NIO to develop In-House Self-Driving Chips

Recently, NIO established an independent hardware development team “Smart HW (Hardware)”.

Bin Li, the chairman of NIO, started his search for a technical leader with a Silicon Valley background a few months ago, preparing for his plans to develop self-driving smart chips.

The investment required for in-house self-driving chips R&D ranges from $140 million to $1 billion; since 2020, NIO has successively raised over $3 billion through convertible bonds and increased issues in stocks.

In terms of sales volume, NIO is the leading company in China’s new energy vehicles. NIO delivered 4,708 units in September, showing a year-on-year increase of 133.2% for 7 consecutive months; 12,206 units were delivered in the third quarter alone, with a year-on-year increase of 154.3%, and a total of 26,375 units delivered in three quarters.

NIO’s independent research and development of autonomous driving computing chips may enhance its core competitiveness and gain more support from consumers.

Currently, most companies are using Nvidia’s autonomous driving chips. Chinese Brands Li Auto and Xpeng Motors have ordered the latest generation of Nvidia chips. This chip uses a 7nm process and is expected to be officially put into production in 2022.

It is reported that the computing power of Nvidia’s new chips will reach 200TOPS. If this attempt at autonomous-driving chip development is successful, NIO will become the new EV maker after Tesla to attempt the development of on-board chips.