Nio's latest release of NAD (Nio Autonomous Driving) has raised concerns about the word "Autonomous", and media report has questioned that it may be misleading to users. In response, William Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of Nio , told cnEVpost that this is not true.
Nio launched its first electric sedan ET7 on Nio Day on January 9, along with its first autonomous driving platform NAD (Nio Autonomous Driving), saying it would upgrade from assisted driving to autonomous driving.
Yicai.com questioned the move in a report which said two days ago, Google's self-driving company Waymo accused the term "self-driving" of being misused by some car companies, which could give the public a false impression of the function of assisted driving systems.
Waymo dropped the term "self-driving" and renamed it "autonomous driving, saying it's important and can save lives. The company wants to make a clearer distinction between assisted driving and self-driving, the report noted.
One self-driving technology expert told Yicai, "Nio has not released any videos of actual road demonstrations related to self-driving technology, and NAD is still on paper."
Self-driving is based on a large number of algorithms and basic platform development, and requires the support of AI systems, not that a car fitted with a self-driving chip, equipped with LIDAR sensors, can become a self-driving car, he said.
He believes that auto companies should be especially careful when promoting self-driving to avoid misleading consumers. "If they are going to peddle a concept that has not yet been realized to the average consumer, then it may cause misunderstanding among consumers and mistakenly operate assisted driving as autonomous driving, which is very dangerous." He said.
It's noting Nio's language is the same as Waymo's latest wording.
In an interview on January 10, Li told cnEVpost that Nio will not tell users that their vehicles can drive automatically in full scenarios, and that as a user-centric company, it will never do anything to mislead users.
In extreme weather conditions, you certainly don't expect a vehicle to be able to drive itself, "It's like if you hire a driver, he might get sick, take time off. In some scenarios where it's not ready, we also expect users not to use it."
He mentioned that Nio uses autonomous driving because it is confident that Nio's technology can exceed human in safety in its own specific domain.
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