After the Apollo Go becomes popular, whether Robotaxiwill become the optimal solution for future automatic driving becomes the focus of the industry. However, on July 27th, NIO IN 2024 NIO Innovation and Technology Day, NIO founder Li Bin stated that he firmly refused to do Robotaxi. The true value of autonomous driving should be liberating energy and reducing accidents.
The value of intelligent driving is not to take away the hard work of some specialized car drivers and taxi drivers today. It also does not believe that this is a sustainable big business.
At the same time, when asked about his view on the smart driving moat, Li Bin said in the NIO IN group interview that the competition in the entire industry is still long and very early, and it is difficult to say who already has a moat this year. We are running a marathon, and this road is still long
Of course, I'm not saying that Xiaopeng and his team didn't do a good job in their intelligent driving experience. They did it very well and brought them a lot of good reputation. But overall, for a considerable period of time, in the context of fierce competition, rapid technological change, and rapid iteration of various artificial intelligence technology routes in China, I think we can only give it our all and continue to do it according to our own understanding of the lowest level logic and models, "said Li Bin.
Although he firmly refuses to do Robotaxi, in the conversation, Li Bin attaches great importance to AI technology, believing that "a successful intelligent electric vehicle company must be a successful AI company
During the two-hour technology conference, AI was a high-frequency term that ran through the entire process. Whether it's the first 5nm intelligent driving chip, the Shenji NX9031, or the AI based automotive intelligent base - the vehicle wide operating system SkyOS · Tianshu, or the first intelligent system based on AI underlying capabilities, Banyan 3, and the first intelligent driving world model NWM, and so on.
Release the global operating system SkyOS · Tianzhu
At this year's NIO IN press conference, NIO's vehicle wide operating system "SkyOS · Tianshu" was one of its more important projects released.
In the official view, previously, China mainly focused on secondary development in the field of vehicle operating systems, with core technologies still being controlled by others and no industrial development ecosystem formed.
SkyOS · Tianshu, as an AI oriented vehicle wide operating system, has a "1+4+N" architecture consisting of one system virtualization platform, four operating system cores, 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 integrate intelligent hardware, computing platforms, communication and energy systems at the bottom level, achieving unified management and coordination of all domain applications such as vehicle connectivity, vehicle control, intelligent driving, digital cockpit, and mobile applications.
Li Bin revealed that the operating system is a car intelligent base developed by NIO after 4 years of research and development, with an investment of over 23000 person months and designed for AI.
It is worth noting that before NIO, several companies have also launched their own operating systems, such as Huawei HarmonyOS, Xiaomi Pengpai OS, Xiaopeng AI Tianji system, etc. Taking Xiaomi's Pengpai OS as an example, as a "human, car, and home ecosystem operating system" under Xiaomi, it was released in October 2023 and took 7 years of research and development with over 5000 engineers involved.
Regarding the differences between this system and the operating systems of companies such as Xiaomi and Huawei, Li Bin stated during the NIO IN group interview that top technology companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of operating systems, but each company's starting point is still different. From NIO's perspective, the focus is mainly on the car, so the requirements for stability, safety, and other aspects are also much higher.
In Li Bin's opinion, every company has its own genes, and NIO's genes are based on user interests. Of course, each company has done very well. "Huawei, HarmonyOS, and others have done very well, and there are many things worth learning from
Making a mobile phone does have pressure
The all-new NIO Phone from NIO, which has gained a lot of attention from the outside world, also received attention on this NIO IN.
According to different configurations, the new NIO Phone is priced at 6499 yuan for the performance version, 6899 yuan for the flagship version, and 7499 yuan for the EPedition. Maintain the same price as the previous generation.
Equipped with the purest SkyUI, it is one of the biggest selling points of this phone. According to the official statement, NIO adheres to "zero system advertising" and "zero commercial pre installation", and significantly improves the intelligent experience. The NOMI GPT equipped supports free dialogue in more than 60 Q&A scenarios, including encyclopedias, life knowledge, historical events, etc.
At the same time, as a high-end flagship phone, the all-new NIO Phone comes standard with the third-generation Snapdragon 8 flagship processor, with up to 16GB+1T memory and storage options available. Equipped with a 6.82-inch 2K resolution screen specially customized by Samsung for NIO, and a 510PPI 120Hz high refresh rate screen.
According to public information, on September 21 last year, NIO released its first smartphone NIO Phone at the NIO IN 2023 NIO Innovation and Technology Day event. Li Bin stated at that time that NIO's development of mobile phones was not due to the influx of mobile phone companies into the automotive industry, nor was it for profit from mobile phones, but rather because users needed a phone that could seamlessly connect with NIO. For NIO users, NIO Phone will completely replace car keys.
However, although the first generation NIO Phone sold out a few months ago, looking back, Li Bin admitted that there was indeed pressure to make a phone.
The first time I made a phone, I was actually under a lot of pressure, mainly because I was afraid that others would think I was not doing my job properly, but more and more people know that NIO's phones are an indispensable part, "Li Bin said on NIO IN.
In the subsequent group interview, Li Bin further stated that there is still pressure to do mobile phone work. Some investors think that making a mobile phone is a diversion of the company's energy and resources, but if you want to make a flagship phone, you definitely need to invest
However, it also pointed out that the entire mobile phone industry chain is already very mature, so compared to 10 years ago, making a mobile phone is definitely not the same thing. According to its disclosure, currently 80% of NIO's mobile phone team is actually working on software, focusing on improving the software experience.
Regarding NIO's sales target for mobile phones, Li Bin stated that NIO does not need to have so many stores to sell phones, nor does it expect NIO Phone to have a sales scale of "selling tens of millions of units a year", so there is no need to spend a lot of marketing expenses. Every year, I make one product and build on the mature smartphone industry chain to create our software, creating a panoramic and driver connected experience between cars and phones, continuously improving, and finally making the experience exceptionally good. I think this is something we can afford