After Zeekr announced its free Qualcomm 8155 chip upgrade plan, some Nio owners are asking for a free upgrade as well.
(Image credit: CnEVPost)
Geely's premium electric vehicle (EV) subsidiary Zeekr on Monday unveiled a plan to let owners upgrade their cockpit chip to Qualcomm 8155 for free, which has upset some Nio owners who would have to pay to get a similar upgrade.
Following the release of that plan from Zeekr, some Nio owners pressured the company in a group chat to also offer a free upgrade, though that was rejected by Nio founder, chairman and CEO William Li, according to information shared by Weibo car blogger @德卤爱开车 today.
Li said Nio has delivered more than 200,000 vehicles and a free upgrade would mean a cost of more than RMB 2 billion ($300 million), which would be unaffordable for the company.
Nio unveiled the Alder intelligent system based on the Qualcomm 8155 chip, including in-vehicle intelligent hardware, computing platform, operating system, algorithms and applications, when it launched the new SUV ES7 on June 15.
Every existing ES8, ES6 and EC6 user can pay to upgrade their vehicles with Alder for RMB 9,600. With the additional option of the 5G central gateway, the price is RMB 12,600.
The RMB 9,600 package includes the Qualcomm 8155 chip, four 3-megapixel surround-view cameras, an 8-megapixel dash camera, a 2.5-megapixel cabin camera.
When users get this system, the interior roof control console, rearview mirror, and rain light sensor are all replaced together.
The RMB 12,600 upgrade package adds two additional 5G antennas and a 5G central gateway.
For Zeekr, it previously used a more outdated Qualcomm 820A chip in the Zeekr 001, which led to a poor smart cockpit experience and faced continued complaints from users.
Zeekr's offer of a free Qualcomm 8155 chip upgrade is expected to address the complaints of existing owners as well as the concerns of potential consumers, albeit at a cost for now.
But Zeekr's cumulative deliveries are lower than Nio, which means it is in a better position to cover the costs associated with the free upgrade.
Since deliveries began last October, Zeekr has delivered a cumulative total of 25,017 Zeekr 001 vehicles through the end of June, according to data monitored by CnEVPost.
For comparison, cumulative deliveries of Nio vehicles reached 217,897 as of June 30, according to data released by the company earlier this month.
Zeekr allows all users to upgrade to Qualcomm 8155 chip for free, launches new variant of Zeekr 001
