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Source: Times Finance Author: Zhao Yu

On July 27, the "NIO IN 2024 NIO Innovation Technology Day" was held in Shanghai. NIO founder, chairman, CEO Li Bin and technical leaders not only released technical achievements such as smart driving chips, vehicle-wide operating systems, smart systems, smart driving and panoramic connectivity, but also revealed a lot.

For a long time, both the industry and the market have regarded service as NIO's first card.

"There is a big difference between the NIO that everyone knows and the real NIO." In the media interview after the event, Li Bin said frankly that he did not want to be labeled with a single label anymore. "We are good at battery swapping, but no one says that we are also good at charging; our good service does not mean that our technology is bad. So we decided to launch NIO IN last year to tell everyone our background, which is technology and R&D."

In short, NIO is going to play its cards new.

Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, and Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of NIO (Photo by Times Finance)

AI capabilities connect NIO's technology chain

At NIO IN, NIO released a series of technological achievements, including the vehicle-wide operating system "SkyOS·Tianshu", the new generation "Banyan 3 Intelligent System", and the new NIO Phone, and announced the successful tape-out of the first automotive-grade 5nm smart driving chip "Shenji NX9031".

As the industry's first high-end smart driving chip manufactured using 5nm automotive-grade process, NIO's "Shenji NX9031" chip and underlying software have been independently designed and have more than 50 billion transistors.

The highlight of the Shenji NX9031 is that it has a CPU computing group with super-strong task concurrent processing capabilities and ample memory access bandwidth, which can achieve fast and stable delay processing; the full-link super-sensing enhanced self-developed image signal processor ISP can achieve earlier braking response in emergency scenarios.

In terms of software development, NIO spent four years developing the AI-oriented vehicle-wide operating system "SkyOS". By connecting intelligent hardware, computing platforms, communications and energy systems at the bottom layer, it achieves unified management and coordination of global applications such as vehicle networking, vehicle control, intelligent driving, digital cockpits, and mobile phone applications.

On this basis, the intelligent system Banyan 3 based on the underlying AI capabilities has reshaped the NOMI GPT architecture to make the interactive experience more human. NIO revealed that the first version of the new Banyan 3 intelligent system is expected to be pushed to users in late August.

Definitely not a Robotaxi

Following ChatGPT, Robotaxi (self-driving taxi) has become a new hot spot in the field of artificial intelligence, with car companies, online car-hailing platforms, and self-driving companies competing for it. Relevant departments are also actively promoting the construction of laws, regulations and systems related to intelligent connected vehicles and self-driving.

But NIO has no plans to chase this wave.

In an interview, Li Bin said that compared to competing with online car-hailing and taxi drivers for jobs, "liberating energy and reducing accidents" is the real meaning of intelligent driving, so NIO "will definitely not make Robotaxi."

In his opinion, the deployment of Robotaxi needs to comprehensively consider the real urban traffic capacity, enterprise production capacity and user needs, rather than enterprises blindly following the trend. "Whether there are people driving or not, a city can accommodate a certain amount of operating vehicles. This amount makes Robotaxi never become a borderless and scalable business like software cloud services. I think technology should be used to improve the user experience of the car, and buying a car with a part-time 'driver' is worth our full pursuit. Reducing accidents is also worth our full pursuit."

There is no high expectation for NIO Phone sales

The second-generation NIO Phone was also launched at the event, with a price ranging from 6,499 yuan to 7,499 yuan.

This model adopts an ultra-thin design, with a body thickness of 8.6mm, equipped with a 6.82-inch 2K resolution screen customized by Samsung, the chip is equipped with the third-generation Snapdragon 8 flagship processor as standard, and the maximum optional 16GB+1T memory and storage combination. In addition, the new phone still adheres to "zero system ads" and "zero commercial pre-installation".

The new NIO Phone (Photo by Times Finance)

In addition to being sold on the NIO App, the second-generation NIO Phone will also be sold on external channels such as JD.com and Douyin for the first time.

Li Bin admitted that making mobile phones is stressful, because to make a flagship mobile phone, you must invest. But NIO also has advantages. NIO's advantage is that it does not need to build a special sales channel for mobile phones, and it has caught the express train of the mature global smartphone industry chain, and only needs to invest a fixed amount of research and development costs every year.

At the same time, he also made it clear in the interview that he did not expect NIO Phone to achieve annual sales of tens of millions of units, so there would not be large-scale investment in marketing, but instead the company would focus on software and hardware research and development and driver connectivity.

"I think we have an opportunity to provide a pure flagship phone to users other than NIO, and then earn a certain gross profit from selling the phone."