also launched their own operating systems, such as Huawei Hongmeng OS, Xiaomi Pengpai OS, Xiaopeng AI Dimensity system, etc. Take Xiaomi Pengpai OS as an example. As Xiaomi's "full ecological operating system for people, cars and homes", it was released in October 2023. It took 7 years of research and development and more than 5,000 engineers participated.

Regarding the difference between this system and the operating systems of Xiaomi, Huawei and other companies, Li Bin said in the NIO IN group interview that leading technology companies are increasingly aware of the importance of operating systems, but each company has a different starting point. From NIO's perspective, it is mainly car-centric, so the requirements for stability and safety are much higher.

In Li Bin's view, every company has its own genes. Weilai's genes are based on user interests. Of course, every company has done very well. "Huawei Hongmeng and others have done very well. There are many things we can learn from them."

“Making mobile phones is indeed stressful”

NIO's new NIO Phone, which has attracted much attention from the outside world, also received attention at this NIO IN.

It is reported that the new NIO Phone will be priced at 6,499 yuan for the performance version, 6,899 yuan for the flagship version, and 7,499 yuan for the EPedition, depending on the configuration, which is consistent with the previous generation.

One of the biggest selling points of this phone is that it is equipped with the purest SkyUI. Officially, NIO insists on "zero system ads" and "zero commercial pre-installation" and greatly improves the smart experience. The NOMI GPT supports free dialogue in more than 60 question-and-answer scenarios including encyclopedias, common sense, historical events, etc.

At the same time, as a high-end flagship phone, the new NIO Phone is equipped with the third-generation Snapdragon 8 flagship processor, with a maximum optional 16GB+1T memory and storage combination. It is equipped with a 6.82-inch 2K resolution screen customized by Samsung for NIO, and a 510PPI 120Hz high refresh screen.

Public data shows that on September 21 last year, NIO released its first smartphone, NIO Phone, at the "NIO IN 2023 NIO Innovation Technology Day" event. Li Bin said at the time that NIO made mobile phones not because mobile phone companies were flocking into the automotive industry, nor to make profits from mobile phones, but because users needed a mobile phone that could seamlessly connect to NIO cars. For NIO car users, NIO Phone will completely replace car keys.

However, although the first generation of NIO Phone was sold out a few months ago, looking back, Li Bin admitted that making mobile phones is indeed stressful.

“I actually felt a lot of pressure when I made a mobile phone for the first time, mainly because I was afraid that others would think I was not doing my job properly. But more and more people know that mobile phones are an indispensable part of NIO,” Li Bin said at NIO IN.

In the subsequent group interview, Li Bin further said that there is indeed pressure in making mobile phones. "Some investors think that we are distracting the company's energy and resources by making mobile phones, but if you want to make a flagship mobile phone, you definitely need to invest."

However, he also pointed out that the entire mobile phone industry chain is now very mature, so it is definitely different from making a mobile phone 10 years ago. According to him, 80% of the current Weilai mobile phone team is actually working on software and focusing on improving the software experience.

Regarding the sales target of NIO phones, Li Bin said that NIO does not need to open so many stores to sell phones, nor does it expect NIO Phone to have a sales volume of "tens of millions of units a year", so there is no need to spend a lot of marketing expenses, etc. "I will make one phone every year, and then based on the entire mature smartphone industry chain, we will improve our software, the panoramic interconnection between the car and the phone, and the driver's interconnection experience, and continue to improve, and finally make the experience particularly good. I think this is something we can afford."