In the next 1 to 2 years, some of Nio's in-house developed key chips including AD chips will be mass-produced, the EV maker's vice president in charge of hardware business said.
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Within the next one to two years, some key chips developed in-house by Nio (NYSE: NIO), including autonomous driving (AD) chips, will be in mass production, an executive at the EV maker said.
Bai Jian, Nio's vice president of hardware, made the comment today when he retweeted a Weibo post of the company.
As of the first quarter, Nio had more than 6,000 patents filed, disclosed or licensed globally, the company said in the Weibo post.
Nio adheres to a full-stack, in-house research strategy, and continues to create experiences for users that exceed expectations with technological innovation, the EV company said.
In the field of smart hardware, Nio has been designing its own domain controller circuits and structures and commissioning factories to produce them since NT 1.0, Bai said in a retweet of the Weibo post.
Even if it is produced by the factories, the test fixtures and test software on their production lines are developed by Nio and then transferred to factories for use, he said.
Developing its own chips is one of the things Nio has continued to push in the past few years.
On November 15, 2022, as Nio celebrated its eighth anniversary in advance, William Li, the company's founder, chairman, and CEO, explained in an internal speech why the company is also investing in new businesses, including chips. Nio was founded on November 25, 2014, in Shanghai.
If Nio wants to achieve a 20 percent gross margin in the mass market, it has to make its own batteries and chips, otherwise, there's no chance of achieving that goal, Li said at the time.
If Nio can reduce the number of MCUs (microcontroller units) used in its models, it will not only solve the fluctuation of chip supply, but also save money, Li said in his speech.
On November 10, 2022, in a conference call following the company's third-quarter earnings announcement, Li said that Nio began actively developing AD chips in 2021, and that the team had reached 500 people.
Defining the chips from algorithms will be much more efficient and will help boost gross margins, Li said in the call.
Internal speech: William Li on Nio's new businesses, and why it's on right side of trend
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